MAKRO disingenuous Ambush Marketing

Makro management embarked on an elaborate scheme calculated to defeat and evade the limited protection afforded to consumers under Consumer Protection legislation. You may encounter advertising product, clearly offering free delivery for orders over R500 I am an 81 years old Pensioner and have a Makro “Pensioner Card”.

After moving home I wished to order a foldawaywashline advertised for R1800. On checkout I was charged an extra amount for delivery which I didn’t accept so that order didn’t go through.

I complained to.Makro’s Customer (don’t) Care and was offered implausible excuses, implying, unconvincingly, that I may have been mistaken for a trader without any logical explanation why it should make any difference.

When I tried again I was diverted from www.makro.co,za to business.makro.co.za where, indeed, there was a message offering “free delivery” for orders over R5000. I proceeded to the checkout, reasonably expecting that if a charge was going to be made for delivery that will be disclosed before I approved the transaction. I was asked to approve a transaction for the product at a price of R1800 which I did, as no additional charge was disclosed, nor approved so far. Only immediately later was an additional charge was made without prior approval or consent.

In terms of my understanding of the law of contract no proper contract was concluded for lack of full consent about the terms or the cost.

I took the matter up again both telephonically and in e-mail with Makro’s Customer (don’t) care and and they refused to refund the dishonestly charged and ill gotten delivery charge of R70.09

The flimsy disingenuous excuse was cryptically referred as “b2b rnsction”, meant to imply that by their misleading manipulation they converted a retail sale to an 81 year old Pensioner to a an at arm’s length sale to another trader and thus not protected by the consumer protection act and that they don’t have to refund what they obtained by deception.

Not that in my vie such conduct should be inflicted upon another customer even if he or she are traders.