to thank mumsnet and phil and teds for all the advice regarding my pram! THANKYOU!

[LacyLeggins]

Hi this is just a quick thread to say a huge thankyou to everyone who commented on my previous thread about c**ting mothercare! phil and teds have just emailed me to say they have my pram and are fitting a completely new chasis and having it sent back to mothercare on a next day delivery service, will be in store tomorrow!! also they have added that if anything else fails on the pram they will replace it with a new one.

on the other hand mothercare have let me down badly. they still havent even bothered to contact me regarding this. i will never ever be making a purchase from them again!

i am looking forward to having my pram back and i hope it will work, thnkyou to all that helped x

If Mothercare do get in touch with MNHQ, with luck MNHQ will just tell them to fix their customer service issues. If the retailer provided great customer service, then they would be talked about in a positive light.

These things work both ways... happy customers tell people, unhappy customers tell lots and lots of people. So better to not have unhappy customers to start with.

So, MNHQ Mothercare feedback thread then? :)

Oh I have an £80 MC voucher I wish I could burn it in protest about their treatment of you but I can't. In my head I will be saying boo hiss to them as I shop !

I love Jeanette Winterson's take on Mothercare in her story about getting a new puppy, for which she had to get a baby gate:

"The week before I had forced my partner to go into Mothercare to purchase a baby gate. The experience nearly killed her. It was not the pastel colours, piped music and cartoon screen, or the assistants, specially graded into mental ages 2-4 and 4-6, ... it was that she was run down by a fork lift truck moving a consignment of potties."

? The World & Other Places
www.jeanettewinterson.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=42

Phil & Teds rock.

I live in the same town as the factory, and had an older model P&T, which got very rough treatmen (hauling it up the stairs with 2 heavy toddlers is not a good thing to do to a pram).

P&T fixed it for free every time, even though it was long past it's warranty period, and they provided a replacement pram each time.

They ended up building me a new chassis, as they didn't manufacture that model any more.

This all makes me love my P&T more :)

Will be thinking twice before shopping at Mothercare again too. Both of my children's rooms are kitted out in Mothercare bedding and curtains not to mention the huge piles of ELC toys.

Guess we'll be looking elsewhere at Christmas and DD's upcoming 1st birthday

I think it's about time Mothercare had a serious overhaul of their company policies and staff training. They have lost sight of the original philosophy behind the store, to sell good quality, good value, and well designed products for mums-to-be, babies and young children, and to provide facilities to make shopping easier for their customers.

My friend had a Mothercare brand pushchair for her youngest 11 years ago, and went through the performance of getting it sent back for repair several times over the course of 12 months, while they provided her with loan pushchairs, none the same as her original. The fault was never fixed and she gave up in the end, by which time the original pushchair was no longer stocked. They should have just replaced it from the outset.

I think a petition to the head honcho at MC head office with a list of problems that are in serious need of change would be the best way to go.

A few I would raise would be:

Pricing not competitive with other stores

Customer service very variable between stores

Staff knowledge of products and policies very variable

Staff attitudes to customers such as lack of motivation, unhelpfulness, and basic lack of care, i.e. boxes of stock blocking aisles.

Repair and replacement policies need review

Facilities toilet/changing/feeding need to be retained and always clean and useable.

20 years ago when I had DS they were good. Where have they gone wrong? I'm glad for Lacy, but it shouldn't need to take those lengths to get sorted.

I think mothercare rely too much on the fact that they really do have a monopoly on the firts time parent market. You're clueless, and see it as a one stop shop. What let's them down is that it then dawns on you just how shite they are. I vowed never to shop there again after they sold em a baby chair that was unsafe, the harness didn't even graze my skinny chaps thighs and hadn't a hope in hell's chance of actually keepign him safe. Two years after my complaint, and many other similar reviews on their own website, they still sell this product. Cunting Mothercare indeed.

Hooray for P&T :)

And yes Mothercare are cunts.(my opinion) Can we have the title re-edited now??

What kind of shop has, as it main clientele, parents with prams and pushchairs and yet has no lift to the second floor where they sell all their major items that are not overpriced clothes? C**ting Mothercare that's who! (in my branch anyway).

it would never happen in John Lewis!

I agree with girlywhirly - my ds's are 19 & 21 and mothercare used to be excellent then. I now have dd (4) and would never, ever used Mothercare again. Just one thing after another....

I'm glad you've got a good result.

Mothercare are just about okay for buying a pair of tights for a toddler, but for something expensive, that needs to last I would go elsewhere.

shopped mothercare as 1st time mum,not with subsequent pg though

lesson learnt.i dont return for poor service

john lewis = outstanding

Brilliant news. But really that sums up Mother(don't)cares customer service. A whole thread related to how shite they are and P&T who maufacture the product realise this could effect their reputation and act.

Well done Phil and Teds.

P&T's customer service sounds brilliant! I love that they built a new chassis especially for ZacharyQuack.

Mothercare customer services.... maybe they are practising for when they have no customers left? I don't go in there any more, not impressed with the value for money or the filthy changing room.

Any update?

Good news Lacy and shame on Mothercare. After reading your last thread went to John Lewis to price up new highchair rather than Mothercare. Explained to assistant old one had bits missing and she told me not to buy new one, she would contact the manufacturers and order just the replacement parts...now that's customer service - saved me a fortune.

I am very pleased for you Lacy. I stopped shopping at MC a long time ago, after they told me that the my 9 month old pram broke because I used it!!! Really!!! I used a pram, OMG!

I insisted on a replacement, but, like your case mine was sent for repairs and they lent me a really shabby one. I use my pram a lot as we don't have a car and I work full time, but it didn't matter to them.

They only relented after I contacted Trading Standards and sent off a snotty letter to their headquarters, and replaced it.

I ended up replacing their pram with my second hand Maclaren which I still use with no problems after 3 years. MC is shit to the core.

When my older 2 were little 16 and 13 now .Mc was good had the Olympus pram from them then the alpine 3 wheeler for dd7

.I went in the other day to discuss carseat for ds3 and they tried to sell me one where I could see the seatbelt was across his neck not on his shoulder.so in a accident would been horrendus and when I pointed out the seatbelt she was like yeah your right bit then he will grow lol like the next 6 months year or so wereadvoiding accidents then ffs if could gurantee that who need carseats

Went to halfords talk to them they was honest and said sorry we can't sell you any that got with seatbelt he is just to short

DO NOT order from Kiddicare. Why do I say this? From my experience over the past couple of days:

1. You can not cancel your order - even if it is a couple of hours after you have placed it and it has clearly not left the depot. The response they give you is, even though you don't want the item and it hasn't left their warehouse, they will deliver it to you anyway and then ask you to pay for it to be returned!!!
2. It is very difficult to contact anyone in relation to your order

• if you email them, you get an automated response stating that you will be replied to within 48 hours, but the answer will be something along the lines of 'sorry we can't help you'
• if you call them, they are similarly unhelpful. The individual service people are nice enough but they are bound by the inflexible ordering system. It costs 10pence for every minute you are on the phone.
• last resort - post a message on their 'community board', where again you either get no response or a similarly unhelpful message that redirects you to their email enquiry line.

3) If you live in a communal flat area and the gate is shut, they will not bother to ring you/message you before delivering your package. Instead, even if you are home waiting, you will get an automated text message saying that they failed to deliver your package. Also, they are supposed to leave a card with re-deliver options, but in my case, they didn't leave it! 4) If you call the call centre to complain, they tell you to wait around all day and the delivery man may come back to you - they do not specify a time. In my case, despite waiting all day, the delivery man has not come! So now, they've taken my money but I'm left without a pushchair, without a redeliver option, and have to contact them again to start the delivery/return/cancellation process all over again! It's not worth the £10 saving...go elsewhere!!!

AFAIK my beloved P&T is now happily servicing its 7th and 8th child (probably more, I think its third owner passed it on to her childminder). I heart P&T.

Mymoomoo do you really need to bump old threads to get your point across? We can tell you don't like kiddiecare so leave it there!

After reading this thread (as old as it is!) i feel lucky my local mothercare is fanastic and go out of there way to help you! My only problem is Ds is scared of the tree lift!

mothercare birmingham city center are fantasic too, staff are lovelyx