Pets At Home TERRRIBLE Customer Service

[Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh]

About every month now I order dog food from Pets at Home. For reference I order Lily's Kitchen brand, a large 7kg bag of dry food (£54) and the 10 pack box of small wet food trays (£13.49).

In my last two orders I found that some of the wet food packs had not been sealed properly and had gone mouldy. These were usually the last pack or two in the box I had used in the order so I didn't realise they were mouldy until weeks after the order had been delivered.
Since I've recently moved house the nearest store is now miles away. Also I no longer have a drive so I park far away from my house and it's difficult for me to get the heavy order from my car to house which is why I started having it delivered.
After the first box of a few mouldy wet food trays I started to try to check the order more closely to see if I received any more in future orders. For reference I tend to order coronation chicken and fishy fish food wet trays. I noticed most of the mouldy ones were the Coronation Chicken so I decided to stop ordering that flavour.
What I'm noticing is that the delivery box is HUGE and not well packed. In this HUGE box there are 4-5 items (one large bag of dry food and 3-4 10pack boxes of the wet food trays). There is a large amount of space left in the box so the dry food moves around during the delivery process and the wet food boxes break open from their boxes with the little trays going all over the HUGE box getting squashed and misshaped in the process. By the time I receive the delivery I'm opening up a mess. I suspect the little wet food trays are getting their seals broken when the trays are getting squashed and then the food inside is going mouldy.
After another delivery with some mouldy trays I decided this food is way too expensive to just be throwing away so I decided to start exploring other companies that can deliver the exact food my dog's on now (Rustic Chicken Pie With Ancient Grains) or find another brand.

I haven't been able to find another company that can do the Rustic Chicken Pie type in the large bag so I'm going to switch my dog's food. I've ordered from Pets at Home one last time to get a full bag to mix with the new food so I can slowly introduce the new food to my dog.

The order arrived today. The little trays of fishy fish food are all over the HUGE box as normal but this time the large bag of dry food is smeared with what smells like faeces and there is fur attached to the bag and the bag is ripped. The delivery box looks fine so it looks like this damaged bag was put into the box to be sent to a customer in this condition.

I don't want to feed this to my dog, I don't even want this in my house because it stinks. I started searching for a number to call Pets at Home to ask for a refund but there is no number to call them. It says to use the chat feature which for some reason isn't available on my phone or laptop. I've filled out the 'contact us' form online but so far no response it looks like it could take days for them to respond. It then says to go onto Twitter and contact them there so despite having other things to do today I took photos and uploaded them onto Twitter and sent messages to Pets at Home about the problem but no one has responded.
After I've been unable to contact the company today I phoned a store and they said the only way to contact Pets at home Customer Service is to drive all the way to the store and get the store to contact customer service on your behalf! Why can a customer not directly contact customer services? If I have to drive all the way to a store that's me wasting £54 on damaged dog food, £4.45 for the delivery of the damaged dog food, wasting time today trying to contact the company, uploading photos and waiting on Twitter, further researching how to get ahold of the company, waiting on hold at the store and now having to drive all the way to the store carrying a heavy bag of poo smeared dog food just so I can get a refund for an item they seemingly knew was damaged when they sent it to me? I still need to go buy food for my dog and apparently they don't have this particular flavour in the store. Apparently the company closes at 5:00pm on Saturdays so there is no hope of getting a response from Pets at Home today now so I will have to try again tomorrow.

AIBU to be F fuming right now????

I guess they make it extremely difficult to get ahold of the company so you won't bother with a refund or a complaint?

Sorry, your post was SO long I nearly lost the plot! Why haven't you ordered directly form lilys kitchen? They will likely delivery directly to your door too!
https://www.lilyskitchen.co.uk/

So order it from somewhere else if it's not working for you.

I had a similar experience recently - awful!!!!
never will I use them again

This was a seriously long post.

Contact the manufacturer too - I find them to be really helpful when the reputation of their brand is being harmed by a retailer. So let the dry food company know how PAH are sending out their food (it illustrates poor storage and handling) and also the wet food company as they too will be interested to know how their product is being treated. They may send you product or vouchers but they will definitely investigate what's happening at PAH.

Pets at Home sucks. I use them in a pinch and for spontaneous purchases of cat treats because there’s a branch on my way home from work but for a regular dog food order there are plenty of online pet shops and veterinary pharmacies that will do a good value subscription.

I don't understand why pets at home became such a big shop with so many stores, it's the worst pet shop. Never has decent dog toys or treats and sells loads of rawhide crap.

they were a medium-sized pet shop, and bought Petsmart which was the same size, and went from 100 UK stores to 200 overnight.

YABU for two reasons.

First, you haven't spoken to customer services yet, so cannot say they've been terrible.

Second, for feeding your dog rubbish.

I've never had an issue contacting them. They gave me partial refund of a litter tray that was damaged but usable and I said I'd keep it. And I also purchased some food that had been packed wrong by supplier. I had opened a tin and they told me to take it back no problem, even with tin missing. I also contacted the company and they offered me discount

Apologies for the long OP.

For those saying don't order from PAH yes I completely agree and I will never order from them again.

I had not considered sending the photos to Lily's Kitchen so thanks for the recommendation! Yes perhaps they would like to know how their food is being delivered and the complete lack of customer service at PAH when things go wrong.

I was looking to switch brands because the same 7kg bag on the Lily's Kitchen website is £65. At PAH it's £54.

You mentioned fishy fish something, check they aren't part of this recall!
https://www.lilyskitchen.co.uk/customer-notifications.html

There are reviews on amazon about mouldy kibble, but not the same flavour you buy.

@CJ0374 Thanks! I hadn't seen that before. It's the same flavour but it looks like the tins rather than the trays.

I've messaged Lily's Kitchen directly via their email because it doesn't look like they have a Twitter account?

Terrible customer service with groomers in Pets at Home, they phoned to cancel an appointment then denied it and refused to refund the deposit. Never set foot in there since.

UPDATE: Day 4

Pets at Home are still messing me about on Twitter. Direct messaging on Twitter is apparently the only way they will respond to customers. They still haven't responded to my direct email contact via their website. Their website's online chat feature is still not working on my phone or laptop.

No luck with the refund so far.

Lily's Kitchen have responded to my email. They apologised for the situation and said they will pull Pets at Home up for the way they sent out my orders. They also said that there is an agreement between Pets at Home and Lily's Kitchen that a customer can either be refunded or have their order replaced. So by doing neither Pets at Home are breaching the agreement with Lily's Kitchen.

I'm so angry about how ridiculous it is to deal with PAH! In contrast my grocery delivery was missing an item yesterday, I phoned them within 30 mins of the delivery being made, waited on hold for about 7 mins, once I spoke with them they immediately apologised and issued a refund and that was that. It was all sorted within an hour.

PAH packing seems terrible, we have had huge bags of cat litter put in a cardboard box whrn other companies would just label the actual litter bag. Have you tried Fetch? There is usually a joining discount and you can have a subscription

Is that Fetch within Ocado? I used to order from them years ago but I thought that side of the business ended? Is it now back? They did used to be very good. Thanks I'll go google it.