Thursday, January 23, 2014

Customer Service FTW!

Dear John Lewis,

Thank you so much for my new television. It's everything I'd hoped for and more - oh, sorry, wait. You didn't make it you just delivered it. Well, thank you for delivering it. Eventually.

I know your delivery drivers are very busy, so getting a phone call at 8.20pm to say they wouldn't be delivering by 9pm was fine. We'd only been waiting since 2pm with the furniture all out of place to make their job easier when they arrived, so no worries there. I was very happy to be given a reason for the delay and "unforeseen circumstances" really clarified things for me. And of course I had the phone call from customer services to look forward to.

Which didn't actually happen, but hey! You're busy people! I understand that. So my three or four (or was it five?) phone calls to find out when our set would be delivered were obviously necessary. And you did give me another delivery date, four days after the first one. Result!

It would have been nice to get the set within the time you specified but the men did come to pick up our old one on time. Punctual or what! And it was only a few hours later that they actually managed to arrive with the telly we were waiting for. How cool is that!

So it's all good and of course an apology is not needed which is just as well really seeing as how we didn't get one.*

Looking on your FaceBook page for the last few months you seem to have a lot of angry people whose deliveries were not on time and who were fobbed off by customer services. All I can say is, what a grumpy lot. Why would anyone expect to get their goods on the day they were promised just because they'd already paid for them?

Sadly we won't be buying anything from you again unless we can pick it up and bring it home ourselves but no hard feelings, eh?

Respectfully,

Fairy Hedgehog


 *A few days later I got a phone call from John Lewis; someone had drawn their attention to this blog so they were phoning to apologise.

14 COMMENTS:

Lexi said...

John Lewis rapped sharply over head with wand.

They really can't afford to let standards slip like this, not with Amazon ever looming larger. JL are currently trying to lure me back to Waitrose.com with a bottle of champagne, but Ocado is so good and the one time I tried Waitrose deliveries they weren't...

fairyhedgehog said...

I was very surprised because they've always been so good.

MorningAJ said...

Sadly, they can afford to treat people like this because nobody else is bothering with customer service either. The first company that shows consistent are for its customers will make a fortune!

MorningAJ said...

Make that "care" for their customers. :)

fairyhedgehog said...

MAJ, this is sadly true. We were very disappointed because we had this false image of John Lewis as having excellent customer service but these days they just don't. We even had to queue up to pay for the tv, even though we'd just been talking to a salesman about it. Not quite at the level of Argos but not so far off either.

Whirlochre said...

Had a delivery recently — although not from John Lewis — timed to arrive between 10.15 and 10.16.

Came at 12, just as the echoes of my laughter finally faded.

fairyhedgehog said...

I think the mistake is to assume that any service will be good these days.

Stacy said...

Oh, yikes! Well, you got it eventually, right??

fairyhedgehog said...

stacy, we did indeed!

klahanie said...

Not exactly a glowing endorsement for John Lewis. These major retailers have to realise that we may have had to take time off from work, change schedules in our lives to cater to them.

Customer satisfaction? Those were the days.

Gary

Simon Kewin said...

Do I detect a subtle hint of irony there? I hope they're listening...

fairyhedgehog said...

Gary, I'm afraid you're right!

Simon, I was most sincere ;) Oh and they did listen - my son got a phone call saying they'd seen this blog post (I'm guessing through someone retweeting the link on Twitter) and they'd phone back when I was in. I'm still waiting.

Lexi said...

So I succumbed to the bottle of champagne with Waitrose delivery offer. Supposed to arrive between 7 and 8 pm. Arrived at 8.30, with no phone call to let me know they'd be late. I was out of food and got very cross. I thought of you, FH :o)

Back to Ocado.

fairyhedgehog said...

Lexi, I'm so touched that when you get poor customer service you think of me!

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