Tuesday 15 November 2011

Irritable customer syndrome...part 2

My comment "I feel another email coming on.." in the first part of this tale a couple of days ago was reinforced by a comment posted by Nev , a fellow blogger, urging me to 'write to the MD of John Lewis.   I took Nev's advice and emailed the Head Honcho on Sunday.

Dear Mr Street
I have been dealing with your Customer Services people about an order I
placed on 25th October for a washing machine, a tumble dryer and a
dishwasher.  The first two items were delivered; so far so good.   However,
my order for the dishwasher was cancelled, by your supplier apparently, and I
was sent an email at 15.04 on 9th November informing me of this by your
Customer Services unit.

I copied the email I had received about the cancellation of my order and then went to say...

I was somewhat taken aback.  No pre-warning, no options, no goods! 
My response below.

I copied to Andy Street MD the email I had sent in response to the cancelled order, reproduced in part below.

....I fail to see why a delivery company operating on John Lewis's behest can
decide not to deliver items that have been paid for in full, to an address
that John Lewis are prepared to deliver to and in fact did deliver to. 
Furthermore, I was given no opportunity to do anything; fait accompli,
order cancelled, money refunded.  This is simply NOT good enough.

Yours,
a very irritated customer...
I then went on to say..

'So clearly I have some issues about what has just occurred.   This to my
mind is pretty shoddy service by anyone's standards.  And the response from your Customer Service unit...

Again I copied the email from John Lewis's Customer Service team that has added insult to injury and finished my email to the MD thus....

I am signing off as an 'very irritated customer', I have raised specific
issues and yet your Customer Service team deem the appropriate response to
be a polite but generic, bland, corporate, templated apology with all the
usual meaningless claims and assurances that doesn't even attempt to deal
with the specifics of my complaint.
Perhaps you can appreciate how the irritation factor might rise a few
degrees? 
I wanted a proper response: well frankly I wanted a dishwasher delivered
and not to be dealing with this corporate treacle, but needs must.
So could you please bring your influence to bear and get your Customer
Services team to provide an appropriate response to a poorly served
customer?
Yours sincerely

Will they respond?  To be continued..




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't wait for the next instalment! I'm so sad I know but customer service is a real bug bare of mine and at present the most important thing in retail and John Lewis are usually so good at it, I'm astounded!

Paula

Nb Yarwood said...

Hi Paula
I was also shocked by the lapse in JL service standards but the next installment is on the way...
Lesley