John Lewis didn’t deliver - but say they did. What now?

[JohnLoulou]

In the lead up to Christmas we received an astonishing number of parcels from John Lewis, as all our family members elected to have their presents delivered directly to us.

Recently a family member checked that we’d received everything, as DD had only acknowledged two out the three items in her thank you letter.

We had never received this item (which I’d have remembered, as DD would have been over the moon with it).

Family member queried this non-delivery with John Lewis, and they responded by sending us a photo of our front door and the bottom half of a woman (me) taking delivery of a John Lewis parcel which they said was this item.

As I said, we received LOTS of John Lewis parcels in the run up to Christmas. As far as I’m concerned, this photo could be of any one of them.

Having taken delivery of some parcels costing £££, I’m hardly likely to lie about the non-arrival of one costing a tenner. John Lewis haven’t refunded the item because they say they have proof of delivery. Actually they just have proof of a delivery, and haven’t supplied proof of its contents.

I haven’t got too exercised over it, because it was a tenner’s worth of present.

But now I need to buy various very expensive items including a new laptop, and I don’t want to buy from John Lewis in case it doesn’t turn up, but they send me a photo as “proof” that it has.

Has this situation arisen for anyone else? How did you resolve it?

I second writing to them. If people don't complain about bad goods or service, companies don't know they gave a problem, and it will never be rectified.

DD gets embarrassed sometimes if I say something wasn't up to scratch, not necessarily wanting something cheaper or free, but just for information.

After a very long time and all major purchases made at John Lewis, I stopped buying from them about four plus years back. I ended up escalating a problem to the CEO who put someone in charge of the issue but they weren't anywhere near as professional as they used to be.

They outsourced their previously excellent customer services to Capita and moved IT jobs out of house last Summer too.

I've looked at their website recently and everything I liked the look of was out of stock.

My JL purchases are delivered by Hermes. Their depot is a nightmare and often stuff sits there for days before it's handed over to our (excellent) courier. I raised the mon-arrival of some makeup and JL sent some more out special delivery as they could see it had disappeared into the black hole of Hermes' depot.

Don't order from Dunelm . I did actually get my entire order but it was slow. A box arrived one day, was supposed to have 5 items in and the rest sent in a second box. It only had 4 items in. The next day, second box arrived and had everything in (including the item missing from the first box) but also had 4 invoices in, with varying splits my order into varying numbers of boxes. I have no idea how they managed to get all my items to me - the way it was split did not match any of the invoices

@JohnLoulou

Also look at www.hughes.co.uk/ for any electrical/electronic things.

DS2 bought a TV from them before Christmas - good service, good price, quick delivery - then decided he wanted a bigger one he’d found elsewhere instead
Hughes allow you to change your mind (Right to Cancel) and return things if you contact them within 14 days.
He still had the box, luckily. They arranged a DPD collection (with a 1-hour window) and just took £25 off the refund for courier cost.
I was really impressed - thought that was incredible service!

Yeah we had to claim our money back through pay pal, just remembered now. They were basically saying that as far as they were concerned they'd shipped the child's car seat snd not their fault it hasn't turned up, it was a joke in the end. I agree with a previous poster that they e really gone down hill over the last several years xx

See, it’s this weird customer service Russian roulette that makes me hate online shopping.

I actually do need a few bits from Dunelm or similar, but FFS when things go wrong - which seems to happen with depressing regularity - with these types of retailers, who has the time to chase this stuff up?

You can let it go for something that’s a tenner, but not for a laptop or curtains - which means the only way to safeguard what’s left of my mental energy is not to shop online. Not easy in a pandemic.