Online Order & Return Nightmare

I placed an order with Polo on the 29th of November for some items for an upcoming trip that I needed before the 9th of December. After a couple of days, I noticed that the status of my order hasn't changed and filled in the contact us form on the website requesting whether the order will ship in time. Having worked in online retail I know that after black Friday and during the festive season, supply chain and logistics are stretched and therefore naturally delays occur or are expected.

To my contact us form request on the website – No Response.

The next day I managed to track down a number on one of the emails and after calling was helped by a very friendly and helpful staff member. This person informed me of some delays at the warehouse due to a covid case and together with compounded with Black Friday orders there were some delays. This was all completely reasonable and understandable so I kindly requested to cancel the order and for Polo to process a refund. This member of staff assured me that she would have that the order cancelled and it was communicated to me that my refund will take 7 days. After 7 days I used the contact us form to request the status on the refund – NO Response. I also then mailed the e-commerce email that was provided on the website and emails from Polo – No Response. During my trip, I get a notification that my courier has received my parcel and frantically tried to get hold of customer service either via the website, email, phone number – No Response. I then had to make arrangements for someone to receive the order on my behalf.

After my package was delivered it was kept unopened so I can return it in original packaging. After trawling through the returns policy on the POLO website ( Section 2) it seemed that to take it to a Polo store looks to be the easiest route since reaching out online seems futile. The closest Polo store to me is in Canal Walk around 26km from my home. I went there and returned the box still in courier packaging and although the staff were friendly and helpful they requested that the original credit card was needed to process the refund. Nowhere on their website does this state anything of having a card present. They also mentioned that the retail stores have nothing to do with online so I have to give them the card. I asked them whether I can tap with my phone and this was also not an option. So I had to do another 52km ( which made it 104km in total) round trip to go collect a card and to hopefully have my refund processed which can take ( 7 - 14 days). This is a really laughable customer experience. What baffles me is that in all the emails and calls I have made I have yet to receive a single response from your online team in 17 days. This has been a nightmare experience dealing with you and I honestly don't know if I would ever consider purchasing from your brand again or recommending it in any case. If you buy from retail stores it should be fine but I wouldn't recommend buying online.