To expect Boots to deal with problems caused by their website?

[fluffedup]

Around 1am this morning I entered a large order into the Boots website (total £200 ish), checked the basket contents and tried to pay. I got a message which unfortunately I didn’t save, saying something about the order couldn’t be processed and needing to contact them. Obviously their phone lines weren’t open so I tried again – same thing. And again – this time the basket contents were recalculated without all the discount offers, so the total was about £216.

I always do have a lot of problems with the Boots website, so I decided to try again on a different browser. I had been on Firefox so logged in again on Microsoft Edge. I had hoped the basket contents would still be there when I logged in again, but the basket was now empty, so I started re-entering everything. However the website was even worse in Edge – search not working, screen freezing when items being added to basket - so I gave up on it and logged in again on Firefox.

Back on Firefox, the basket was empty again so I re-entered all my items. This time the website seemed to be working much better. I checked the basket again (total £200 ish) and went to pay via Paypal.

Finally the payment went through – but when the screen returned to the Boots website it said I had ordered £388 of items! The quantities had all been doubled! (The total price wasn’t quite doubled due to discounting).

I am 100% certain that the basket contained the correct items before I started to pay, because I checked and double-checked it, the Boots website being unreliable as it is. However I had relaxed once the process was passed to Paypal, so I may not have checked the amount at that stage. But I think I did. I couldn’t swear to it though.

I emailed them and got standard will-reply-in-48-hours replies. So I phoned them this morning when the phone lines opened and was told that there was nothing they could do. They told me I would have to wait till the order arrived (will be Wednesday) then send back the extra items and they will refund me for them. But I that will leave me short by £188 until then.

I did press my point and asked to speak to a manager, but it made no difference. Their systems don’t cater for any intervention in the order process and they can’t be bothered to interrupt the process manually.

You have just one hour to cancel a Boots order after submitting it, and that didn’t occur to me last night. Also I didn’t think there would be any problem with amending the order. The money hasn’t even left Paypal yet.

The manager said that the basket contents were held in their servers and should have appeared when I logged in again, but they certainly didn’t – the basket was empty as I logged in on different browsers. And I did log in, entering my email and password, as opposed to just looking at the website without logging in.

When I look at the activity on Paypal it shows just one order of double quantities, so that must have been sent through to them and I should have checked the final Paypal amount – but I thought I was ok having carefully checked what the Boots website was displaying.

AIBU for expecting them to take responsibility for their crap website?

(TLDR – Boots website basket said total cost £200 but appears to have sent double quantities through to Paypal, and Boots will not amend the order.)

Distance selling applies, just reject/return the order and then inform PayPal.

Boots have the worst website ever. It is woeful.

No real idea. but can you stop the paypal payment?

I don't think there is anything else you can do other than wait until it arrives and return the items. It's annoying but it's only a few days.

Thanks for your replies.

rslsys - I googled distance selling regulations, those have been now replaced by the Consumer Contracts Regulations, but it's much the same thing -

Your right to cancel
Your right to cancel an order for goods starts the moment you place your order and ends 14 days from the day you receive your goods.

So I should be able to cancel shouldn't I? I will phone them now.

YANBU. Boots website is utterly shit. The service in store isn't much better.

If your order has not been dispatched then you should be able to cancel the whole thing, you won't be able to cancel part of your order.

One thing I've learnt in my life is if a website is playing up, give up.

If not dispatched, cancel the lot.

The Boots website is atrociously user unfriendly. Any time I click on to it I'm slightly baffled as to why none of their marketing bods have insisted on a more user friendly site.

Ok I phoned them and I do have the right to cancel, but I can't do that until the goods arrive (eta Wednesday), then I can cancel the entire order or return the ones I don't want.

Which is not very helpful as I will still be missing the extra money until it is refunded.

They don't seem to think the website is a problem, but I have a reasonably modern laptop (Windows 10, up to date browsers) and can order from other online companies without mishap.

I do like some Boots own-brand stuff, but this is too much work so I'll start looking for alternatives.