Woolworths Online Order

Item: Woolworths Retail South Africa
Rating: 1

I am writing to you as I have had two instances now where ordering from Woolworths online has caused me a major inconvenience and has left a bitter taste in my mouth. The first instance was in January when I ordered two pairs of heels online. These were heels that I was going to wear at my wedding. I placed the order a few weeks before the wedding so I would have the shoes in time. A week after placing the order, I received a call from a lady in Pretoria who said she had received my package from Woolworths (I live in Johannesburg by the way). Woolworths online had no idea this had happened, and if that lady hadn't called me, I'm not sure what would have happened. Anyway, the whole situation was eventually sorted with many phone calls, a lot of airtime lost on my side, a lot of frustration and just over two weeks after I placed the original order. Now, after this incident, I swore I would never order from Woolworths online again. Until the other day when my colleague mentioned that Woolworths is having a sale on their website. I was of course intrigued, being a loyal customer of Woolworths for many years. I found a few great items that I really liked and thought, hey, why not try again? I'm sure I won't have the same issues as last time. Plus its not for my wedding, so if the parcel comes late it doesn't matter that much. I had specified the parcel should be delivered on Tuesday the 18th July, between 10 am and 1 pm, to my office. After placing the order I realised that we would be out for Mandela Day, and no-one would be at the office. I then called the online department to change the deliver to the following day, which was fine, no issues. I received a call on Tuesday evening at about 6 pm from a guy who said they were unable to deliver the parcel that day because they couldn't find the office. Firstly, the guy could hardly speak English so it was very hard to understand him, secondly I had already changed the delivery to the following day and thirdly, the address I had given was very clear, so not sure how they got lost (no other delivery company ever gets lost). The guy wanted me to give him directions, and I had to explain that it was 6 pm and I was with my family, getting dinner ready etc, and that he should call me the following day when he was on his way. No call the following day, but the parcel did arrive. I went home after work, tried on the clothes and realised some were too big - it is always difficult to gauge which size to order when you can't try the things on. Still, no problem. I checked the terms and conditions online and this is what it states: Returns and Refunds Please bring your dispatch note (included with your order) and the original tax invoice (emailed to you) as well as the items you wish to return to any of our Woolworths clothing stores and we will gladly refund or exchange any items in a saleable condition within 60 days of purchase. If you have any quality issues with your purchase, you have up to 6 months in which to return the product. Please note that Quality Sale items need to be returned by 5 September 2017. For Hygiene reasons, panties, underpants, and pierced earrings cannot be returned. Gift cards may not be returned either. Your refund will be given against the original payment card as specified on your tax invoice. Please note that we cannot process cash refunds for items purchased online. So I went to Cresta Woolworths yesterday (20 July) to exchange the items. I went to the refunds / exchanges / customer department and showed the lady (I didn't get her name, apologies) my items and told her I needed to exchange them for smaller sizes. She scanned the first item and said that I can certainly exchange the items, but because their sale hadn't started yet, I would have to pay in the difference for each item. I was speechless. Never in my life had this happened to me, with any other retail store. And now I was being told that because I ordered something on sale online, and because the Cresta Woolworths sale hadn't started yet, I would have to pay in the difference. Does that even make sense??? I started arguing with the lady, because honestly, this can't a Woolworths policy. She told me that that is how the manager of the store explained it to them the previous day, when they had the same issue with another customer. I then asked the lady to get someone on the phone from online or wherever and ask them, because honestly, I could not believe that this is a Woolworths policy. She didn't want to do that and said that the only way that I could get the sizes that I want would be to give the clothes back, get a refund and then order again online. I said that is not an option because then I would have to pay another R 50.00 delivery fee! Because for some reason Woolworths doesn't offer the option of delivering items to the nearest store. The only option is to pay a delivery fee and get the items delivered - another policy that puzzles me, as every other retailer in South Africa offers both options. So by this time, after 20 mins of arguing with 3 ladies who were all telling me the same story, and no manager in store, I had had enough and told them to take the clothes and give me my money back. They refunded my card and that was that. No apology, no sympathy, basically no customer service. They did, however, give me the number for the store manager "Thinus Strydom", only because I had asked for it. This morning when I got into the office, I decided to call Mr Strydom. The phone was answered by a lady who told me that he was indeed there and then promptly put me on hold for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes I was tired of holding, so I decided to call the online customer care department. I told the lady that answered (again I didn't get the name, apologies) my whole story and she told me that that is definitely not Woolworths policy and she apologised for the whole situation. She then gave me a R 50.00 gift voucher to use when ordering online again to make up for the delivery fee. I thanked her and then tried to order my clothing online again. However, by this time, there were no sizes available anymore (there were sizes available when I first ordered). So yes, I have a R 50.00 gift voucher to make up for the delivery fee, however I still cannot get the sizes I want because now everything is sold out! I know that for one of the items, they definitely have the right size at the Woolworths Cresta store because I tried it on yesterday evening! So now I am not sure what to do because I want these specific items and there are no sizes. I am very unhappy about this and will not be supporting Woolworths any longer as I havent had a response from the cutomer service department or the online department. All of the above is what I had written in my e-mail to Woolworths, first on the 21st July, and then re-sent on the 24th July after receiving no response. I will be telling everyone I know about my experience as it is now the 25th July and I still havent heard from them.

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