Please come back, David Jones. I’ll forgive you if you’ll forgive me

For sale: One lovingly cross-stitched tapestry bearing the cautionary Latin maxim, “caveat emptor”. Now stained by the rueful tears of its creator.

Spoiler: This item doesn’t actually exist, which is probably for the best. I’m diabolical at handcrafts and far too impatient for all the scrubbing required to get makeup stains out of basically anything.

Anyway.

The subject of items destined for the bargain bin – or not – brings us inevitably to yesterday’s huge news that retail behemoth David Jones was closing half its stores with thousands of jobs potentially lost. There was a time when such news would’ve driven me, weeping, to the front of its flagship city store, clutching candles and clad in a black mantilla, praying fervently for a saviour for my truest shopping love.

Alas though, no amount of mental gymnastics can alter the fact that I have lately been an unfaithful spouse. I started cheating on David Jones three months ago, when Lithuanian online marketplace Vinted opened its virtual doors in Australia. Then I remembered that I didn’t mind an occasional browse on its secondhand fashion trading predecessor, Depop, and the rest is history. Including, possibly, David Jones.

But mea culpa, caveat emptor, tam stultis fui. (The last one means “I was so stupid”. I was on a roll with the Latin, and it seemed rude to interrupt myself.)

Back to Depop and Vinted. From herein I will refer to the two online traders as “Dented”, partly because it’s a handy portmanteau, partly because that is the condition of some of the stuff I have accidentally purchased after not reading the original sales listings properly, and partly because I have bought so many things in recent times that I’ve lost track of what I sourced from where.

And if you are reading this and you happen to be my husband, I would like it noted that some little AI gremlin must’ve crept in and written the previous paragraph because actually I’ve barely bought anything at all.

There was a glorious period – let’s call it the first month – where I was basking in the warm glow of the myriad bargains available on Dented. Here a $3 dress with tags, there a lightly used $20 designer handbag, everywhere a $50 keychain from Miu Miu. Some of the listings even came with a touching backstory: “Selling because we are moving back overseas to care for my ailing mother!” “Keen to move this quickly to raise $$$ for Christmas presents!” “We tried this board game once and found it really boring!”

During said honeymoon, everything I ordered arrived on time, as described. The sellers were prepared to negotiate on prices that were already too good to be true. The site fees were low and the postage was cheap, relative to other online retailers. Everyone walked away from the table happy.

Dented operates on a ratings system for both sellers and buyers, and I was doling out those gold stars like it was the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

But then, oh then, the rot set in. One woman messaged me, apparently from the post office, a week after agreeing to flog me a dress that once retailed for $179.95 for the new ticketed price of $13.80.

“I’m sorry! I thought I could part with it. I wore it when I was pregnant with my first and I just can’t do it xxx,” she wrote.

My first reaction – rage (her listing had made no mention of a baby, and I’d probably overpaid, given the fabric was likely stretched) – was followed by my sincere suggestion that she save her kisses for her dress.

“Hahahaha, you’re clearly childless,” came the unsympathetic (and frightfully inaccurate) response.

Another seller, this one hocking an $8 hardcover sporting anthology, got in touch to say he was cancelling the sale because he’d underestimated the weight of the book and there was “no way [he was] paying the extra postage sorry”. The good news was that I could rebuy it for “a reasonable amount”, but he was evasive about what the new price was. When I pointed out that “a reasonable amount” wasn’t legal tender, he told me that he didn’t want to fight with me. “So, honour your original deal and I’ll send you a Christmas card,” I wrote, but by then he’d ghosted me and that was that. Not even the prospect of revenge via the “leave feedback” button was any consolation.

So much faux friendliness after the initial transaction. Shifty vendors. Sales contracts superseded by website rules. Items that arrive looking like they’ve been belted with a mallet despite being listed as in “very good condition”. And all avenues of appeal governed by Dented’s faceless “help desk” staffers, whose one-star ratings and “formal warnings” to errant sellers carry the retaliatory weight of a heavily discounted lettuce leaf.

Come back, David Jones, all is forgiven. I see now the error of my bargain-seeking ways and promise to do all my Christmas shopping with you.

Bring back the houndstooth bags. And the smiley pianist in the lobby. And the food hall and the 30 per cent off signs and the definitely-not-crazy salesladies. Caveat emptor, I’ve learned my lesson. After all, there’s no other store like David Jones.

Michelle Cazzulino is a Sydney writer.

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