It’s December 13th 2020 and Covid is going through a second wave in South Africa and also in many countries around the globe. It’s important people are cautious and although life goes on its good to make the right choices.
So I wanted to do some Xmas shopping and decided to check out what the festive trading times are in operation at Tygervalley mall. Below is what I found on the malls webpage.
You can see for Sunday 13th December 2020 the stores will trade until 19h00. Perfect I thought, I will go at 5pm and hope the mall will maybe have fewer shoppers than earlier in the day and I still have two hours left to shop.
Arrived just before 5pm and got to the first store Cape Union Mart at one minute to 5pm. The sales associate was closing the store and said to me “Sorry we are closed”. I responded by pointing out to him the Tygervalley festival trading times say stores should be open until 19h00. He told me “Yeah but the stores can use discretion and close when they want”. This statement is total rubbish as all stores sign a lease with the landlord and commit to abide by the malls published trading times. I pushed him a little more and asked “I know the shirt I want to buy in a small at R499 can I buy it please”. His response, “Sorry we are closed you can come back next week, we are open until 8pm”
Well it is difficult for me to understand this, retail business are under so much pressure this year after being closed for eight weeks in the first lockdown. Many are reporting loss of profits and some have even stopped paying shareholders a dividend. Yet today stores are closing early for no reason and not interesting in trying to generate that extra sale which will help the business survive.
I will go back but not to Cape Union, you guys have lost a sale and customer
Enjoy your shopping (if you can find a store open)
