This past weekend, hundreds of South African shoppers thought they had struck gold in the Makro “Weekend Mania” sale.
The frenzy started when eagle-eyed shoppers noticed prices on high-ticket items like MacBooks, inverters, coffee machines, TVs, and gaming laptops slashed to just R55. Social media lit up with people sharing their incredible finds and some placing multiple orders.
But as with all things too good to be true, there was a catch. By Sunday morning, Makro confirmed that these prices were a mistake, citing a technical issue that affected pricing on their websites and app. Furious customers who had already paid were finally informed that their orders were cancelled after a series of mixed and inaccurate messages.
So, can Makro really just cancel these orders? According to the Consumer Protection Act (CPA), yes. Retailers have an out when it comes to “obvious errors” in advertised prices. Makro invoked this clause, explaining that the pricing error was “unintentional and obvious”.
Naturally, X (we used to call it Twitter when it was good) had a field day with this, with savvy consumers citing sections of the CPA they felt supported their right to receive the goods at the price advertised. “We paid, have receipts, and I even have estimated shipping time. We’d like our laptops, not your R50 vouchers please,” tweeted user @TheNextNeo56.
Makro’s parent company, Massmart, has issued an apology, but this incident has thrown the company into crisis management mode. They’ve promised to learn from this debacle to prevent similar issues in the future. This is terrible timing for the Walmart-owned company, as Amazon has just launched in South Africa. Dropping the ball like this will surely have customers shopping elsewhere…
