Caution: redirects at Spartoo (300 EUR)
brucine Posted messages 25314 Registration date Status Member Last intervention -
I’m sharing here our experience, my wife and I, with Spartoo. She had ordered shoes from Spartoo for the first time. They cost 300 EUR. They were delivered to a Belgian address (at her mother’s place).
She is perfectly used to competing retailers and return systems that she has used for years without any issue.
After an unsuccessful attempt, she decides to return the shoes to Spartoo, to the Belgian Spartoo return address.
So far, so good. We receive confirmation from the post office that the package has been delivered. My wife calls Spartoo support and receives a phone confirmation from one of their employees that the package has indeed been delivered and that the order will be refunded for the full 300 EUR. Everything is fine. They even offer us a discount voucher to apologize for the refund delay (because yes, they were slow to process the refund).
But a few days later, Spartoo suddenly changes their tune. They now tell us that the package never arrived, and they request all sorts of documents, as if they were trying to buy time or to discourage us. Sometimes, some telephone employees repeat on loop like robots that they want us to file a complaint with the “competent authorities” without giving us any details, and they hang up on us.
They now refuse to refund us even though the proof of delivery from the post office has been provided. It’s frankly unacceptable. On our side, the return was indeed made and the post confirms it. We even have an email from a post office employee confirming also that the package was delivered.
Spartoo is the one that has a contract with the Belgian post to organize its returns. It is Spartoo that appears as the sender of the return, not my wife. We cannot be held responsible for the loss of the shoes in Spartoo’s warehouse, nor be responsible for a possible post office malfunction if it turns out that the post office did not actually deliver (which I doubt). In that last case, it would be a dispute between Spartoo and the post office, and it is not the end customer who should pay for that.
In short, Spartoo does not want to hear anything and has decided to keep our 300 EUR, despite all the proof documents we provided.
I must admit I am at a loss in the face of their actions. I consider this simply to be theft. We are dealing with employees who have precise instructions and who are clearly not there to try to help us. So, it’s very complicated. I find their approach really dishonest, and I now understand why I see so many online complaints from users talking about a scam regarding Spartoo when I researched them after their actions.
We, of course, still have remedies, such as consumer protection companies, and also writing to the Procureur de la République in Grenoble (the city of Spartoo’s headquarters), writing to DGCCRF, SignalConso, Test-Achats, etc...
Do you have any other suggestions to help me get out of this unfortunate and very costly situation?
2 answers
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Hello,
So in short I would say: say hello first!
Forum CCM - Charter - Respect for others
Secondly, I would say to stop buying on such questionable sites and to shop at reputable brands with a physical presence.
And thirdly, please post your question below on a more appropriate forum using the same credentials.
https://droit-finances.commentcamarche.com/forum/
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Hello,
There is something special coming up on a forum dedicated to bad-mouthing a certain site and, in passing, spreading nonsense.
No potential buyer will come here to inquire about this opinion; moreover, it will quickly fade into oblivion.
The public prosecutor and the DGCCRF are part of the usual nonsense of the kind; it is not criminal, and if applicable the Tribunal of First Instance is competent in civil matters after exhausting amicable channels (emails, registered letters, mediation).
The site in question that boasts discounted prices but not outrageously so is not known for being particularly reputable, and obviously a site selling shoes on a large scale would not survive without handling returns; perhaps this does not apply to what it calls “partner suppliers,” its Market Places which are solely responsible for their own sales.
The question of ordering shoes online on any site is another matter, unless one has a “one-size-fits-all” foot and for models that are not very rigid; otherwise there will necessarily be returns and one seeks trouble or if one has no choice (I have a close relative who wears size 51).
The only dispute I have known that lasted several months involved not shoes but a small defective piece of furniture purchased on a Market Place from what was then a famous and historic home shopping retailer in the North, which certainly had a strong street presence.
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Hello everyone!
thanks for your messages. I will check the links, that will be useful to me.
After Spartoo is publicly traded on the stock exchange, still. Saying that they don’t have a significant storefront seems a bit excessive to me. The site looked as serious as one would expect at first glance.
And personally I read quite a few opinions about this company before posting here. I found it very useful and it also made me see that I wasn’t the only one. I would have been glad to read this kind of sharing before using them. This would have allowed us to avoid all these problems.
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Hello,
I did not see that there were negative reviews about the site in question, which is generally well rated overall.
The bulk of the disputes you can find are either related to delays by the carrier for which it is not directly responsible, or, as I mentioned, to its Marketplaces, which, across all sites, have their own terms of sale different from those of the hosting site, sometimes unclear, and on which we proceed at our own risk when we still want to use them.
Your last remark doesn’t make sense: it is potentially the reviews of a large number of users that can have an orientation, not that of a single person or a few dozen, and you would, as I also previously pointed out, never have come here in the first place, and moreover on a forum whose core activity is not really looking for a third-party opinion like the one you wrote.
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