To never buy anything from John Lewis ever again?

AO were brilliant when we had a new kitchen. DH was fitting the kitchen and sliced his fingers with a circular saw. AO let us postpone the delivery at really short notice and again when he needed longer to recover

The only bad experience I’ve had was buying an LG washing machine that broke after a few weeks. I had to deal with the repair people kicking the can down the road for a few months before eventually getting an replacement months later. That is probably on LG not John Lewis but I’ll never get an appliance like that from them again.

I still like JL.

Take it into a store

I am so interested to learn that my contract is JL if I have bought from them.

bought 2 x vacuums, one Dyson and one Shark. Cost nearly £1000 in total. Both stopped working within the month. Rang JL about the Dyson, who palmed me off onto Dyson customer service. That took ages - they kept sending me different parts, which I had to fix on to the vacuum, then I had to ring back when it still didn,’t work, and so on.

finally they agreed to take it in for repair, and returned it mended, but it was a massive palaver.

couldn’t face going through the same thing with thr shark, so have just left it, but now I think I’ll ring JL and insist they deal with it.

Had an issue with shoes that I bought from John Lewis a few months after I had bought them - the sole was falling off after little wear.

They were brilliant at refunding me. Very quick email with photo from me. They agreed with me.

Genuinely they were great.

We had exactly the opposite. AOL said they would take the old freezer, and were warned it was a tight space. Said no problem, when they arrived they refused to take it saying they were worried they would scrape the walls, told not an issue, still refused, said they would remove the old one if:it was taken to the front door, and deliver the new one to the front door but no further! Order cancelled, JL delivered, old out, new in, no scraping, no issue.

Yep, it's gone totally down the pan. Fridge freezer with their name on packed up less than 18m old. Had to seek assistance with manufacturer as that is who my gaurentee was with, who was useless. 8 weeks without a fridge or freezer. Never again. Nothing from JL.

I see you've not met my mother. Shopping at John Lewis is as much of a requirement as buying one's knickers from M&S.

Not sure what their service was like before but I'm generally satisfied with their service. It's just they don't have a wide range of products. I'm reluctant to use small businesses sadly they can't compete on price and their service seems to be less flexible than that of big retailers when there's an unexpected issue. Probably it's because of a lack of experience and bigger companies tend to have many different kinds of customer complaints and they seem to have a manual to deal wth issues.

I use John Lewis all the time as their prices are competitive and service is good. Sadly your experience is not great!

I cancelled my account and haven't used them since this debacle: https://archive.ph/PNV5e

They contracted out Customer Service at least 5 years ago. You used to be able to go into a store and speak to someone, or ring the store and speak to the department. Now you have to ring a call centre.
I will never order anything that has to be made to order. I’m ok with going in to buy eg a couple of towels that I can take away with me.

its so ironic because they have changed CEO twice, keep saying they are doing their best to improve falling profits, but it’s quite clear why people are voting with their feet.

We won't use ao . com again, either. I know a lot of people rave about their customer service, but it's only excellent if the appliance you buy is in good working order. If it's broken/faulty, they're a nightmare. We didn't want a faulty/broken new dishwasher and wanted it replaced, as was our right under consumer laws. They wanted to keep trying to 'fix' our brand new dishwasher. It was quite the battle. We won, but my husband won't use them again.

I also had appalling in store "customer service" and left with nothing.

Ordered from ao.com and have never looked back-they are fantastic.

John Lewis rode it's reputation for years but the reality is that service ethic is long gone

*edited to say I have no idea why or how ao.com turns in to a hyper link when I just typed in the name. Scary!!!

We had a similar experience about a replacement item that was damaged - took weeks of talking to different customer service people none of which could read the chain above, so was just me repeating myself to different people.

I like JL when they work well but this has put me off.

DH bought a merino wool jumper from them in February. By the end of March after only a few wears, a hole appeared in the armpit (on the seam). He contacted them ask for a repair or replacement and they said no, as it had been washed so was probably our fault. I think we’d washed it once, exactly as described on the care label!

We were really disappointed as it wasn’t a cheap purchase, and had heard so many good things about JL customer service.

I've never had anything other than exemplary customer service from John Lewis.

I recently received someone else’s order, presumably they received mine. I buy pretty much everything online and have never had that happen before. Very odd.

Never had problems and still our go to place. Do people complain to JL afterwards about their bad experiences?

Same. Drum went within 2 year warranty period and it was a nightmare getting it sorted. I only did because I was persistent at my end, but I shouldn't have had to do as much as I did for them to uphold their end.

We stopped after we wanted to buy a camera that was £400 more online with John Lewis than with a camera store online. John Lewis refused to price match. Why would I pay £400 more for exactly the same item and a worse guarantee?

I don't work for JL neither am I defensive but I accept that I find it odd that an adult would need to ask the internet if they should to stop going to a particular shop.

If I get bad customer service I dont go back, as they say, simples, no?

I had a horrible experience with them last year trying to get a refund on a faulty item. The man I dealt with made me feel dreadful. The item was faulty and I had the receipt. But he was so condescending and nasty I almost left without the money. He then got another person over and they kind of ganged up on me. I held my ground and despite having a massive hot flush managed to be very determined.
It made me see the shop very differently.

The customer service department was outsourced a while ago to an outside company. This is when it started going downhill. Employees of JL were hired and retained for their work ethic and loyalty, and vested interest in customer service as it could affect the yearly bonus they receive as ‘partners’ in JLP. The outsourced company do not have this incentive.

This looks like a haiku 😉