ZARA Sandton City shocking Customer Service

My experience with ZARA Sandton City

As a regular customer from day 1 they opened store in South Africa, I like their style and for everyday work attire they are perfect and hardy, the cuts fits perfectly and are sleek. I visit their shop at least once a month.

The above two trousers was purchased end of May, I tried the blue one, it was perfect, like it so much and bought the black one as well, same size, same price, but did not try the black one, assuming it should fit, why wouldn't it anyway.....oh well I learn it the hard way here.

When trying it at home for the first time, one morning getting ready for work about a week later (first week of June) somehow it just did not fit, as comfortably as the blue one, as mentioned both same size!!

I return the black one to ZARA Sandton City, here starts a succession of meeting three different managers, and the long wait in between, each with a different history of how to handle the exchange.

I happened to have lost the original invoice, but I still had the tag.

ZARA Sandton City insisted on the invoice for exchange, the second manager asked me to bring both trousers, so she could see, which I did a few days later (hence the picture), but could not make a decision, eventually the third manager gave me a business card with details of their customer service to escalate the matter, which I did via email, explaining in detailed what happened.

I even send them a detailed credit card statement for the month of May showing all purchases at ZARA Sandton City.

What follows was the coldest reply I ever received from one of the largest international fashion companies, two response in fact, it was basically a copy & paste of their T&C's with yellow highlights where relevant of their returning policy, WOW, the arrogance and inflexibility of their approach was simply nauseating.

Last email sent from their website was simply never attended.

It does happened for a customer to loose an invoice and generally in South Africa other retailers are happy to replace provided the tag still present and some sort of proof of purchase and the item have not been worn, which is the case here, well not ZARA Sandton City.

Disconcertingly enough, their website states:

"The customer is at the heart of their unique business model, which includes design, production, distribution and sales through their extensive retail network"

It is clear their South African stores completely disregard the above with sheer incompetence and without the customer happiness in consideration.

Disappointed am I, who wouldn't

Miguel Chan