Hi ladies, congratulations on your pregnancies. I had my DD two weeks ago but in the last month or so have had a dreadful experience with Boots Tens machine hire and wanted to post here so that if you are wanting to hire a tens machine you can have better luck than I did!
Sorry for the long post, have summarised at the bottom.
Admittedly, I left it quite late to order the tens machine, going to place my order at 37 weeks rather than have it delivered at 37 weeks. Initially all of my bank cards were declined for no apparent reason. I had to wait over the bank holiday to call them to find out why and eventually got through to the call centre to be told it’s because my delivery address didn’t match the one my cards were registered to and I would need to enter a different billing and delivery address. Fair enough - I had moved house recently. By now, I was 38 weeks pregnant and slightly worried I could give birth any day so I asked about how soon it could get here and was told to pay £3 for next day delivery. I went back to the order form to find next day delivery was actually £8 so I decided to chance it and get free standard delivery (2-5 days). 7 days later and still no sign so I called them. They confirmed it had been sent to the right address and should arrive tomorrow (Weds) at the latest. During this time, my baby’s growth had slowed and I had a growth scan on the Thursday when I could be induced if growth wasn’t satisfactory so cutting it close but fine. Tomorrow comes and goes and no tens machine so I called them and said forget it, I want my money back. They promised it would arrive tomorrow but by this point I was pissed off and just wanted my money back. They took my card details, promised a refund and said if it arrived in the meantime to keep it - great! I wasn’t induced and eventually went into spontaneous labour a week and a half later at 40+4 and delivered my gorgeous baby girl without the tens machine but that was fine, I was getting my money back.
A few days after my baby was born, I checked my bank account to find they had not refunded me. So once again I called them. The girl was baffled, there was no record of my complaint or refund. She eventually found my order and realised it had been sent to the wrong address despite me checking this exact problem with them weeks earlier. But this is the ridiculous part - my house number is 297; they had sent it to 2974! I have never known a residential road with almost 3000 houses on it! I am now awaiting my refund and have been promised it will be there within 3 days. We shall see.
This has taken so much of my time and effort that I had to review it but they don’t have a website or option to leave feedback so here I am.
I know it’s hard to find somewhere to hire a tens machine if you want one but if you are looking to hire one from Boots, make sure you order early enough that you can chase it up for over a month and if you think you can’t give birth without one, go elsewhere because it may never show up at all!
TLDR: difficult to order, rubbish customer service, machine never turned up and neither has the refund! Don’t bother.
Good luck with all your pregnancies and births! :)