to stage a one woman sit-in John Lewis' household appliance dept. barking and growling like a rabid dog at potential customers

[TheRuderBarracuda]

...so that they can save themselves months of crap customer service. WTF has happened to JL in recent times? Has their customer service always been so crap?

I have now THRICE sat in waiting for a delivery of a washer dryer only to phone up and discover the lovely polite but totally incompetent customer service rep I spoke to last time has failed to execute what they needed to do to make the delivery happen. This time someone has forgotten to 'release' the goods. Someone else has also forgotten to refund me £300 for the difference between washer dryers. They have also forgotten to refund me the installation and delivery charge they promised as a sign of goodwill for having made me wait in twice already. Every time I phone I speak to someone else they apologise profusely (their politeness training is exemplary) and agree it's crap service, they then must get off the call, stare blankly at my customer record on screen and go and get a coffee only to come back and take another call and completely fail to do anything they need to to process any of my order or delivery. They only thing they have successfully done is take my money off me. Fuckers.

And then yesterday I go into Oxford Street, do a big toy shop, and as I pay am asked Do you want to collect these? Apparently they do a service where they will hold onto your shopping and you can come back and collect later. They even do street parking tokens so you can park right outside the collections area. Great I thought. All this stuff is really bulky. I can now dart around Oxford Street for some small presents and come back. Duly go and get car from other car parking space and pull up outside collections. "No madam we haven't run a collections parking token service for years." I waited for just under an hour for them to find my stuff which they finally found up on the 4th floor in Toys still waiting to be taken to the Collections department and got a parking ticket in the process because I was told I couldn't leave Collections once I had requested my order because if I wasn't there to collect it would go back into the black hole into which it had disappeared, so in essence their collections service cost me £40.

According to their website they have customer service awards coming out of their ears. Is there some kind of secret to getting any service out of them?

Maybe placards and some relentless chanting would be a bit less aggressive

I could PM you the MD's name if you want, and you could write him a stiff letter?

And take names each time you get a new customer service person.

But yes, barking. Barking's good.

Wow. That is some crap service. YANBU (but may end up spending xmas under a section on the local mental health ward :o )

Oh yes please keSnowBi! Bit less humiliating to foam sternly via email. This is unlike them though is it not? Is it just Christmas madness?

Popcorn Like the jumper. Very Noel Edmonds/John Craven circa 1983 (I didn't mention Giles Brandreth because no one ever needs to be reminded of Giles Brandreth - )

One click of goggle and you can get the MDs e-mail address.

Just one thing to say!
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/a1360395-TO-NEVER-NEVER-use-Johm-lewis-again

Sorry can't do links and meant to say John Lewis in title

Totally unacceptable, needless, inconvenient nonsense :(

I read another post here recently stating JL customer service had gone to the dogs (excuse pun).

Write stiff letter, make copies, send recorded delivery...

Good luck

Ooh slow progress but they have paid for an external courier to deliver tomorrow between 7am - 9am because they didn't have anyone available to deliver themselves and it would have been after Christmas otherwise. The backstory to the ongoing washer dryer saga extends back to June and their inability to keep me updated on when they would be getting their own brand washer dryers back in stock again so am well and truly tired of it. Thing is they're all so lovely on the phone, I end each call somewhat pacified and convinced that whoever I've just spoken to is actually going to sort it out. How naive.

They have asked me to recontact them again for compensation once goods safely received and installed. Will update with contact details/compensation offer once I am convinced it has actually worked so someone in the future can use if they need to. Off to read the other JL thread (if only I'd read/searched earlier!) now. Thank you all.

Lizcat found this site www.ceoemail.com/ but only off the back of the fact that KeSnowBi had PM'd me the MD of Oxford Street's name so I had something concrete to search on (apart from wading through pages of search results recording the arrival and departure of various high up bods at JL). Will be bookmarking that site for sure!

You can get the ceoemail by typing John Lewis MD into google came up at the very top of my search list.

YANBU. OP if you decide on your protest, please come and do it in Brent Cross branch on behalf of north London. . I could do with the referred angst.

OP YANBU, but I thought I was in a club of 1 re appalling service in JL.

Every time one of my friends raves on about it's marvellousness, I stand in an island of utter bewilderment.

I seem to have an uncanny knack of only being served by the most unhelpful, knuckle scraping morons whenever I shop there. It happened so often no one would believe me.

I have taken people with me now on a number of occasions and it's like I have an actual knack for seeking out the most unhelpful person that day in the store.

One day last year I went in and asked for a fairly common product. Oh no, say they, we do not have that try Lakeland. 5 minutes later my friend asked the same person for the same item, and was walked right to it.

WTAF

You are NBU as long as you only bite senior members of staff.

Pfffffft. Someone forgot to book the courier. To be fair I don't think this was John Lewis forgetting - this is the courier service. However impact on me is the same. The only time available now for deilvery today involves me cancelling a trip to see Father Christmas and letting down other parents whose DC I was taking along with mine with only 5 hours notice so they could get a bit of last minute shopping (or whatever their plans were for a few hours). I'm gutted. John Lewis are now not just impacting on me. I can probably gloss over with DS (2) but the other mums are not going to be happy (4 and a 5 year old who KNOW they are going to see FC today) so I just can't do it - too mean.

Looks like I'm also going to be spending the morning at the laundrette again when I had tonnes of stuff to do while DS had last morning in nursery

Lizcat I was initially searching for Head of Customer Orders before I posted here which is the dept I am dealing with but yep...heading for the top chap now.

EnjoyResponsibly I feel the same way - let's never go shopping to John Lewis together. Ever. Or maybe we should? - we could hire ourselves out as mercenary decoys so that all the other shoppers in JL got exemplary service while we languished in a back office with a horde of JL customer services people around us telling us the first available delivery slot is for 2019 and would we mind waiting in till then unless we wanted to pay extra for 2015 - 2017 slot.

lisaro Yes agreed - Often out of less senior staff's control (system won't let me....can't override this on the screen etc) so have not been at all rude (counterproductive and just not nice) and always make it clear I am annoyed with JL not them personally but it's getting harder to not to see this is more widespread incompetence.

Wish I'd read the other thread now but tbh was already trapped in this order before that thread was posted so probably wouldn't have made any difference. Am off to look up appliancedirect though now so thanks for that messmess

You could try copying this thread to their social media PR bod (scroll down)

I think you should copy the thread to the CEO and his pr Director. There was a thread here a few days ago about drayton manor hotel and the manager responded v quickly, posting here on mn as well! Won him lots of goodwill and swoons!!!

I would second appliances online. I've ordered twice now (washing machine and cooker) and v good service. W/m was delivered next day at 8am and cooker delivered on the day requested. All cheaper than chain stores and even independents!!!

Even before I'd read the post I was up for an afternoon of growling, having read it I will COMMUTE for this mofo!

Well, on the plus side at least you've written a very funny post about it!

FWIW, part of the problem may be that some of the people in stores at Christmas and New Year are the back office team, who are hauled out from programming computers and made to face customers and see what it is the company sells. (A couple of relatives work for JL, so we hear all about this.) I think they're not supposed to have any job more responsible than putting things on shelves, but possibly some of them are getting loose and talking to customers...

You should SO post this to JL's facebook/twitter feed.

My DH ordered some basic boxer shorts from JL (he likes their basic brand and didn't have time to go to a shop) and they took 8 weeks to arrive. By which time he'd gone to Peter Jones and got them.

So got a reply from MD of Oxford Branch Simon Fowler apologising within 5 hours of sending email cc'ing in their Head of Customer Support (delegating which is fine):

"Thank you for your e-mail, from which I was very sorry to learn of the problems you have experienced. It is obvious we have failed to deliver the level of service both you and I would expect.

I have forwarded a copy of your correspondence to John Matthew, who manages our Customer Support team, asking that he contacts you direct on my behalf to address your concerns. John will keep me fully informed of his actions.

In the meantime, my sincere apologies once again that our correspondence was not under better circumstances. "

which I thought was quite a nice reply. Then got a call from them directly after and agreed that 5th delivery attempt would be made on 30th December 9 - 11am. They wanted to try and book before then (ie today) but in between last minute errands I just can't afford to waste 2 hours waiting in and have already been to the laundrette so can last out until 30th.

But then I get a call at about 18:15 last night when I'm stuck in traffic driving out to west London to stay overnight with friends - which I had told them I was doing - "Hello we're outside your house trying to deliver your washer dryer". . So now my washer dryer appears to be touring London on the back of a John Lewis van playing Knock Down Ginger. Jesus wept. From one extreme to another.

KeSnowBi Would have loved for your DH to have written a letter of complaint detailing all the ways in which going commando for 8 weeks had caused him discomfort! Next time.....