Woolworths Online - duplicate payment taken from account

Dear Woolworths

I purchased goods last week from your Online shop (twice) and was charged at check-out as per normal online shopping procedure. You refer to this check-out value as an amount which is "reserved" from my bank account. Your internal process however takes a second payment from my account when you have picked the goods and process the invoice, this is the actual amount which you take as payment. You do not at this point release the "reserved" amount back to me. Only after a 14 day period. In other words you take the value of the goods shopped twice from me, bar a small variance for any goods which were found to be out of stock.

Upon telephonic enquiry to your call centre, I am told that this is within your terms and conditions and that a process needs to be followed to release the first "reserved" amount back to my account. The practical outcome of this process is that I, the consumer, am out of pocket by the shopped amount for the 14 days which it takes your system to release the first "reserved" amount back to my account. Unless of course I call my bank and email the invoice to them which they will then use as support to release the funds to me sooner. This is a hassle and a direct contradiction of the objective of online shopping, which should be to convenience the consumer, not inconvenience and frustrate the consumer.

I fail to see how the fact that this process is covered in your terms and conditions makes it legal as this process is not in line with our National Consumer Protection Act ("NCA"). No legal document i.e. your terms and conditions, may override any National Legislation, i.e. the NCA. It is not in the consumer's best interest to be double charged and then have to be inconvenienced by waiting 14 days for their own money to be refunded back to them.

Further, I fail to see where in your terms and conditions you make the Consumer aware of the fact that you will take payment twice with a 14 day delay in refunding the "reserved" amount.

Herewith the Terms & Conditions copied over from the Online Shopping section of your website, https://www.woolworths.co.za/corporate/cmp205294.

"Payment When you place your order, funds equal to the total value of your order will be reserved against the card you are paying with during the checkout process. To allow for any possible product substitutions, payment will only be effected once your order is ready for delivery. ..."

I do 95% of my shopping online and have never encountered such a process before. All other retailers reserve the amount and then only end up taking the shopped amount, without a time lapse.

I will not use your online shopping portal again and will rather shop with other retailers until such time as you change your archaic and consumer unfriendly system.

Regards

Coba van Griethuysen