Inferior quality products from Takealot and then no refund

I have been shopping with Takealot for many years and have spent thousands at this online portal, but will never again do so. I bought an office chair in August 2022. I was quite happy with my purchase and even though the chair seems a bit rickety and not the best quality, the seat was comfortable and that was more important to me.

I am a small 1.57m person who sit in this chair daily at my office. I got up last week pushing on the arm rest, not very hard – just normally and the one arm broke off completely. I have had my previous office chair for over 7 years and by the time I gave it away it was still usable.

I book it for a return which they very efficiently did and after a 4 or so days I received the news that they will not refund me due to: " • damage arising from negligence, user abuse or incorrect usage of the product;" Now if any of this was true I could understand their decision and will have abided by it, but I am a 55 year old lady, not prone to negligence, abuse or jumping up and down on a chair, have no small children around that can damage it etc etc.

I was quite disgusted because clearly this was not a case of that and rather of an inferior quality product and I certainly don’t have R1500 to spend every 4 months on inferior products that can’t even last a year.

I am quite disappointed that they did not even offer to refund half of the original purchase price as a show of good faith.

Sadly my shopping days with Takealot is no more.