This company should be called take-a-lot-of-your-money-and-run.com

I've seldom received such appalling delivery service as with an attempt to buy a sleeping bag through takealot, in preparation for some time spent at a nature reserve in the Karoo.

I ordered it in good time for delivery in the Cape Town area. The first problem was a 'warehouse hiccup' - delivery would be delayed by 1 - 2 working days, I was told.

In the event it was 4 days late. I got the delivery sms, and then the tracking data showed that it had gone to the wrong depot. So I phoned and asked if I could collect it as I had some errands to run. This was on a Friday.

No delivery, and a few 'wait-and-see and we'll-get-back-to-you' emails later, and I had to leave the following day.

Eventually, on the Monday, by which time I was in the Karoo, I got an email to the effect that no, I couldn't collect. So I phoned in to change the delivery address and gave them the name of the nature reserve. All fine.

Needless to say, the courier didn't deliver this far off the beaten track. So we made an arrangement that he could leave the item at the Total garage on the N1, and we would collect from there. Note that this is delivery attempt number three.

The courier duly left the parcel, my host did a 50km round trip on a dirt road two days later to collect it - and the contents are an Afrikaans maths textbook. No sleeping bag.

So I logged a ticket, got all sorts of vague assurances on Saturday that they 'might' be able to resolve this if I sent in various photos and barcodes.

Today (Monday) not a peep, so I responded to the email again, and got told that I would have to go through their returns process (which means a 50km road trip to leave the unwanted maths textbook somewhere where their courier can find it) and then potentially a 7-10 days wait (by which time I will have left the nature reserve) in the hope that they will manage to deliver the right item on Attempt Four.

So I pointed out the distance, the time, the petrol, the fact that my trip to the nature reserve was ruined by not being able to sleep out, and that my next step would be legal action unless they could come up with better service than this.

Not holding my breath.

If this was their first delivery attempt I would probably suck it up. But to ***** it up three times in a row and then make the resolution my problem is unacceptably bad. Basically they have the money for a very expensive sleeping bag, and according to them it is now up to me to ruin what is left of my stay out here running around trying to sort out their string of ****-ups, otherwise I won't see a cent of it. I will never do business with this bunch of shysters again.