Took 2 months to issue a refund, avoided my calls, **** about when refund would be issued

TL;DR: We returned a laptop with faulty battery 4 business days after buying it, received terrible service, they took 2 months to process the refund. Finally got the refund only after threatening to take them to small claims court.

On 12 March 2021, I went to Smart tech Solutions to help my girlfriend buy a laptop. The laptop of choice seemed like it was great value for money, but the battery was suspiciously bad for something that was "only 6 months old". They confirmed that we could return the laptop before 5 working days to receive a full refund. So my gf bought it and over the weekend she had experienced how terrible the battery was (it didn't last very long).

On March 16 we went to return it, but apparently we had to wait for the "tech guy" to arrive before we could return it (which is absolute nonsense, we should've been able to return it on the spot). We then left and came back around 17h00, but the tech guy still wasn't there. We had to wait until late in the night (my call log says I called them last at 19h38, and a total of 21 times that day) and still couldn't return the device even though up until that time they were said to be "on their way back to the shop".

After that, I told my gf that I would handle returning the laptop and make sure she gets her refund.

On March 18, I returned to the shop with the laptop and handed it in. This time the tech guy didn't have to be present (for some reason). I had to wait at least 45 minutes before they helped me. This was terrible service.

I was told that the laptop would be sent to their tech guy so that he could inspect it for any missing parts etc. But if nothing was missing, I would be issued a refund a few days later.

On March 23 I was notified that the laptop had been sent to the supplier because the tech guy found something wrong with the battery (well, that is why I returned it). No idea why it had to be sent to the supplier though (earlier they said that this wouldn't be necessary if no parts were missing).

From March 23 to April 8th I called 41 times in total - most of the calls weren't answered. On April 8 I finally got them to initiate the refund.

On April 16 I still had not received the refund and they requested that the EFT details be sent over whatsapp even though we already sent it via email.

From 16 April until 5 May I had called a total of 79 times. I think that they knew about my number since whenever I would call, no one would answer, but when I called my dad's phone, they immediately answered.

The last 2 weeks before 5 May I had been told many times that "the manager would pay at the end of the day" but each day I would call asking why we still hadn't received the refund. This was very frustrating.

Eventually my girlfriend took over and only after she quite literally threatened to take them to small claims court did they actually refund her. She received her refund on May 7th 2021.

PS: I reference my call logs a lot, so to prove its validity I took a scroll shot of it and posted in on Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wGN1Esa5OFF2y_2V1361qY-H2wASzLll/view?usp=sharing You'll notice many of these are "Cancelled", that's because you get sent to VoiceMail after 25 seconds if no one answers, in which case the call does take Airtime. So I would decline the call around the 25th second to avoid wasting Airtime. You'll thus also see some of the calls are 1sec, meaning that I declined the call just as the VoiceMail person started speaking.