DO NOT SHOP AT ZARA SOUTH AFRICA!!!!

My son purchased a pair of jeans for R850 from Zara in November 2019. His wallet was ****** the same day with his receipt in it, however he had paid for the jeans by card and was able to access his bank statement on line to show the transaction / proof of payment. Furthermore he had only purchased the jeans from Zara that day so the amount displayed on the price tag on the jeans clearly correlated with the transaction amount reflecting on his bank account which could be easily traced at the store where the purchase was made the day before.

When he attempted to exchange the jeans for a smaller size the following day he was told that he needed to obtain an affidavit..... (what an over**** for an exchange not a refund). When taking the affidavit to the store we were kept waiting for over 1 hour while the cashier, supervisor and manager insisted that they had never seen this before and needed to clarify who had advised my son to obtain such affidavit.... first time I've heard of a senior manager needing clarification from a cashier..... Nonetheless, the cashier was finally identified and she confirmed that she had assisted my son and that she had requested the affidavit. Sadly this did not help as we were then told they needed to send the documents to head office for review and they would revert. Never heard a word ....

I then emailed the Zara Head Office in Spain as well as the SA Head Office and received a reply (now we're 2 months down the line) stating that they will make an 'exception' and provide us with a gift card for R599 as the jeans were now on sale.

What an ********* offer!!!! - There were no delays on our side in returning the item - 1 day turnaround. - The item had all it's original tags and stickers on, it was even in the same Zara bag that it was put into when my son bought them the day prior. - The affidavit was obtained as requested and handed in.

So 2 Months have now passed since my son purchased the jeans in November last year, and all we have done is run around chasing our tails trying to co-operate and still we have had no assistance for having purchased an expensive item of clothing that does not have a good fit.

We have lost time and money on this issue and I have spent an unnecessary amount of time trying to trace contact details as these too were kept a secret!

Having outlined the summary of events accordingly so that hopefully someone with the relevant authority could remedy this situation as any 'brand ambassador' would do..... I receive correspondence today confirming this pathetic outcome and stating that they had rep**** to me on the 10th January 2020 .......... which I clearly never received given the many spelling errors including an incorrect email address!

Come on ZARA, you get it right all over the world, but your SA operations are less than acceptable.

You leave us no option but to take this matter to the relevant legal and statutory bodies in SA that certainly offer consumers protection against this sort of unjust behaviour or perhaps this is your way of bumping up your bottomline in a stiffled economy......

Over and above the shocking service, waste of our time spending hours on this simple matter, we are expected to suffer a financial loss as the item is now on sale, some 2 months down the line.............

Never again Zara. In this fiercely competitive market you should honestly work a little harder on retaining your good clients as opposed to forcing them to shop at your competitor brands where service truly is worldclass and customers are not made to feel like ********* when they in fact do have proof of purchase and only required an exchange! You not only lost our business, but the many customers who walked out of your store in Menlyn Mall during the 1 hour ordeal when all your staff where gathered around trying to resolve a simple issue....... and multiple clients were left queuing with no attendance........ some of which walked out at that.

So moral of the story - do not shop at Zara!!!!