For peo­ple who knows me well, know that I am not a fussy per­son.

My his­to­ry with this com­pa­ny has been out­stand­ing. Back when they spend hours of time wast­ing dig­ging my knowl­edge about com­mer­cial pho­tog­ra­phy, and using that as an excuse to ‘test’ my skills. Know­ing ear­li­er that it might be their trick, I insert­ed a few false knowl­edge which can be seen in their pho­tog­ra­phy across the web­site up till today.

When I was liv­ing in Shang­hai, the idea of shop­ping online incept­ed inside me like my sub­con­scious, because the excel­lent deliv­ery sys­tem that Shang­hai has (order past mid­night, item arrives in the morn­ing) peo­ple in Shang­hai do their shop­ping in the com­fort of their homes. I per­son­al­ly enjoy shop­ping for gro­ceries and have them deliv­ered to my door step.Since the incep­tion of the idea of shop­ping online, and some cer­tain delays in my plan­ning before Chi­nese New Year, I had no choice but to shop at this por­tal, a Malaysian biggest, so they claimed.

I put in an order of 5 items, hap­py with the pur­chase, I keyed in my cred­it card num­ber and pro­ceed with the check out. Deliv­ery was prompt as the order came right on my door step the next day, bare­ly 24 hours.

First, the box was opened. Not sur­prised because seals do get lose dur­ing trans­port, espe­cial­ly with how Zalo­ra choose to seal their box­es. Check­ing against my order list did not reveal any miss­ing items.

I was hap­py with the tee shirt that I have got. Two for myself, and one for a spe­cial per­son. It’s Nike and anoth­er from Pes­tle & Mor­tar. I can’t imag­ine any­thing will go wrong with it.

Then it was the pants. I was hav­ing a lot of trou­ble siz­ing the pants, so I went to pants that I wa com­fort­able with, and got that size. The pants that arrived was a tad too small, not tight just tight, but utter­ly impos­si­ble to buck­le. How can it be so wrong? I pon­der.

Then it came the shoes. It was flawed. I actu­al­ly did­n’t mind that a thread is stick­ing out so I put it aside.

At this point of time. I had no thoughts of return­ing. As I do not find any fuss for me to return them. I can give the pants to some­one else, and I prob­a­bly can fix that orphaned thread.

Hor­ror strikes when I tried on the shoe. It felt like my toes had fell into a sink hole. I checked again at the qual­i­ty of the shoes, and the glue work dis­gust me.

I imag­ined that some­one used the wrong sized insole and instead of swap­ping it with a cor­rect sized ones, they just extend­ed it by cut­ting it and stick­ing it to the oth­er end of the cloth. If the cut­ting was made a tad bit low­er, my toes would not have felt the sink hole, and the shoe would had past my ‘strin­gent’ qual­i­ty con­trol.

Fur­ther checks shows that there are bad glue jobs. The insole are just smeared with very lit­tle glue, and I antic­i­pate that it will fall apart per­haps after 2 wears. It start­ed to fall apart when I gen­tle pulled it.

I had sent them an email request­ing for a RMA (Return mer­chan­dise autho­riza­tion) and that email was not answer. I made a phone call to the friend­ly peo­ple. It was a local store so com­mu­ni­ca­tion was tad easy.

My call was answered by Bob, I made up this name. Read fur­ther.

Bob got my order num­ber, and was very prompt telling me that my mer­chan­dise has left the ware­house and should be on the way. I told Bob that I want to return 2 items and he said a pick up can only be done the fol­low­ing week. I was­n’t hap­py about it and request­ed Bob to rearrange the pick up date ear­li­er so I can actu­al­ly get a good goods. Bob refuse to bulge, cit­ing that it was­n’t his depart­ment, and there is noth­ing he can do about it. In oth­er words, he asked me to sulk.

Then, con­ver­sa­tion went to qual­i­ty con­trol. I was­n’t being fussy when I said that, but hav­ing a hole in my shoe is just isn’t good qual­i­ty con­trol. Bob sug­gest that I go down to the ware­house and do my own QC. When I asked for his name, he hung up.

I post­ed a rather loud mes­sage on Face­book, togeth­er with pho­tos. Zalo­ra respond­ed with a phone call.

Car­o­line called to tell me that she is sor­ry of my unfor­tu­nate expe­ri­ence, and would like to arrange a pick up a week after Chi­nese New Year.

You see, the whole rea­son I was doing my shop­ping with Zalo­ra is because of it’s deliv­ery time. At least on the web­site it stat­ed that with­in 1 to 3 busi­ness days. How­ev­er, one would not antic­i­pate a defec­tive item, and thus ren­der­ing the whole ‘no new cloths dur­ing Chi­nese New Year’ effect to be true. 

Instead of pro­vid­ing with a pass­able solu­tion, Car­o­line did a very bad mis­take; she asked me what I want.

I want a new pair of shoes, and a new pair of pants. Some­thing that I have paid for.

She refused.

In her own words, she said, “Even if I put in the order now, you will not get them tomor­row. You got your order today is because you are very lucky.”

WHAT? How can you say that to a cus­tomer? More­over, did­n’t your web­site state that your deliv­ery time is 1 to 3 busi­ness days? This is on a Wednes­day, there is still Thurs­day, Fri­day and Sat­ur­day to deliv­er the goods!

At that point, I was furi­ous. I told Car­o­line that I would like to send back all their items and I do not want a refund in the form of store cred­it. She said that it will be done and the funds back to my cred­it card. I packed up every­thing and left it in the box.

Fol­low­ing with Ms Car­o­line’s claim that I was lucky to receive the mer­chan­dise the next day, I did an exper­i­ment. I ordered anoth­er Pes­tle & Mor­tar. This time a dark col­or. Just in case Ms Car­o­line was right and that I was just lucky to receive my mer­chan­dise on the next day.

Now, let’s wait.

Edit:  I had no tai­lor type of mea­sur­ing tape, so I took a handy­man’s tape and mea­sures the pants.

To my hor­ror, and explains why I could not buck­le at all.

Edit:  I made an order, about an hour after Ms Car­o­line’s call on Wednes­day.

On Thurs­day morn­ing, I received a pack­age, the order that I have made on Wednes­day, after Ms Car­o­line of Zalo­ra’s call, an order which Ms Car­o­line said it will be impos­si­ble to ful­fill, an order that is against all odds.

Short­ly after the post went live, I received anoth­er call from Zalo­ra; Sonia saw my post­ings and is very eager to help. She offered to put in an order for me on that day itself, and hand deliv­er it to me at my par­en­t’s.

Edit: Sonia updat­ed the sta­tus of the order all the way by phone calls. I don’t under­stand why she choose to hand deliv­er it though. She could have just arranged for the RMA items next week after Chi­nese New Year. I mean, I have already spent close to RM400, why would I want to run away with a pair of defec­tive shoes, and a tight pair of pants?

Edit: Thurs­day night short­ly before 9pm. Received a per­son­al call from Zalo­ra’s head of cus­tomer ser­vice. He offered his mobile num­ber in which I should call him if there is any trou­ble. I am not sure if this applies to my future pur­chase, but it was sure­ly a nice ges­ture.

Edit: Fri­day. Some­one in Zalo­ra mixed up the mer­chan­dise, instead of inform­ing that the pack­age from the ware­house was deliv­ered to the HQ to Sonia, the per­son called me and thought I was a staff in Zalo­ra.

A few min­utes lat­er, Sonia called and informed me that she will be see­ing me on Sat­ur­day deliv­er­ing the goods to me. I still could not under­stand why the waste of resources where they could just col­lect the RMA next week after Chi­nese New Year.

Edit:  Sat­ur­day. A great morn­ing, a day before Chi­nese New Year.

Sonia arrived with a box in her embrace deliv­er­ing my per­fect shoes and pants that I can actu­al­ly fit in. (It was size 34, and tight). Sonia also offered to take any of my future orders per­son­al­ly. Not sure what she meant, but it was sure­ly anoth­er nice ges­ture.

Edit: About a week after, I received an email from Zalo­ra’s sup­port advis­ing about the returned mer­chan­dise. They had since then issue a coupon code based on the val­ue of the returned mer­chan­dise. I left the coupon idle for a week before spend­ing them, in case they did­n’t real­ized I had already had an exchange. I received RM170 worth of tee shirt and shoes after that.

Face­book Post­ings

https://www.facebook.com/ZaloraMalaysia/posts/476037649126978

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=536549613044227&set=o.24022743937…

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=536957103003478&set=o.24022743937…

I have omit­ted the con­ver­sa­tion where Sonia asked me to watch my lan­guage, and I inad­ver­tent­ly insert­ed the word ‘shit’ into the con­ver­sa­tion.