Suspicious behaviour and poor customer service by Makro Alberton and their staff

To whom it may concern, Makro sales catalogue advertised a Meccer 720W inverter for R499 in last week’s catalogue. I went into the Makro Alberton store to purchase this item and upon arrival, no sales person was in that specific department to assist me. I then queried for assistance with people from other departments regarding the item I wished to purchase. As time went by I had 4 staff members from other departments scrambling around to find the correct individual to assist me, this is very poor customer service. Some sales people were on the phone trying to get hold of the correct individuals to ascertain the correct information regarding the item. For 40 minutes, I was in limbo at the Makro store while staff scrambled around either trying to find assistance, delay the process of acknowledging their guilt, or they just blatantly did not give a damn about their customers. I found it very strange that no boxed/sealed Meccer converters were on the shelf instead an open one surrounded by Ellies converters, further to that I found it very suspicious that mobile trolleys were surrounding the converters as if to prohibit customers from viewing the product in order to take advantage of Makro’s error. Even further to that, I found it strange that no catalogue pamphlets were on site presenting the error by Makro, considering that the specials only ended COB 3rd May 2021 The Ombud stipulates: According to the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud, “A supplier must not require a consumer to pay a price for any good or services higher than the displayed price for those goods or services” In other words, when there’s a discrepancy, shoppers can demand to pay the lowest price advertised If this was a printing error, why was it not made known by Makro to the public without customers having to waste their time going in store and then still not have staff readily available to assist them? I will be engaging with the Ombud and Competition Commission on this matter.