AIBU to expect Waitrose/John Lewis to give me back my £500?

[Clazzer1]

I had my car stolen last night. This would be bad enough in itself but Inside my car was over £500 of Waitrose / John Lewis gift cards that have been stolen along with all my children's Christmas presents.

As I still had the receipt for these gift cards I was able to give JL the gift card numbers and they were able to confirm that nobody had used them and they were able to successfully block anyone from from using them in the future. Sounds good - so you think they would issue new gift cards to me - WRONG.

Waitrose/ John Lewis policy is to NOT refund or reissue gift cards. This means they have my money, they have stopped anybody from using the vouchers I bought, they have confirmed that NOTHING has been spent from these gift cards but they are now withholding this money and refusing to give it back or provide a replacement. I am totally shocked at this response from such a respectable retailer. They are no better than the thief that stole them in the first place.

These gift cards were the school collection money that the parents had collected for a gift for several teachers and teaching assistants To withhold this from us is a true disgrace. AIBU to expect a multi million pound retailer like Waitrose / John Lewis to do the right thing and provide a replacement?

Only on mumsnet would you be challenged never to use a Waitrose or John Lewis again.

We don't even have a Waitrose and can't think of a time I've ever shopped at John Lewis either.

I have NEVER used John Lewis or Waitrose. Purely because I don’t really live near either or can use alternatives. I don’t think we’ve been bought anything from there either!

Plebs like us eh!

This thread has been shared on the JL facebook page.

Fantastic that is Facebook - maybe they will actually reciting the situation. Poor OP.

I'm actually howling at the good luck with getting through life never shopping in Waitrose or JL In 32 years I can count on one hand the number of times I've been in either store and may have purchased something once. Some people really are batshit!

I'm sorry they're being like this OP, nice little profit for them though eh? Hope you get somewhere with the CEO

Maybe we should comment under the post to get it "noticed"

HI everyone I have an update for you all. This morning thanks to a lot of people my twitter post has gone through the roof !!! Well done mumsnetters over 70K impressions on the post !!!!!!! We really are a force to be reckoned with. I have also had an email from Waitrose Office of the CEO and a phone call - they are looking into it for me. I have also had a voicemail from a lady at Martins money tips. I have not called her back yet as I think it is right to allow Waitrose to correct this situation - what do you all think? Should I wait on Waitrose or just call the lady at Martins Money tips back?

Hoping all goes well & they transfer the money onto other cards for you OP.

Phone the lady back. Really hope you get this sorted x

Furious for you OP. I'd be tempted to ring the Martin's Money people back and explain the status of your complaint. Could be a call from them to Waitrose for you will encourage Waitrose to come up with a good solution.

I think Waitrose should stick to their policy & not back down tbh.
If they give you your money back they’ll have to change their entire policy on gift cards.
I understand what you’re saying, but if you’d bought presents and they’d been stolen that’s just bad luck and you’d have to go through your insurance company.
It’s not Waitrose’s fault your car was broken into.
This is a personal home/ contents insurance issue & nothing to do with a company being ‘unfair’ - I’ve been given gift cards over the years that I’ve forgotten to use, but because they had a ‘use by’ date on them I lost out.

Surfer, but if they offer the option to cancel or block the cards so nobody - including the OP if she gets the vouchers back by some fluke of fate - that means they should refund imho. Their policy NEEDS changing.

I understand what you’re saying, but if you’d bought presents and they’d been stolen that’s just bad luck and you’d have to go through your insurance company

Yes, but in that case someone other than JL themselves has benefited from the money even if it is a thief. In this scenario JL are the thief as they have both sold the gift cards and also made sure that they can't be used and then pocketed the money. So they are no better than a common thief.

I think most people (I certainly am) are arguing that the policy should be changed, not that this should be a one off. It’s an outdated policy.

I think the policy and regulations about gift cards including JL needs to be looked at and changed. i don't think it's unreasonable to charge a fee for replacement, I don't think that it's unreasonable to apply an expiry with a low deminiumus where cards with values of under a £1 are expired after a year or two. Maintaining admin in terms of storage for that info will cost the companies so expiring low values I think is fair.

The companies should be grateful that people are chosing their companies to give their gifts from rather than cash so why they penalise people for it I've no idea. Well I do have an idea as they will be profiting from unused credit on gift cards to the tune of millions of pounds every year.

Sorry to be a debby downer but just be aware that 70K impressions isn't as good as it seems. Impressions just means its appeard on 70K homepages - not that those people read or even noticed it. You need to get it shared for it have big affect.

How can we help?

Phone Martin Lewis asked well. Yes mumsnet is a force to be reckoned with. We get all these feed back forms stores pay outside marketing for and yet they would get better insights to listen to people on forums like this.
There have been quite a few threads recently on john Lewis, waitrose with general consensus they are going down hill

Ignore me - just seen that Coleen Rooney re tweeted, I'd say you're on the right track

Where's your tweet? Can't find it to retweet....

For the billionth time, it’s JL’s issue not Waitrose.

They have the same helpline phone number, which has also been stated several times. The person on said phone number told the OP to go back to Waitrose.

OP, I won a £150 John Lewis gift card on MN, and I placed an order online with JL. They then cancelled the order with no explanation, so I rang to ask why and what would happen with the gift card money.

They said that they would re-credit it to the original cards, I told them I had thrown the cards away after using them. They said that there was nothing they could do, so I escalated the complaint because at that point, they had then stolen £150 from me.

They then blocked the original cards and issued new gift cards for £150.

It can be done.