To warn you all about the hazards of shopping at Very.co.uk

[BupcakesAndCunting]

You know when you make one (inadvertent) mistake and you pay for it every day for a decade afterwards...

I ordered a dress from Very in October. I arranged for it to get delivered using the Click + Collect facility (where the courier takes it to a designated C+C shop and you pick it up when convenient) Basically, I got really bad gastroenteritis when it was delivered and I was stuck in for two weeks and never collected the dress. C+C sent me an email to say it had been returned to Very, as I hadn't been able to collect it. Thought no more of it.

Then Very sent a statement asking for the payment for this dress. DH rang them and explained that I hadn't collected it. They said they would try and trace it and not to worry. So we didn't pay any money. Then we started getting phonecalls from their payments department demanding money or else they would charge us for late payment DH said that that wasn't going to happen and that thet were going to be sensible and speak to the department chasing the missing parcel...

A few weeks to now, they have rang more times (we have just ignored the phone tbh, they are morons) We have been emailing their "customer services" department regularly to ask on the status of this. Yesterday they emailed back to say they had found the parcel and the £25 would be credited to our account.

So just logged into my account and they HAVE refunded the £35 but there is £25 (the late charges!) still waiting to be paid. They're having a laugh, right?

So I just wanted to warn you that they are an arse of a company and honestly, they're overpriced, terrible at customer service, staffed by script-reading robots and they try and shaft money out of you for their errors.

If you value your sanity, you will want to avoid.

I agree, they are awful and hounded me daily with phone calls and letters before I paid off my account. They demand 4 weekly payments rather than monthly so if you are paid on the same day every month it is very difficult to pay them. Please avoid, they caused me so much stress and misery and I rued the day I ever opened an account with them, which I have now thankfully closed. If you like their stuff, go on ebay and buy it instead!

I agree, Caro!

I found the dress I liked on eBay (brand new!) for £21 instead of the £55 they're asking for it now! (Was on offer when I bought it for £35)

I've almost never had a straightforward transaction with any of these catalogue companies. I just don't use them any more.

From things not being delivered, or insurance I tried to cancel not being cancelled even after about 20 phone calls, to just the thickness of the people you get tospeak to - I mean I'm sure they're not actually thick but they areso limited in what they can access and what they can DO for you, even if they believe you have a problem that is their fault - and getting passed around 7 different departments and then cut off, well it's a living nightmare.

Also their products tend to be rounded up in price, or just plain overpriced compared to anywhere else...I often wonder how they actually stay in business, I really do.

Didnt they used to be 'Additions'? Ha, that's a name I'd like to never have heard of.

No, they ARE thick.

When I was trying to get this resolved on the 'phone 3 weeks ago, the phone monkey wouldn't speak to me because "urrrrr ur not dur account holder" despite DH telling them 10 minutes earlier that I would be ringing them back with a tracking number. When I asked why he couldn't speak to me, he spouted some guff about data protection. I was only ringing to give a tracking number, not to find out DH's information (which I have anyway) They are beyond stupid.

Oh and I hadn't even mentioned that the only reason we set up the stupid account was to buy a duvet set that DS really wanted (you have no choice but to set up an account, even if you just want to pay straight away?) We ordered and paid for it up front and 3 weeks later... no duvet set. They were out of stock apparently, even though it didn't say they were OOS when we ordered and paid for it.

They are divvies.

They sound beyond awful.

At least you are passing the word around here and hopefully people will know to avoid them in future.

I know I will.

I think their entire system is shite. It is the most disorganised set of shit I have ever encountered, at least.

I think if it can turn perfectly intelligent, ordinary people like us into raving loons just by brief contact, imagine what it does to the people that work there.

Sorry, I realise my sentence about disorganised etc makes no logical sense, but it just came out that way

and tbh I think it describes them accurately enough

Disorganised is about right.

In my case, if you were working in the department that hadjust been told about an item not received, wouldn't you let the arrears department know not to send any more letters out? When the arrears people rang my home, they didn't even know that I hadn't had the dress. They are incompetent to say the least.

I think there's zero communication.

That's what happened when we had the fraudulent account opened - different departments not talking to each other. The only fortunate thing was, iirc, they didn't have our telephone number (the fraudsters must have put in a false one says a lot for their security systems ) and the lack of communication meant that the Fraud Department, which did have it never put it against the "false" account.

So we just got increasingly stroppy letters from the Billing and Arrears Dept.

There are some advantages in having the phone bill in my name (which is different to dh's)!

threepeice can I have a link to ex-catalogue possible Del Boy relation, EBay furniture seller please?

I have buggered my dining room chairs after leaving them in the garden when I was too lazy to bring them indoors and need replacements for Christmas

at Del Boy relation.

Fellowship, there's a good few on ebay that do this sort of thing...tends to be overstock or ex catalogue, returns sometimes, that sort of thing..

look for 'new' items under a ditance: nearest first serach - in the home and garden category - and some stuff will probably come up near to you with similar looking photos, so you know it's the same seller.

Tend to be very good discounts.

I love a dodgy "off the back of a lorry" seller. When I lived in Kent, we used to know the dodgiest woman ever, she lived in a flat at the end of our little road. For 4 years, we paid nothing for our Turkey, always a massive one too, as she would get to the end of the street with a trolley stacked with things she'd nicked, and give them out to whoever was quick enough. She was slightly batty and called it sharing the wealth. When I was obviously very pregnant with dd, she brought me a whole stack of nappies and baby clothes, as she'd noticed I might need them! I do miss her so now I live in Berkshire. You don't get batty old thieves in Berkshire.

sorry for typos am eating cornetto

Oh she sounds ace!

I feel your pain, Bups.

Last year I ordered my DS a bed from Very and paid in full with debit card. It took 3 months to turn up (there had been 4 delivery dates given within that time). When something did arrive, it was a chest of drawers, not a bed.

I returned the drawers and told them to cancel the order, refund my money and I'd go elsewhere. Except they didn't refund so I couldn't afford to go elsewhere. Eventually, 5 months after the original order, they sent the bed, along with a statement saying I owed £289 for the bed, which I had already paid for and £150 for the ducking drawers. It then took another six months to sort it all out with late payment charges been added all of the time and black marks on my credit score etc. absolute nightmare .

Anyway, my rant is over, sorry for hijacking your thread. Apparently I'm still fairly pissed off with them. I still have the email address of the MD of the company who was actually helpful (and gave me the bed half price in the end for the inconvenience) if you would like it.

You're not hijacking! I WANT people to come and slag them off!

Would you PM me that address please, Lola?

Cheers Rooney will look. I'm after some swish leather ones, but the ones I've seen up until now have been stupidly dear. DP does the face when I mention new chairs so cheaper the better

Sod the PM, put the MD's details on the thread!

Oh totally agree about dunelm mill being rude. Where on earth do their shop staff do their training because they are awful, supercilious, look bored and clearly do not give a shit about their customers. Wrexham dunelm mill is dire.

Mind you littlewoods are not much better than very. I'm in dispute over an order they placed twice and charged me for. Awful company.

Very is Littlewoods sister company!

MyNameIsLola you should have had the bloody bed for FREE after all that inconvenience! I hope you billed the MD for your time after 5 months of chasing and no doubt numerous fruitless telephone calls

You know Bupcakes, your thread is very effective in that it is making me absolutely furious at a company that I have never bought a thing from!

I just hate incompetence and terrible customer service so will AVOID Very in the future, yes I will.

Oh, just wanted to ask a question of Fellowship - did you never wonder where your batty old thief was getting her stuff from that people would eagerly make use of? i may be very po faced here but I just thought she might not have been ripping off the huge tesco to share the wealth but rather the struggling neighbourhood butcher losing his Christmas batch of turkeys... Just saying.

No its OK Onward- no local butchers in her radar, none for positively miles, and very few shops even before the recession hit us all. It was the local Aldi, and Iceland apparently instead!