Disgusted beyond Wond

To whom it may concern,

I write this email deeply saddened, disappointed & in absolute Awe at the service I received today at Zara Menlyn Shopping Centre Pretoria (South Africa).

Today I walked into one your stores in the men’s section with a colleague of mine, wanting to purchase a pair of shoes (which were not available when I went to the particular store). I eventually picked four items from the Sale items which consisted of a pair of Jeans, Two Shirts (a green denim shirt & another green shirt) & one Henley T-Shirt.

I went to the fitting room and afterwards was only happy with the Army Green Denim shirt which was priced at R199.00 (€12,54) . I then proceeded to the till and the lady who assisted me tried ringing the item to which she said it was not reading and asked me where I had obtained the shirt. I showed her where and she proceeded to look at the rest of the shirts and came back stating that the prices on the same shirts were R320. 00 (€20,19).

That is she went to the store intercom and called the store manager named Koketso, who came and explained that the store had left a 2018 Season item on the floor & there was no way of them reading the price. To which I responded by asking why keep something on the floor as well as price it under the sale range if it can’t be ringed. He responded by saying to me if I’m not happy with his response I should write to the complaints department and they will respond to within 48 hours.

I explained to him that this was not the first time I had purchased through your Stores & have spent a significant sum of monies over the last two weeks or so and could not understand why he could not write a credit note or override the amount as it was clearly written on the item & further more why keep items from 2018 & as well as price it along with the other items that were on sale.

He was adamant that there is nothing he could do about it & I needed to escalate this to the complaints departments. At this point my colleague and I explained to him that a customer should not be inconvenienced because of his staff pricing an item incorrectly.

We kept going back & forth until I eventually asked him if he did this to all customers who came into the store and all of a sudden started screaming that I was racially abusing & when we tried calming the situation down, he then proceeded to tell us that he will not even escalate the matter anymore (Even though my tone was still calm & was addressing him directly & not screaming to the rest of the customers).

We eventually decided to leave & he screamed for the whole store to hear and said “You Can Leave, plus you two look ***!”. You can understand that at that time my colleague & I completely lost our cool and Koketso kept hurling insults & kept swearing at us right in front of everyone in the store.

Some of the customers came to us & kept saying he was wrong in how he handled the issue and should have been more professional being in the services industry & being the last point of call within the store.

One of his colleagues ended up calling us outside of the shop & apologised on his behalf stating that he had witnessed the whole drama & wanted to apologise on behalf of his colleague as he had not right to speak to customers & as well as swear insult them in that manner.

I am deeply disappointed, as I have spent much more money than a mere R199.00 over the last two weeks in your stores, and even worse he perpetuated ****phobic perceptions as that is the view we left feeling like ZARA as a brand does not only hire management with an inability to handle trivial issues & uphold the theory of the customer being the most important.

I would like to express my utter disgust as he is the face of the brand & store at large & I have never in my life been treated in this manner as well as been degraded & insulted!

I believe you need to take immediate action against such actions from an employee as the group of people who were in the store & witnessed such will definitely be spreading the word on how ZARA management feel they can insult customers how they like & get away with it because the they feel there’ll be no accountability as you are only answerable to people all the way in Spain.

(Deeply hurt beyond words Sic)