Bitter Black Friday

On Friday morning, the 27th of November I placed an online order with Totalsports. It was a split payment, meaning that I payed with both my TFG store card and via debit card. I grew concerned when my order was not confirmed – it still said “awaiting payment” on the website. Later that afternoon I phoned the online query division.

Initially I spoke with a female representative. During the call the line mysteriously cut. Now determined, I called again and spoke to a gentleman who assured me that my order would be placed after the debit order went through. I accepted his response and decided that if it did not go through by the morning I would call again. Bearing in mind that I received as SMS stating that if payment was not made with 48 HOURS my order would be cancelled. The next morning, to my utmost surprise, I received an SMS stating that my order was CANCELLED.

At 8 am I called and spoke with another representative who basically stated that although the SMS did in fact state that the order would ONLY be CANCELLED AFTER 48 hours, due to black Friday this timeframe had been lowered to 24 hours. I that it is well-known fact that it takes between 24 to 48 hours for any payment to reflect and by this time it had only been roughly 26 hours. I went onto explain that even if I tried to repurchase the order it would take a further 2 days to reflect from the date of purchase plus the extra 1 day that I had lost out on. Furthermore, this was an online deal so I couldn’t even go instore to purchase.

He then told me that the only thing to do was to reverse my store card payment. “How long will it take to reflect back?,” I asked. His response was 3 days. WOW!? So you're telling me that I lost out on a deal because of the debit order waiting time and I would not be able to attempt to repurchase because of the time it takes for my money to reflect back????

Dear TFG please make ensure that you: 1. Train your staff adequately on how to deal with ALL customer service queries. 2. List to the pre-recorded calls and ensure that your staff are polite! 3. Amend the SMSs you send in order to ensure the customer receives the correct information. Have you no concern that your reputation is on the line? It’s no wonder that your rating on this site is atrocious.