John Lewis’ PR is awful?

[HelenaHandcart0]

Just received this in an email from JL saying they are ditching the ‘never knowingly undersold’ promise. Sadly I feel this could be the beginning of the end for them (I hope not) but what an awful way to communicate it!

It said:

..’we will be retiring our Never Knowingly Undersold policy this summer. Established back in 1925 and a hallmark of trust for nearly a century, we recognise that this policy is no longer serving you in the way that we would like, as it doesn't allow us to match prices from online-only retailers’

AIBU in thinking their PR is awful in communicating it this way?

I'm often surprised by staff in retailers telling you to go online for stuff. It happened in 02 several years ago. I wanted advice on phones and the guy in the shop sort of shrugged and said "you'll get a better deal online" I probably would I was there in the shop with cash to spend. Can't even remember if I actually stayed with O2.
And every time I go to the bank there are posters everywhere telling me "did I know I can do x y or z online" and the assistants tell me the same. I do know this info but I haven't looked up what 3 hours that the bank is open that week and travelled to a different town for fun! I do 90% of my banking online but paying in cash and cheques above a certain amount are not possible online. (Half the time the paying in cheques feature on the phone doesn't seem to work anyway) But presumably most of the people are there either because they are unable or don't want to do whatever it's online. I doubt many people are completely unaware that you can bank (and shop) on line.

@EmbarrassedAllOver that is not my experience at my local branch (Brent Cross). Staff are young and inexperienced. They look bored and disengaged and can’t answer a simple question about products in their department. Back in my day you would have been reprimanded by the bridge board manager for being away with the fairies with customers around

The store that was in Aberdeen had great, knowledgeable staff. Customers came from the North of Scotland, the Islands and even Norway.
The store has closed and been a great loss to the city centre. I personally think they had been running it down, to force us to shop online. It used to be financially one of the most successful stores
JL is just a conduit for brands - I try to buy direct from the actual shops now.

[quote DontBeMean]@EmbarrassedAllOver You've got the wrong end of the stick. Posters aren't complaining that John Lewis are stopping NeverKnowinglyUndersold they are annoyed because John Lewis are trying to tell them it's because it's in the customers best interests when it clearly isn't. John Lewis are being disingenuous and treating their customers like idiots. No one would be pissed off at them if they were honest about it.[/quote]
Yes

I received a John Lewis Investments leaflet by post today. 🤷

It’s lost its USP

It’s possible to be annoyed simultaneously with both Vladimir Putin and John Lewis

@HaveringWavering This ought to be MN Quote of the Day (if they still have it?)

@TheRideOfYourLife

It’s possible to be annoyed simultaneously with both Vladimir Putin and John Lewis

@HaveringWavering This ought to be MN Quote of the Day (if they still have it?)

Agree!

@EmbarrassedAllOver

Their stuff IS good quality. You don't have to buy the Anyday goods.

Except I don't expect a cheap and crappier range to be peddled under the JL brand just because it's Anyday. The Anyday stuff, quite aside from its naff and cheap branding (how on Earth did JL think that was a good idea?) is worse quality than its previous basics range. All my dinner plates were JL basics and 10 years on they're still great. But candles have gone down in quality since they were relaunched under the Anyday bran - they're overdipped now (where the centre is cheap white wax and only the outer is coloured) and that right there is a metaphor for what JL are trying to get away with: cheaper products and worse service with a veneer of quality.

Because I damned well do want "good customer service" but I can assure you that it is not the case that "John Lewis is up there." As an example, why else would JL have policies that mean faulty goods have to be returned to the manufacturer for inspection rather than just being replaced and JL deal with the admin of it all? Why does this fall on the customer to have to wait until the manufacturer replaces the item? Why would JL have staff who refuse to accept a manufacturer's written statement that an item is faulty and insist on sticking to The Policy?

Here's another example: why would JL refuse to accept a return on an item bought in a store which subsequently shut during lockdowns, and where they could find a way to allow it to be returned to a service centre or via the same system as for online returns but Computer Says No? Why should a customer have to wait four months for the shop to open again?

JL's customer service increasingly operates at its own convenience while preening itself on being excellent. When it really fucking isn't.

I bloody love Waitrose and John Lewis, I always have. I am trying very hard to be a loyal customer. But they seem to be doing their damnest to focus on what they want their customers to want, rather than what customers ACTUALLY want.

@RutlandVasey

JL mucked about with their Peterborough store for a year while they spent £££squillions on a super refurb, it opened fully for a few months in 2020 but now has remained permanently closed. Surely you’d open it up again to get some value out of those shiny new countertops and escalators?

Having shopped elsewhere in 2019 I now… shop elsewhere.

I strongly suspect the CFO is in charge at JL which is why they’re a) spending no money on the customer experience b) spending no money on the customer experience.

Peterborough was my closest store too and the closure really annoyed me. So much money spent on that refurb! Now it's gone there is so little reason to go into the city centre. One of the reasons they gave for closing the store was that people who live in Peterborough weren't shopping there; footfall was very dependent on shoppers coming in from the surrounding area. But now there's nothing in the city centre to draw people in for shopping! I used to get a lot of children's clothes there but have stopped really as looking at the website it feels like they've gone downhill. A lot of the children's clothes are AnyDay and they're nowhere near as nice. I do think AnyDay is a mistake - it's not what JL customers want.

I think part of the issue started when (from memory) they outsourced their call centre. The people are nice but don't seem to have much clue or authority how to solve issues.

The poster who referred to their change on faulty goods needing to be returned to the manufacturer summed it up for me. JL used to be brilliant on this. I remember working there and an elderly lady bought back a jumper with a label that JL hadn't manufactured for 20 years. She was given a refund.

Now, I'm not saying that companies can afford to do that, with the cost competition from online retailers. But Amazon are excellent at giving refunds when there's an issue with faulty goods. They even did it for a computer that only had a few days left on the warranty.

My friend had a camera that broke after a couple of months and JL didn't want to know. That approach is going to alienate their core customer base.

Recently, vans from both Ocado (I know it's not affiliated to JL) and AO hit and knocked over my wall. AO were so helpful in paying for it to be fixed that they've won me as a customer (they weren't delivering to my house). I've ordered a tumble dryer and computer from them since. One way of getting new customers!

My friend had a camera that broke after a couple of months and JL didn't want to know. That approach is going to alienate their core customer base.

Yes. They walk a very tight line between ‘this is covered under a manufacturer guarantee’ and the law on supplying faulty goods under the consumer rights act.

They always seem to default to the former when the latter should apply, e.g. new washing machine develops fault within 6 months.

The last three orders I've had from John Lewis have had the invoice printed either upside down or on the wrong paper, so I couldn't fill in the returns form properly. Plus the boxes have definitely been changed - the most recent box had disintegrated to the point where I couldn't return an item in it, so I took my return back to my local Waitrose, wrapped in one of the new sturdy 50p bags for life. The (invariably excellent) staff commented that I'd used a 'good bag!' and when I explained why, the manager immediately went off and got me a replacement. She said she'd had a lot of grumbles about the online JL experience of late.

I really don't want Anyday. I want the JL basics to be good value/good quality.

@merrymouse

My friend had a camera that broke after a couple of months and JL didn't want to know. That approach is going to alienate their core customer base.

Yes. They walk a very tight line between ‘this is covered under a manufacturer guarantee’ and the law on supplying faulty goods under the consumer rights act.

They always seem to default to the former when the latter should apply, e.g. new washing machine develops fault within 6 months.

The thing is though, the consumer's contract is with the retailer. Any half-way decent retailer would deal with the manufacturer's guarantee themselves, i.e. replace the item without quibble then claim on the guarantee for the cost/replacement item. That way the customer doesn't have to deal with it all.

Of course, the key word there is 'half-way decent' and JL's customer service, when it goes wrong, is catastrophically bad. I bought the item above from JL so that any issues would just be dealt with and I certainly didn't expect to find myself the last circle of administrative hell, up against The Policy which apparently no-one can deviate from even in the face of absurdity.

My understanding of this is that the offer no longer served it’s purpose. It didn’t apply to online retailers so if a consumer said I found this on a website for £10 less, JL couldn’t give the price difference back to the consumer. It only applied to brick and mortar retailers. With so many people turning too online throughout covid and having no interest in going back to actual shops, the JL price promise wasn’t worth much,
And realistically of course online retailers can have lower costs, they don’t have half the overheads.

This does remind me - I bought a washing machine from JL because I thought they had good customer service. It broke very quickly (within months), and JL were awful. I was without a washing machine for two months (4 children).

It was only when I contacted the manufacturer myself forcibly, that I got it sorted. The customer service department at JL was going round in circles with me and was completely useless.

I think that JL are taking for granted their loyal customers, and they are going to fail because of that.
Other shops are available…

I bought a coffee machine from what was my nearest store, before they closed it down. It broke. They said I would need to return it to a shop. I didn't want to do a 140 mile round trip to return it, , so it was a big fat waste of money.