Incredible bungle and there’s no connection
Store assistant tries to pass off demo modem as new
“OUT of stock”— three words shoppers dread.
They are so final — and frustrating — when you really want a particular item and no substitute will do.
But there are three other words that shoppers love hearing: when assistants agree to search the stockroom to find “the last one”.
Few among us do not relish the thought of being lucky enough to have secured the final item available.
That is how reader Sarel du Plessis felt after a search by staff at Incredible Connection’s Menlyn store in Pretoria paid off.
“We had asked a sales assistant if they had the particular modem we wanted in stock and he promised to have a look ‘in the back’ for us,” Du Plessis said. “We waited almost 15 minutes, after which he returned triumphantly with ‘the last one’ that they had.”
But the media and marketing consultant’s delight turned to shock when he unpacked the sealed R2 600 box at home.
“We noticed that there were missing items and there was a lightning protector in the box that wasn’t supposed to be there.”
The modem was meant to have gone through the distressed stock process to resell it at a discounted rate
When Du Plessis tried to set up the unit, the password provided did not work.
“We phoned our internet service provider, which assisted us . . . but we then realised that this unit has been used by another person who had already inserted their own credentials and changed the password.
“Clearly, this unit had been returned to Incredible Connection and was then repacked and sold to us as new.”
The unit was immediately returned to another branch closer to home.
“We explained our problem, [but] the person dealing with this simply took the unit and came back with a supervisor asking if we wanted our money back. There were no apologies whatsoever from them,” Du Plessis said. “They tried to sell us a used item as new and when confronted they simply brushed it off.”
It turns out Du Plessis was right. The unit had indeed been used — it was a demo model.
Said an apologetic customer relationship manager, Ankia van der Pluym, after I approached her: “The unit was meant to have gone through the demo or distressed stock process in order to resell it at a discounted rate, clearly marked as a demo unit and not as a new item.
“We have a procedure in place to govern the reselling of such items and we can assure you that the matter is being addressed with the individuals in question,” she said.
The fact that a demo model was cellophane-wrapped and resealed raises questions not only about internal controls, but also about the staff’s integrity.