Incredibly confusing mess with my smartphone order

I FELT incredibly frustrated in my dealings with Incredible Connection. On Black Friday, I placed an order for a Samsung Galaxy Z with an LTE black dual SIM card, as advertised on their website.

On Tuesday, I received delivery from Incredible Connection and upon opening the packaging, I found a box with the Samsung Z2 label, but absolutely nothing anywhere on the box about the specs for the phone.

I opened the box and was disappointed to find only one SIM slot.

I called Incredible Connection’s customer service department and talked to a woman who kept me on the phone for a while and then told me that some other department that specialised in phones would call me back “now, now”.

That call never came. I then went online and attempted to get assistance through their chat. I had a chat with someone who informed me that the procedure was that he would have to send it to customer resolution, again at the same number.

I called them again but this time I got hold of a gentleman who advised me to take it to the nearest mall. On Wednesday, I took the phone to Southgate Mall.

I went into the store while my husband called customer resolution at the same time so that we could get the matter resolved.

The employees started shouting that they did not carry that cellphone, even though it was advertised on the Incredible Connection in-store specials for R799 that week and on the website, too.

I asked for the manager, who told me they do not do any merchandise exchanges for online purchases and that someone was ill-informed. All I was trying to do was to exchange the phone for the correct one. We left the store.

The employee on the phone informed my husband that we had to send an e-mail first to customer care, which we had already done, and that she would forward the complaint to her manager.

Complaint? What complaint? We had the wrong product delivered to us and they are treating it like a complaint… God help us.

Please assist with this mess.

All we want is our money now and we will buy the phone somewhere else, like Makro or Pick n Pay, which have painless return policies. Maria Nokoane Georgie: The JD Group, which owns Incredible Connection, hadn’t responded to my query by deadline but Nokoane should not be made to jump through such hoops to return the unwanted product.

It’s not what she ordered and, even if it was, the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, which applies to online transactions, gives consumers a general seven-day cooling-off period, for any reason, without penalty, but the consumer foots the bill to return the goods.