Not a good experience

Unfortunately, I cannot give this company a positive review.

I came across a rifle scope on their website priced at approximately R25,000 and proceeded through the online ordering process to the point just before payment. Something however struck me as unusual: the listing contained no photograph and almost no product details. It gave instructions to see the item on the Sightron website and provided a code for doing so. Because of this, I decided not to complete the purchase and left the item in my shopping cart.

The following day I phoned the company to confirm whether the scope was actually available and in stock. The gentleman I spoke to informed me that the scope was not actually available for sale, but was in fact a second-hand refurbished scope that had been reserved for a customer to collect. At no point on the website listing was this indicated. The item appeared to be a standard retail product available for purchase, with no mention that it was used, refurbished, or unavailable. He strangely acknowledged that they were aware of this "uncollected listing" on the website for some time. This exacerbates the error even more.

The gentleman then remarked that it was “fortunate” that I had not made payment, and suggested that the issue should be understood in the context that they have more than 5,000 items in their store. While I appreciate that mistakes can occur, this explanation does not address the concern that a high-value item was incorrectly listed as available for purchase.

He then asked whether I would like them to source such a scope elsewhere. I rep**** that, given this experience, I would prefer not to proceed with doing business with the company and at that, I was ready to end the conversation. At this point the tone of the conversation became defensive. I was told that “everyone is human” and that mistakes can happen. I acknowledged this, but reiterated that I simply preferred not to proceed further.

The conversation then became unnecessarily confrontational, with the gentleman accusing me of wanting to “pick a fight”, despite my intention merely being to conclude the call politely. I eventually ended the conversation calmly, after which he remarked, somewhat sarcastically, “I hope you can try to have a nice day.”

Overall, the inaccurate website listing and the unprofessional handling of a straightforward enquiry left me with little confidence in the reliability of this vendor.