after 6 order messup in 2 years, i no longer want to be a takealot customer

Good Morning, I have had 6 major order issues including my current one, which involves you sending out a stick of RAM instead of the Hard Drive Enclosure I ACTUALLY ordered, one that has provided nothing but headaches and has consumed too much time to resolve. For this order alone I have been passed off from one customer representative to another 3 times. First it was Nevona Faro, who asked me to take a photo of the barcode on the incorrect item, then it was Tasneem Issacs who asked me to take the same photo, and now finally it is Eleanor Ndhlovu who in her first email made herself sound like some kind of superhero, by announcing in an email preceding her first actual interaction with me, that the request being dealt with by the first to reps had been combined and would now be handled by her alone. Eleanor Ndhlovu: apparently capable of doing the work of two women alone. Except after informing me that she had taken over at about 16:30 on Thursday the 8th, I didn’t hear from her again. Instead I got a generated email on Monday the 12th informing me that my return had been approved. Thank you for approving my request that you fix a mistake you caused! This is only the second time the wrong item has been sent to me, but On 4 other occasions takealot has had an issue with stock on one of the items in my order, neglected to inform me of the issue, not updated the order due to said issue on your site and sent out the packages for delivery without updating the price of the order. All of which resulted in me expecting I was getting my full order, because there had been no update or indication at any point or in any form to lead me expect otherwise, only to open the box and find I had paid you for something you did not deliver, and it was usually only after a second email from someone at takealot after my initial complaint that I was informed about the lack of stock or whatever the problem was. All of these personal experiences with you as well as Hello Peter reviews and facebook complaints about similar problems to mine experienced by many others customers, have lead me to the conclusion that you at Takealot do not value your customers and even worse you feel no shame about the way your company mismanages things. Again, I say that not just because of the way you have treated me alone on 6 different occasions, but if you had been paying attention to your companies customer reviews on Hello Peter, you would notice that your average customer rating is 1.92 stars out of 5 and trust in your company is rated 2 out of 10. Those scores put Takealot in the same peer group as institutions like Telkom and Eskom, who are infamous for their poor service delivery. Sure you may apologise and promise better service in every email response to our complaints, but yet here I am, complaining again for the 6th time in a 2 year period, about an order not being processed properly, and once again it has been days since I have had any reply from the individual who promised to resolve the issue. I understand it has been the weekend, but you can’t possibly expect me to believe there is nobody working at Takealot over the weekends? Who is in charge of all the weekend delivery couriers you over charge for and I see driving around if that is the case? Not only have I received no update on my order issue, but until this the aforementioned email I received this morning, the return hadn’t been updated since 09:33 on Thursday morning on your website, which implies there had been no movement on this issue from any department since Thursday. So obviously all the placating about quick resolution was bull****. I got passed off from person A to person B, who promised a swift resolution in an email and then ******ed off to enjoy their weekend. Meanwhile 6 times takealot has dropped a bomb in my life and taken the better part of a week to sort out the aftermath. You lot get to go home and enjoy your weekend, while I get to stress out because I either have to pay my hard won money for goods you don’t deliver but charge me for anyway, wait an indeterminate amount of time longer for a product to be exchanged, have to waste petrol driving around from shop to shop to source the item you couldn’t supply because I needed it urgently or worry about how much work I have to take off to wait around at home for someone to come and deliver the item that was missing or exchange the wrong one you gave me. How the hell do you do this to people and still say with a straight face that you are a more convenient way to shop? I feel I should also point out to you that the item I actually ordered: https://www.takealot.com/transcend-2-5-rugged-ssd-hdd-upgrade-encloser-kit/PLID***7 Is R800 cheaper than the one you sent me: https://www.takealot.com/transcend-8gb-ddr4-2400-u-dimm-1rx8-memory/PLID***3 That means that whoever or whichever department keeps making this stuff up nearly cost you close to R1000. Again this is the second time I alone have received the wrong item, add that to the number of complaints on Hello Peter about the same thing and you can see how something like this could be causing losses to your company in the thousands each week. And you obviously aren’t aware of these potential losses due to mismanagement, until a customer complains about receiving the wrong goods. What if this was to happen to a less honest person? What if they ordered an item for R309 and due to somebodies inability to read an order properly you sent them this stick of ram valued at R1109? They could easily hop on to OLX or Bid or Buy and sell that RAM as unsealed for R200 less than your price, reorder from you or from somewhere else the original item they wanted for R309 and still make themselves a profit of about R600 off of somebody at takealots mistake. If that sort of thing happens once it’s a mistake, but if I’m complaining now for the 6th TIME in 2 years about an order issue, that’s much more of a pattern of behaviour than a mistake. If something like this happened more than once where I work we would have that whole department investigated to figure out how this KEEPS happening. From now on I will be using Loot or Raru for my online shopping and I would urge anybody else reading this to do the same. They have mostly the same products Takealot does at pretty much the same price point. Although that being said, Loot also has better savings on much more desirable products on their average daily deal than Takealot has on big advertised sales like Black Friday. For Example: they had a deal on this weekend for a 65 inch UHD tv for 45% off what it usually costs and a PC monitor going for R1000 less than Takealot have it advertised for and what Loot themselves usually charge. Last Black Friday it was obvious Takealot were flogging their warehouse surplus items for the most part. Also Their delivery fees are R30 rand less than yours and their free delivery cap is R100 less than Takealot’s despite the fact that they use a third party courier service and operate from the same part of Cape Town takealot does. With Loot Or raru I can put pre orders and wish list items into the same cart without being told that causes some problem and forces me to either pay your expensive R60 delivery fee or add more than one of the same products to qualify for free delivery. You’d think having your own in house delivery service would make mixing orders easier and delivery fees cost less. And yet it actually cost less for me to drive down to Makro to buy a single blu ray, or pre-order one from musica, than it does from takealot once I figure in the R60 it will cost to have it delivered, or the second copy I would have to buy as a gift for someone because I can’t add other different items to a pre-order. Not to mention the addition of a few hundred rands worth of unneeded items I would have to add to my cart just to qualify for free delivery, and actually get the saving on that one item I originally wanted that takealot promised over buying in store. And after all of that who’s to say I’ll actually get my full order or the right items? At least I can be sure of that at a brick and mortar store. The only thing that had me coming back to Takealot was the fact that I kept getting your gift vouchers for Christmas and birthday gifts from people and the ability to pay via COD. But that one convenience is just not worth it anymore considering one out of every 3 orders causes me this headache. What’s that stupid slogan of yours? Our smile guarantee. Were only happy when you are. Well in that case hopefully you’re miserable and ****ed off too.

Have a good rest of your life, Regards, T Hunter