DISRESPECTFUL AND RUDE

To whom it may concern.

On the 9th of April 2022, I went to the Goldman Spar in Florida, Johannesburg and purchased washing powder, amongst other items. Every single day when we shop at this Spar, we are charged more than what is shown on the shelves. We have to actually make notes of the prices of items whenever we shop at the Goldman Spar because the prices are always incorrect when we get to the till. At times we only realize this slyness when we've reached home. This is extremely irritating and frustrating. The price on the shelf for the Ariel washing powder read R44.99 but as the cashier scanned the item, the price read R69.90. I queried it with the cashier who then went to check the price and brought it back. She called Thobile for assistance, who approached us with a very bad attitude. Without saying a single word to me, she looked at the two price differences i.e., the one on the slip and the one from the shelf. Thobile then called another person whose name was not visible. That person also said nothing and joined Thobile to stare at the price differences without addressing me or saying anything. In all this time ten minutes had lapsed. I then asked what it is that they are staring at and requested for a refund. Still no answer or feedback on what was happening, the 3rd lady who joined just walked away. I then said to Thobile that she is standing and staring at prices without saying a word to me and once again asked what was happening. With a bad attitude, pulling her face at me, she said... 'you already screamed I don't have to tell you anything'. I then said to her that she is not doing us a favour and she needs to hurry up with the refund because we do not have all day to wait. My sister asked if the woman who took the shelf price will be giving us the refund because we do not have time to waste and to wait for spar to fix their system errors. My sister then went to speak to the manager (Garry) who was sitting in his cubicle watching everything but did not do anything to intervene. My sister then told him that she had addressed this issue with him at a previous occasion regarding the fact that the staff has a bad attitude who carry on as if they are doing us a favour by correcting the incorrect prices that we spot. As it stands, we are still not sure what the delay was, why we had to stand and wait for the 3rd lady to do something on a system very far away from our till. My sister then asked what is happening and why they are not giving our money back, and then only they decided to work on their tills and provide the money back. It appears as though the staff at Spar wait for clients to spot errors in their prices and then expect the customers to wait while they correct it on their system, which is extremely unacceptable as people, like us, are often rushing for appointments and cannot spend 10 to 15 minutes waiting for Spar to correct their system errors.

We understand that errors happen, but the concern that I have is that the staff are always upset, disrespectful and rude when we spot errors and request for them to correct it. Even the manager handles the situation as if Spar is doing us the biggest favour by correcting it and carries on as if we did something wrong by expecting the items to cost the price as per the shelve. Neither Thobile nor Garry apologized for the delay and discomfort that resulted from this.

Whenever we shop at this spar, we are anxious, and our experience is made very unpleasant. We have been shopping at this spar for over 20 years and have been having these issues for all these years. However, our previous experience has made us decide to rather shop elsewhere, as we cannot allow ourselves to go through this for another 20 years.