Terrible Payment Processing; likely a SCAM

Terrible service. I placed an order with them, they charged a R1 verification charge (that’s fine, every online retailer does so when you first add a card) but then they called me a few moments later to say that they couldn’t start packing my order because the payment didn’t go through. , which was weird because I’d assumed if they successfully charged the verification charge that they should be able to charge for the order.

I was then told to remove and re-add my card, which I did (another verification charge but okay, it’s refundable) and they said they couldn’t process the payment again and that my bank must be the issue. That’s really weird because I had MORE than sufficient funds for that order and I’ve never had this issue with any other online retailer (CottonOn, Microsoft, UberEats, PnP Asap, Checkers60Sixty, the list goes on).

I was told to call my bank to “resolve this issue”, which I did. My banker said the same thing as me which is that if they successfully charged the verification charge they should be able to charge me for my order, so the issue must be on their side.

Fine, seeing as they couldn’t charge my card for some reason, I send an EFT to their bank account and reference my order. Mind you, this wasn’t the first time I’ve had to do this because the first time I ordered, there was a similar issue and one of the customer service agents sent me the company’s banking details (via email, I have a paper trail) to pay for that order because they couldn’t process the online payment, hence I figured I’d just do the same again for this new order.

Then HOURS later they tell me it’s against company policy to send an eft and that they’ll need to re-charge my card for the order and refund my bank deposit.

Naturally, I refused until I received my refund for the eft because I wasn’t about to pay them twice for an order I have yet to receive. The guy asks for my banking details to process the eft refund, which I gave him, and the following day I was promised that my refund was currently being processed and that I should receive it in due time.

They asked to charge my card for the order again, seeing as the “refund” is already on its way but I refused and cancelled my order altogether because at that point I just went to the mall and bought the items myself because this was too tedious and draining to be dealing with. We shop online for convenience, not to be stressed out throughout the entire process and there’s still the risk of not even getting your order (despite having paid for it)

It’s been over a week and I haven’t received any feedback from them regarding this. I almost forgot about this incident until it popped in my head today, so I tried checking my profile to see if they’d sent any communication or any updates but that’s when I saw that my account had been deleted. It only says “A” by my name and no other details along with it. I tried signing out and signing back in but it won’t let me.

I knew this app felt suspect from the start, but I went against my better judgement and lost on my cash. Thank goodness I didn’t agree to the second charge because then they would’ve *****ed me over twice as much.