Well, what an experience, when Thursday morning I checked my credit card balance, and suddenly R1500 is missing....aaaahhh!!!

It all started when I ordered a flower-(bouqee(spelling?)) for a woman at a business partner that was in hospital.

I picked what I wanted,and everytime(quite a few time) I entered my credit card details it said that the transaction could not be authorized, then eventually I phoned them, and they did the transaction manually.

I registered my name under Arné, they say everytime I tried to authorize,their system could not process the é that I used to register my account name.

Well, everything dandy, the flowers was received at the womans house.

But, Thursday morning my credit card was deducted with numerous amounts for the same transaction, and I phoned NetFlorist.com again, and asked them if they can please find out what is going on, and the lady just said "EEeeehh, there was only one order, with nothing else to say..." - although I tell her if she must just check their CC transactions or something...

What I then decided to do as the lady that helped me looked not very competent, I phoned ABSA and I wrote a dispute letter, and just a few hours after that, my money was back in my account, Thanks ABSA, bye-bye NetFlorist-our business will never do another transaction through you guys... just by one incompetent support person.

that sux

deap post rush.

Yeh, that does really blow. Luckily everything is sorted out now. Thanks for the warning!

Haven't you guys heard? Bad service is a South African trend. Sure, it's the customer's right to complain, but after you've received the bad service, the damage is done and creating a scene in a restaurant or other place of business just to make management aware of their employees' shortcomings is something I really, really loathe.

Taking one's business elsewhere doesn't always help either since as I said at the beginning of the post, bad service seems to be some sort of trend in our country.

It's not that we as the customer have become complacent; I've seen many scenes before where a furious customer storms out of a store or restaurant after getting fed up and then the staff pretend as if nothing has happened and it's business as usual. Not so much as a "sorry" to the people still in the store or even an attempt to find out or fix the problem the customer who stormed off had.

So what it comes down to is what can you actually do as an individual? Since this is an on-line business, this part won't really be relevant, but if you're getting hassle(d) at a store, restaurant or other place of business by some clueless employee whip out a camera and watch magic happen.

This is just one of the many reasons that I am migrating ASAP

I also had useless service from netflorist. I ordered a bunch of bloody exspensive roses to surprise my girlfriend with and what do they do? They phone to say someone by my name has ordered flowers and when can they deliver them.... I told them from what time to what time she'd be available but they just had to phone and spoil the surprise

Never again....

bad service is due to bad management. some of my takes on the bigger picture of bad service in this country (based on operational management studies):
i think most of the bad management in established companies can be attributed to the apartheid past, when local companies had no need to provide world class service or products to stay in business or make money, and so this attitude in management has continued (as seen in the decline of the local 'previously' established textile industries.) also education level is terrible, so u get plenty of incompetant people running businesses. and competition is very weak, so businesses can always get away with making enough money to survive... whereas elsewhere in the world they would go down purely due to bad management and service levels.

the best thing would be to see more online florists (and online pc shops etc) popping up... where there is cut-throat competition... then the worst of them will go down due to bad management practices/service.

Hmmm... note to self...

I had a similar experience. Ordered flowers for my mother birthday. Clicked on the bouquee which did not include a specific flower range (heck if i know what they are called. in germany we call them death flowers since they last a long time on grave) entered card num and sent it off. Birthday came and yup they messed up the order..sending my mom thos damn grave flowers. I promptly emailed them and I got a response in 48 hours informing me that a new order has been despatched...that never arrived. phoned again. they said a new one has been despatched. never turned up. so after spending a week to sort it out I wrote them a letter in which curtly told them to insert a bouque of roses rectally. Now if they could only remove me from their damn mailing list aswell... (sent 5 email requesting it)

that's a bad one, death flowers ... what did your mother say about her "b-day"-flowers

lets just say she is a forgiving mother...

Just a follow up on this situation, at the moment I'm very impressed with Absa's service, or maybe I'm just lucky to have a really excellent service person helping me.

Today, just a few days after I reported the incident and the funds were written back, a mail came in the post just confirming the despute and that the funds has been reversed, that really is already excellent.

...Let's go submit it at HelloPeter....