Where's Matt Allwright when you need him?

Ok, so maybe Rogue Traders is taking it a bit extreme but as their blurb on BBC website says 'Consumer show exposing businesses and individuals giving customers a raw deal' A raw deal, well that's what I, and others, seem to be suffering at the hands of Debenhams online shopping service.


I ordered some clothes from Debenhams on 26th December last year. Items all were in stock and delivery was due at my local store within 4 working days. I waited for the dispatch email and waited. 4 working days came and went so I contacted their helpline only to be told, rather unhelpfully, that 'they would be dispatched in due course'. How long is due course you may ask? How long is a piece of string? So I waited again. I emailed customer services and got the following reply on 11th January at 11.15am:

Thank you for your email.

We aim to deliver our orders within 4 working days of the order being placed, however, on occasions, this may be slightly delayed.

We would like to confirm however, that your order has been processed and despatched and will be arriving with you shortly.

If your order is not received after 10 working days from the order being placed, please contact us to allow us to make the necessary investigations.

We hope this is of assistance to you.

Kind Regards,

Ben Farbus

Customer Contact Centre

Debenhams Retail PLC

Note the sentence-your order has been processed and despatched and will be arriving with you shortly.

Excellent, I thought. At last. 

No such luck. At 00.07, I received another email from them stating that one item in my order was unable to be fulfilled so that item was cancelled and would be refunded. How could that be so when just the previous morning it had been dispatched? Very odd indeed.

So I fired off another email:

How can you tell me that my order has been processed and despatched when
I've received an email today, less than 24 hours after your original email, stating
that one item has been cancelled due to lack of stock?

This is really the most appalling customer service and I will be taking it
further and making sure others know not to shop with Debenhams online. 

You'd think this would make them sit up and take notice but here is their reply

Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to your e-mail.

Our records indicate that you should now have collected your order from the Ipswich Debenhams store.

Should you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards,

Joseph Greenwood
Customer Contact Centre
Debenhams Retail PLC

Huh?? No notice taken of what I said at all. My complaint swept under the carpet and ignored. Talk about banging your head against a brick wall. So, I decided to never shop at Debenhams online store again.....until my daughter found the perfect dress for her 'Royal Wedding' party on their website. I had shopped everywhere and found nothing but this dress was The One according to her and who am I to dissuade a very determined 6 year old?

I decided to give Debenhams a chance to redeem themselves. I'm not one to hold grudges and lightening doesn't strike in the same place twice...does it?

This time both items arrived very quickly, admittedly, but the chiffon dress was creased and underneath the first layer was a large dirty mark. Being chiffon it wouldn't have been that easy to clean and I expect my goods to arrive without stains.

 Now, it wasn't as big a complaint as previously but I and my daughter really felt let down, particularly after last time so I let it be known to @DebenhamsRetail on twitter. I got the standard reply of 'can you possibly send your details to blog@debenhams.com and we will try and sort for you? Thanks' So I did, straight away. 2 days later and I haven't heard a thing so I took the dress back into our local store today making a trip into town that I really didn't need to make. The sales assistant looked at the stain she said with a rather accusing tone "They wouldn't have sold it like that". Well, they did! 

A very lovely lady called Claire has also been having problems with Debenhams and we've been discussing it on twitter and tagging them means they have seen our tweets. I received one from them saying 'we're really sorry to hear about your past experiences & are very keen to help Can we get in touch via email to talk?" which annoyed me even more as I had already emailed, as asked previously, but they don't reply!! So much for being very keen to help.

Debenhams online have lost themselves 2 customers today through their appalling

 customer service and after reading up on some other reviews it seems like we're not the only ones. For such a large, well-known company their customer service is shoddy, to say the least. 

You can read an interesting post about Debenhams customer service here


Update
25th May 2011


And so it continues. Claire and I are still waiting for our complaints to be resolved. Claire was promised vouchers last week and after tweeting Debenhams she was told they would look into it and get back to her asap. You would assume it would be the same day but nothing has been heard. I was copied in on the tweet and I was told the same. 


Not only were we both really disappointed and let down on more than one occasion by Debenhams but when they say they will resolve the issue they still seem to be stalling.


Claire was invited to post a review of her order which she did but it was rejected, presumably on the grounds that it was negative and they didn't want it posted for all to see.


Recently Debenhams have been RT'ing a lot of positive reviews but you only have to read their timeline on twitter (@DEBENHAMSRETAIL) to see that complaints are regularly made.


Come on Debenhams. It really is time you sorted your customer service out and dealt with complaints efficiently and swiftly.