Takealot - give back nothing

Bad Service from Takealot.Com On 21st October, my husband placed an online order with Takealot.com for a Julia Donaldson 5 Book and CD Bundle for R129. This was going to be a Christmas gift for our young granddaughter, who loves Julia Donaldson books. He received a confirmation from them for my order, together with confirmation that they had taken R189 from my bank account (being the R129 + R60 delivery charges). They promised delivery by 13/11/2018. I called them ahead of time to ask if delivery could be on a Thursday as there would be someone home then. On 13/11 my husband received an SMS to say they would be delivering our order that day. As nobody was home, they sent another SMS saying they would deliver on the 14th Nov. Next morning, the delivery came and when I received the parcel, I thought it felt light, so rushed inside to open it, only to find they had sent a notepad "Primary Story Journal" - not our book and CD bundle. I immediately went outside and as the courier was still there, handed the package back to him, telling him it was not the right thing. I then called Takealot to lodge a return and to complain, asking when I could expect to receive what we had ordered. The gentleman I spoke with, Ronaldo, told me he hadn't experienced anything like that before so would need to speak with his supervisor and call me back. When he did call back, he said that once they had received the returned item, they would credit our account and we could then place the order again, but it seemed they may not now have any stock. He said it was strange because when he put our order number into they system, it came up with the notebook sent to us and not what we ordered.

I was furious and said this was unacceptable as we placed the order in good faith and they clearly had stock on 21/10 when order was placed. The problem was clearly on their side as we had a printout from them clearly stating that what we ordered was the book bundle and they were happy to take our money at the time. If they had now sold out, then they should make up a bundle for us as they do have Julia Donaldson books in stock. I asked for the supervisor to call me. The next day, when no call was received, I called them and spoke to a lady, repeating the whole story again. My husband also followed up with an email to them that evening, saying that he did not want a credit, but the books (or similar) that were ordered as these were for our granddaughter. The next day he received a call to say that they couldn't help us any further as they no longer had stock and were not prepared to do anything else to rectify their mistake, other that to apologise and credit our account.

If this is the kind of service we receive, I feel that I do not want to be doing business with them again.