Over the past 3 months I’ve become totally addicted to online clothing shopping.  It’s just soooooo much easier than missioning for parking, schlepping around a busy shopping centre and standing in painful “kill-me-now” queues.  The small risk of getting the size or fit wrong has been 100% worth it for me personally.

So far I’ve made quite a few successful purchases from US website Forever21.com (I told you guys about it here and here).  But recently I decided I would give some local sites a bash too.

The first was relatively new venture, Zando.  I was lucky enough to be the proud new owner of a R100 Zando voucher, thanks to a lucky draw on total sweetheart, Saturday Girl SA‘s blog.  So it just made sense that I should give their online shopping experience a little test drive.

I had my heart set on a pair of simple Zoom pumps for only R229.  You see I’ve been on a mission to refresh my wardrobe basics, and a good pair of pumps that matches everything is a winter must have in my book.  But to use my R100 voucher, I had to spend a minimum of R300.  So to make up the difference I also added a pair of drop earrings and a pair of gym secret socks (yes yes I know… super boring… but mine’s forever going missing OK).

Things I liked about the site:

• The product categories are well organised.
• The site search option works like a charm.
• You can filter by brand, shoe size, colour and price.
• They have multiple images for each item so you can see it from every angle and then you can also zoom in to make sure you are happy with the quality.
• The cart, checkout and payment process is quick & simple.
• FREE delivery & FREE returns (only for exchanges/replacements) within SA for orders over R150.  Just read all the terms & conditions.

Things I did not like:

• Once an item is in your cart, you can’t see what size you had selected.  This irritated me as I like checking, double checking & triple checking before I click on confirm.
• The order confirmation email also doesn’t state your selected size.  Again, more worrying about whether you got it right…
• The clothing section is a bit of a snooze fest.

I placed my order just after 7pm on Tue, 27 Mar.  By the next day, I got a call asking whether they could deliver between 2pm and 4pm.  I was really surprised & impressed, I mean that was less than 24hrs.  That’s pretty damn good for online purchases of any kind.

The box arrived looking like so:

The problem was that the box only contained my shoes.  There was no sign of the earrings & gym socks. Hmmmm…

I called their call centre.  The guy who assisted me promised that he would find out what happened and call me back immediately.  The aftenoon passed, but nobody got back to me.   So I decided to also email them that evening, explaining the problem.

The next day (Wed), someone got back to me via email.  The lady stated that the socks were actually out of stock and that they would be giving me a R50 voucher to make up for it.  The earrings were apparently due to arrive that afternoon.  I told her that I did not want yet another voucher, because then you’re just locked into making another purchase you don’t actually need or want.  So she said she would therefore submit a request to refund me for the socks.  I also informed them that the shoes actually seemed to be a very small fit and that I’d need to swap the size 5′s I ordered for a size 6.

Wed passed without receiving the earrings and I also did not get any further feedback on the refund.  On Thu though, they did come to collect my size 5 shoes.

On Fri morning I sent off another email to follow up.  Nobody got back to me.  But then later on that day reception called and said that there was another Zando package for me.  This time the box contained the size 6 shoes, the earrings and the socks.  Finally we had everything sorted.

My goodies - the earrings turned out to be much bigger than I anticipated. But I've done a DIY job on them, taking off 3 of the pieces on each and now it works.

In the end I didn’t need the refund and everything was finally sorted, but I must admit that the multiple deliveries were really annoying.  Especially because the delivery guy would just rock up without giving you a heads up.  That first shoe delivery was the only one where they actually called me beforehand.  Also I though the swapping of the shoes could have been done in one step – ie. pick up & give me the other pair at the same time. Seems pretty simple to me…

Obviously the free delivery & returns helped a lot.  If I was footing the bill for it, I would have been seriously p’d off.  But if their deliveries come through in drips & drabs in general, I’m sure they are losing money.

Will I buy from them again?  Well also in my box was yet another R100 voucher (on a minimum R300 spend), so I might be tempted again…  But I’m hoping that they are working on fine-tuning their processes, otherwise I’ll just avoid multiple item purchases.

xxx