During Black Friday, I placed an order at Hawkers for six pairs of sunglasses. It was a purchase I made with complete confidence, as I have been buying glasses from this brand online for many years and, until now, I had always been satisfied.
The sunglasses are of good quality, and, in addition, Hawkers usually offers very attractive promotions — 2×1, 3×1, or 50% discounts — which make the purchase particularly appealing.
Precisely because of that positive previous experience, I did not hesitate to place the order.
The problem began when I received the package on November 28. When I reviewed the sunglasses, I noticed that one of them did not match what I had purchased: a pair of sunglasses that I had ordered in pink arrived in a completely different caramel brown color.
Before filing a complaint, I carefully reviewed the order to make sure it was not my mistake. I confirmed that I had placed the order correctly and that the error had occurred during shipping.
Starting on December 1, I tried to contact customer service. The only available option was a contact form on the website. There is no direct email address, and no chat. You submit the form and wait for a response.
What is most concerning is that after submitting the form, no confirmation email is received. As a customer, this creates significant insecurity, since you do not know whether your message has arrived or not. I waited 48 hours without any response and, faced with the silence, I began resending the same request day after day, simply to obtain some sign that my complaint had been received.
After receiving no response through the official channels, I decided to contact the brand through Instagram. I sent a message explaining everything again in detail: which sunglasses I had ordered, which ones I had received, and what I believed was the origin of the problem. Everything pointed to the fact that the pink sunglasses I had purchased were no longer available and that, instead of informing me or offering options, they had sent different ones without prior notice.
Shortly after placing the order, I received an automatic email inviting me to leave a review on Trustpilot. The review was negative, because at that point I had already spent several days trying unsuccessfully to contact customer support. Interestingly, it was right after publishing that negative review that I received my first response on Instagram.
From Instagram, they replied to me, but always with significant delays, sometimes more than 24 hours later. They informed me that they had sent me an email, but that email never arrived. After several attempts, I finally received an email that turned out to be completely generic, with no specific reference to my case or to the information I had already provided. I replied immediately, but once again received no response.
Only after insisting further via Instagram did they confirm that they had received my email and that, indeed, the sunglasses I had ordered were no longer available. As a solution, they offered me a 45-euro voucher — the amount of those sunglasses — to place a new order with free shipping.
Although this solution might seem reasonable, the truth is that it was insufficient. At that time, the website was offering active promotions such as 2×1, meaning that with those same 45 euros any customer could purchase two pairs of sunglasses. However, I could only order one item. There was no additional gesture to compensate for the time invested, the accumulated frustration, or the fact that I never received the product I had actually chosen.
In addition, they proposed arranging a pickup of the incorrectly sent sunglasses and sent the carrier without even asking about my availability. At that point, I decided not to continue. After days of messages, waiting, unanswered emails, and unnecessary procedures, I was not willing to continue losing time by staying at home to fix an error that was not mine. I kept the sunglasses and will give them to someone else. I simply assumed them as a minimal compensation for the inconvenience suffered.
The most disappointing aspect of this entire experience is not the initial mistake, but how it was handled. For years I have purchased Hawkers’ sunglasses without any issues and with satisfaction. However, the moment something goes wrong, the customer is left completely alone. Solving a simple issue turns into a long, confusing, and exhausting process that forces you to insist through multiple channels, write repeated messages, leave negative reviews, and invest time that should not be necessary.
In 2025, it is difficult to understand why there is no automatic and efficient system to handle basic issues: going to the website, reporting that a product arrived incorrectly, and requesting a replacement or a clear solution. Something simple, fast, and transparent.
The final feeling is that while everything goes well, the experience is good. But when something goes wrong, the cost for the customer is disproportionate. And that inevitably damages the image of a brand that had worked well until then.
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