arranged to travell 200 miles to collect a reserved item .. it wasnt there!

[pinkprincess1206]

Hi all,
Please can I have your thoughts on this..this might seem trivial but I am fuming.

We have been trying to locate a porch for our tent for two years. The store only ever makes a limited number each year and we have never managed to get this. )You can't pre order ) anyway,

I was on the website and could see that their store in Scotland had 5 in stock. You cant buy on line -only in store. So I reserved it on line, called the store and explained that I lived in the midlands and would collect the porch on Friday as I would drive up after work Thursday (today) and collect on the following day.

The guy said this was no problem. It was reserved in my name.and asked me to call the store on wed (yesterday) to confirm I will collect friday. - which I did.

So off I set today and on toilet stop three hours in, I called the store just to make sure it would be ready to collect first thing in the morning to be told.. ''sorry love, we gave it to someone else!!!!!!!!!!!''

I was fuming. I asked if they could get one transferred from another store- to which was told- we don't do that anymore!
Even when I said I was half way there and had already travelled 150 miles, the guy just said ' we gave it to a customer that came in!'

I called the head office as I am fuming and was told by a very nice lady that she is sorry but there are no more in any of the stores in the UK and they wont be making them anymore as there is new designn. She suggested maybe I would like to purchase their new tent design at £800 and an extra £150 for the porch to match that!!!

I nearly swore at her so I asked for the complaints address and ended the call..

AIBU??????????? TO

1. complain?
2. expect that the offer me some discount at least on something else given that I've had to turn back and that will 300 mile today for nothing?

and if anyone want s to suggest a complaint letter format - I would be very grateful.

Thanks for reading my rant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:)

Well that's rubbish.

Agree with other posters, complain where others will hear, though if they're as bad as they sound, they won't care either way.

what tent is it that the porch goes with?

could you manage with a porch from a different company?

eg outwell do a few porches which they call 'front extensions'. We use one, and it is fine, but it wasn't made to go with our tent. It just has a long flap which passes over the top of our tent and we secure it at the back, then the porch bit has its own poles.

I'm surprised as Go Outdoors does have a good customer service reputation with campers for no quibble refunds on dodgy tents, although this is a different situation. Hope you get the result you want.

some tips here about universal porches

I wasn't surprised when you said it was Go Outdoors, they seem to do this a lot. I didn't have quite as long a journey (about an hour) - reserved online, got the confirmation and called to check. They sold it whilst I was on my way - only one item in stock in our area. They then tried to get a further store to send one up, was told that was ok but then it turned out they sold it too.

Damn - I took my brother to the Bristol brancg today and raved about how fab they are as he spent ££s. I shall warn him. How crap. Maybe you could post a link to this thread on their twitter and Facebook?

I agree with what other posters have said re porches. Also, have you thought about getting a second hand one? We chose our £700 tent and porch at Go Outdoors and then bought the lot on ebay for £250.

When I worked at IKEA, the policy was that items couldn't be reserved for collection, so even if you'd called and checked that a certain item was in stock, we couldn't give a guarantee it would still be there when they came in, as another customer could easily come in in the meantime and single handedly relieve us of all of the items we had in stock (this happened quite often, with businesses buying lamps, blankets, drinking glasses, whatever).

However, we would warn anybody planning a journey that this could easily happen. If the shop had that same policy of "fist come, first served" (which sort of makes sense to businesses, as a whole, because for many genuine "reservers" there tend to also be lots of no shows, while in the meantime, at the shop a customer would have been willing to buy the item then and there, but couldn't, so the company lost money), they should have been very clear about it on the phone.

If they do not have such a policy and made a deal with you, they should have honoured it. All in all, bad service, and I would certainly complain.

Would it have been any different if you had offered to pay for it over the phone I wonder? Might be worth trying to do that if you do manage to find another one...

Good luck!

And yes - twitter and facebook do seem to have good success rates with these sort of things. Twitter seems to be particularly effective at the moment (well not literally this moment - approaching midnight isn't a good time to tweet this - but tomorrow morning would be!)

Well in the interest of balance I've only ever had excellent service from go outdoors. I reserve items for collection all the time and this has never happened.

Yanbu though. I would have been fuming in this situation.

Could the shop assistant have lied, though? Maybe the item was never physically there, although it was showing as 1 in stock, so he made up a customer when he checked and it wasn't there after all? Either way, no good.

Wow, that really is shoddy customer services. I would be really fucked off with that. I'd expect a huge discount on the new model. Not good at all.

Go to Cotswold Outdoor - had excellent customer service from them yesterday (I wanted a particular rucksack but the one left was looking a bit dusty - no others available - it was already reduced but they knocked off a further 15%) ,The trouble with Go Outdoors is they're like an outdoorsy supermarket but with no real knowledge.

Appalling customer service - yes to posting on their Facebook page & tweeting.

That's outrageous.

That is absolutely crapulent of them. Scorch their Twitter and FB with reviews. You should definitely get some kind of replacement or compensation for the time and petrol wasted.

Check out ceoemail.com and go right to the top with your complaint. I've done this with Tesco and Vauxhall and received very satisfactory responses!

Thanks for all the ideas.
Email written to CEO and MD...and sent!!

I will let you know what happens.
:)

That's beyond awful and they should totally give you the porch for free. We are looking to buy a tent and shed loads of camping equipment this summer, so I'll be interested to see the outcome of this.