It's Sad :(

Truthfully Takealot doesn't even deserve one star! It's horrifying to be in a world where a dependency was created and now we are all at the mercy of Takealot. Takealot will let you put things in your cart, they will have a notification on for day's that tells you that they have disabled all payment options due to them reworking their platform to allow only for the purchase of essential goods during lock-down. This is fair enough given the dire state of affairs during this pandemic. Now, with that being said, I placed things in my cart and left it there, going back in a couple times a day to check. Then magically upon a certain login there was a pop up notification saying that payment options had now been unlocked and we could now place orders for essential items only. I was soo happy. But then I checked my cart. At least four of the 10 items that I put in the cart were already displaying out of stock messages. So I had to remove those. Then I noticed one item had been removed from the cart by itself or by somebody other than me. I know this because I put 10 items in and then went back to discover only 9. Then, with those essential items I realised the reason why I chose to purchase via Takealot was because they had messages on them stating "in stock and ready to deliver" from either JHB or CPT, this was very crucial in my decision to purchase. Those items now had messages stating "shipped in 5-7 working days" So now I have decided I can rather do without or even just walk into a shop when I am able and go buy whatever is left on the shelf, even if it means eating a potato. Prior to the lock-down I had one previous bad experience with them during which I placed an order for delivery and it was delivered to my neighbour instead. I was not phoned to notify me of the delivery, I got a sms notification about the delivery but nobody pitched up to my door. I had been on the look-out all day long. My neighbour kept the delivery for days before I went around asking and it was finally given to me. Takealot has no telephone number that you can call to query deliveries. There is also no point in the track and trace after the stock is dispatched and out for delivery as you just simply have to wait until it pitches up after that point. I think it's useless to have a delivery service that will allow somebody else to accept a parcel that I have paid for when I did not give that instruction. Also it's sad that if even if perhaps, you could not see me to deliver to me, you would rather deliver to a 3rd party instead of calling me. That doesn't seem logical. I should have learned after that experience. I placed an order through Superbalist thereafter only to find out that Takealot now owns that too. I paid extra for same day delivery and waited the whole day with me heart in my mouth in fear that you would deliver to somebody else as was done before. I kept running up and down to the gate to check for you. It's like I was being held at ransom for a parcel that I had paid for. And that is not pretty at all. I can't even tell you what all of my bad experiences have done to my psyche. I don't trust Takealot. I also want to let you know that twice when I received deliveries the gentlemen that handed over my parcel grabbed and caressed my hand quite awkwardly. It was the same gentleman on both occasions. That's how germs spread!