AIBU to be raging with M&S?

[Sarayu]

In brief:

Ordered bouquet of flowers for Mother's Day and personalised cake for Mum's significant birthday this week. Order was placed end of Feb.

Mother's Day flowers arrived. Box battered. Tissue paper ripped. Flowers brown and half dead. Rang up to complain and got a refund. I had to go into town at the last minute to get a replacement. Was happy with the refund and they assured me the cake order would all be ok.

Fast foward to today. Email at 1.10am saying cake order is delayed and won't be there for collection. Party is tonight! Rang this morning and no one can deal with my query as the systems are being updated. I was told to ring the store in case it had turned up. Rang the store and no cake, given a different number to try. Rang another number and same story, system is down and they have no idea when it will be up again. Someone in store is trying to sort it out.

What should I reasonably expect them to do? I'm cross that I will have to traipse round town to buy a generic cake off a shelf :-( Plus I will have to pay out again for it. I need this for tonight. Not the ideal way for the party to start. I really want tonight to be special.

Thanks if you got this far

Done it. Feel free to retweet twitter.com/nineed80/status/315406805368967171

Can I suggest waitrose as an alternative for the emergency cake? Similar selection to M&s so may have a non birthday alternative.

I got an off-the-shelf Waitrose cake for a celebration and added the name myself - they do a lovely square sponge with white icing and pink roses, which I subsequently have seen quite often in stock on the shelf. THey also have quite a good selection of sugar flowers etc. Their Thornton chocolate cake also went down very well.

Thanks, the lovely hotel are making me one and personalising it

Aw bless you. Lovely kind offer but I am sorted now. Thank you. Would just like some kind of apology and acknowledgement from them. Can't find email to complain

Complaining through Customer Service online is a minefield.
You have to use one of those ridiculous 'forms' (if you can find a category that fits your complaint it's a miracle).
You will then get a very pleasant e-mail responding to your complaint which you cannot reply to!!
If you need to respond then you have to go through the whole rigmarole again!
It is appalling and I don't know (other than never shopping there) what can be done about it.

Ah Team what a sweet and generous offer! Can you just make one for me instead? I am feeling sorry for myself and could do with cake! Not fruit, anything with chocolate icing!

OP, sorry you have had a shit time with M&S, they're getting worse and I won't go in there any more after a terrible school uniform saga. Better still, I harped on so much to my family about it, they won't go there either! :)

Shocking about cake unless weather related of course - however having had some m and s flowers for valentines that were DEAD I am not surprised to hear about flowers. DH got full refund but said customer services were shocking - nit good enough m and s!

Wow, what a lovely offer TeamEdward

Most people at m&s with email addresses are for eg [email protected].

Try Marc Bolland. Pretty sure one of his minions will pick up emails over a weekend. Or post on their facebook page.

Post on their Facebook page. Glad it's sorted, how annoying. Hope it goes well.

TeamEdward, how kind!

I second posting on their Facebook page because they read it and will offer a solution, hopefully compensation.

I had trouble over non delivery of Mother's Day flowers. To be fair though that was ShittyLink's fault but after a few phonecalls I was refunded. They arrived about 20 minutes after my refund , but looked much smaller than the online photo. I managed to speak to someone on a Sunday, what number are you trying? They ignored my fb comments though (despite replying to other people's ) and told me that my review was 'didn't meet their guidelines' so didn't get put up - suspiciously all of the other reviews displayed were positive

Hum....have you thought making a cake yourself and involving the kids? Will occupy them and homemade stuff is lovely

Did you get a confirmation email when you ordered your cake?

Thanks everyone. Yes I did get confirmation. Shall be ringing them Monday. Still no reply via twitter

Keep us posted please!

I made a (much less important than yours) complaint to m&s via their fb page and got an immediate response.

Worth a try?

Fwiw I made an (also minor) complaint by email to next last week. They refunded the item and replaced it foc. Was impressed. And you would expect m&s to be better than next wouldn't you?

Good luck. I hope you get it sorted. Sounds a nightmare

m+s have disgusting attitudes to their customers. i recall the day an assistant in per una tried to send my adult daughter to collect something for her...

M&S cakes are disgusting anyway, all shop bought cakes are IMO. Always better to source an important cake from a local cake maker.

I'm glad you're sorted with a cake now.