Late Deliveries and *****ulent Company Policies

I hate typing up a bad review for Takealot. I've been shopping with them since 2005, when they still called themselves Take Two. The last four orders I've placed in the preceding months have each been one disaster after the other:

- I order items listed as "in stock" and pay before 10:30am to ensure same day delivery and the delivery is automatically scheduled for 5 business days, without any option for express, priority or otherwise. The delivery will then only arrive after 6-7 working days with the support team being virtually impossible to contact or reason with.

- I attempt to contact Takealot support to report this issue and they tell me that the items must be listed as "in stock", which they are. I explain that I have followed everything to the letter and I am still told that I am at fault for expecting them to live up to their service delivery.

- The Takealot team advertise far and wide for same-day or next-day delivery on in-stock items paid for before 10:30am and yet I have followed these stipulations on the last 4 orders only to have each delivery arrive a week or more later.

- Come the time of delivery, I will receive a notification saying the delivery is out and will be delivered in 24 hours (before 5pm), and EVERY TIME I will have to wait 48 hours for the package to arrive AT 5PM or just after, end-of-day and a full day late, so I end up standing outside waiting for the driver at 5pm when I have other obligations - every time.

- I have not received a single on-time order from Takealot in a year.

- I am presently awaiting an order I placed last week where all items were listed as in-stock. The order did not give me ANY delivery options and delivery was scheduled for 5 working days, defeating the purpose of finding in-stock items and relying on Takealot in the first place. I contacted Takealot support to notify them that the items were required AS SOON AS POSSIBLE and that this delivery would be at great inconvenience if it arrived a week later, and that I had followed their rules for a same-day delivery. They responded by saying I didn't check that everything was in stock - it was - and instructed me to wait. No option of a refund was offered or mentioned. I was notified yesterday that the delivery would be out today and arrive before 5pm - I have been watching my colleagues receive Takealot deliveries all day while I am still waiting. It is now 5pm and still no delivery, no correspondence, no contact whatsoever. I've paid for several items that have yet to arrive and I have no information as to when they will arrive and I am obligated to go out and buy them myself because I needed the items urgently. Should the delivery eventually arrive I will have spent double and have an additional unnecessary duplicate item. Useless.

It has now become FAR easier to inconvenience my time and actually go somewhere to purchase items in-person, instead of ordering from Takealot, which defeats the purpose of online shopping, so I cannot logically continue awarding Takealot with my patronage.