To have expected a response by now

[Dancingfairy]

I was in a store shopping with my dd who has asd. As we were near the checkouts she had a melt down over something and knocked some gift cards off the shelf displayed by the till. I tried I help encourage her to pick them up but she wouldn't so I asked my son to help. As he was picking them up dd knocked some more onto the floor. At this point I was trying to hold her to stop her knocking any more off and decided it would be best to remove her from the shop before she does anything else. (She did not damage anything or break anything) I fully accept I could have picked them all up but at that moment the best thing seemed to be to remove her from the shop. As I was walking out and got outside I was chased by a security guard who was shouting at us. I was very shocked couldn't actually believe it. I tried to explain to him she has asd but he was having none of it and told me we were banned from the shop! I found this really extreme and it was also distressing for my dd who I removed from the shop to calm down so made her worse. I have since complained to the shop (this happened on the 30th of October) and have not received any response at all. I've chased it up 4 times and always get told the same thing, someone will contact me but it never happens. I feel it's very extreme to be banned from a shop over this and have never been banned from anywhere in my life. What more can I do as they won't respond to my complaint.

OP - mention to the CEO/COO that head office refused to speak to you too. Oh, and mention you have splashed it all across Mumsnet and we are unanimously appalled.

The current director of Wilko is Lisa Wilkinson - she was a lawyer who specialised in discrimination law......

@crikeyclumbsblimey

Oh the irony! Deserves a second mention.... (journos take note)
What a spectacular own goal by Lisa Wilkinson of Wilko. Shame on you.

I guess if we retweet at the same time tomorrow morning - say 830?

Op, I can't wait to see how much quicker you'll get a response on twitter.

Thanks for doing this. I have 2 ASD dds. At some point they need to go shopping, it's a life skill! More awareness about Asd is vital so that I can slowly 'acclimatise' them to shopping without judgement.

Personally I've found Lush great. One dd is particularly keen on scent and I explain to staff she has AsD and they usually show her around/let her do a bath bomb in their sinks!

Fucking good on you OP for keeping on with this as I imagine it must be exhausting to have to fight yet another ignorant idiot. It’s some gift cards for Christ’s sake! Customers regularly knock things over from odd items on the rails/shelves to bottles of wine and never would I expect them to tidy it up, it’s my job, it’s one of the things we get paid for and I tell them not to worry and that I’ve got it. A customer should absolutely not have to worry about those things when they’re shopping, let alone whilst trying to look after children.
You are doing a fantastic job and your children know that, but the fact that you’re fighting this still when you shouldn’t even have to just makes you all the more bloody amazing in my eyes.

I can't find Lisa Wilkinson on Twitter. There are loads of them...and none say Director of Wilkinson's.

Here’s a link about her from the Wilko corporate website: corporate.wilko.com/stories/ourboard.php

It's @KM2051763 just signed up today to Twitter as I haven't used it before so I could tweet them

OP, is that your Twitter name, as it's not coming up on there?

Just delurking to share a link to ops twitter (hope it works)
mobile.twitter.com/KM2051763

Op I’m disgusted at how you’ve been treat. I have a child with asd, she doesn’t often meltdown in public (she’s a masker) but on the few occasions she has staff where we’ve been have been really helpful. Shame on Wilkos for their small mindedness!

Lisa Wilkinson email address:

[email protected]

Do you have to follow @lovewilko for your tweet to appear on their feed? Not sure how it works, but I'm not seeing your tweet OP on their feed, which is what you want too. For their 122k followers to see...

Just forget the entire incident OP. You are not banned from the store. A security guard wouldn't have the authority to do this. He was annoyed because your child made a mess. You are upset due to a lack of understanding of your situation. It sounds like you have a lot on your plate so don't add this to it. Simply return to the store if you need to go there. It has become a much larger issue to you since it happened but to the store it will have been forgotten.

@FlowerPot1234 You can't make your tweet appear in someone else's feed. All OP can do is keep @replying to them (i.e. keep addressing her tweets to @lovewilko) and hopefully it will get picked up.

Personally, I would word it as:

Hi @lovewilko, one of your security guards harassed my disabled child and unjustifiably banned us from the store last week. I have complained to your Customer Care team 5 times but nobody has responded. Please ensure somebody calls me today.

ugh those asterisks shouldn't be there. Formatting fail.

MaryLou if everyone just forgot about things like this, then nothing would change.

I'm really not sure how to work twitter I will try again as suggested.

They manager of the store who I spoke to yesterday said we are not banned but that is what the security guard said to me I didn't think he had the authority to ban people anyway but he was obviously working on intimidation and thought that saying that would be enough for me to obviously not go in there again. But this is about more than just that as the way I've been ignored is disgusting, and also the way the manager spoke to me. As I said I've never experienced such appalling customer service.

Parents with disabled children are always supposed to forget incidents and get on with it. We just have to put up, shut up and not allow disabilities to dare come into contact with the rest of society.

We should all ring a bell warning people to watch out, the autistic people are coming to ruin their day with their bad behaviour.

Thanks peachgreen. So when we see a twitter account of a company with a scathing comment about them on their feed, does that mean they have decided to publish it, or 'picked it up' as you say? Learning here!

Good luck OP.

I've posted it now.

@FlowerPot1234 Yes, it means they've retweeted it or quoted it with their response. Doesn't usually happen! This makes Twitter different to Facebook as on Facebook companies can allow people to post directly to their page.

It might be best to tell them what you expect from them - maybe that's what the manager was trying to say. I think they're often faced with complaints looking for compensation, which obviously you're not, so maybe saying you'd like them to educate their staff with a series of courses on disability might help?

OP, keep an eye on your mentions on Twitter. If they reply to you, it will show up on there.
You could also add a hashtag or two, such as #Wilco #BadCustomerService, #DisabilityDiscrimination, etc. Don't put any punctuation or spaces in a hashtag, or only the bit before the space/punctuation will show as a hashtag.
People sometimes search for hashtags of a company or event to see what others have tweeted about them.

I wouldn't say she was asking what I wanted done about it, without listening to the conversation it's hard to explain but it was more of a why are you complaining "so what do you want me to do about it?!" And she actually said "what do you want from me" as if I wanted something like compensation as you say. Which certainly isn't the case.

Ok so they've responded asking me to DM them my contact number but there is no option to do that?