La Redoute free gift bait and switch - be warned!!!

[Catlike]

Hi, just sharing my experience to warn anyone who may be thinking of using the La Redoute codes 1680 or 1678 to get this quite nice free gift beige and pink weekend bag set.

Ok, it's nothing amazing but looks like reasonable quality and I thought it would do for my hospital bag when my baby arrives next month.

So I placed an order the other day using one of these codes and when I went through the checkout, it said the pink and beige bag set was available and when I received my confirmation email, it was included in the order.

However, when I logged onto their site yesterday to check the order status, the free gift description had changed to "jacquard pois gris". No explanation or description of this substitution.

When I googled "La Redoute jacquard bag" this flimsy, cheap looking bag set was all I could find. It's horrible looking and appears to be much poorer quality than the advertised gift that was apparently in stock when I placed my order.

Contacted La Redoute customer services and they confirmed that this would be the free gift item I'd be receiving. They said that this alternative bag set is of equal quality and value to the one they advertised (and claimed was in stock when I paid for my order!) even though this blatantly is not true. The green spotty one looks like something you'd get free with a magazine or you'd buy from Poundland.

I feel quite annoyed as while I understand that stocks are not infinite and that sometimes items have to be substituted, it seems really cheeky to send out such an obviously inferior product :( It feels like a dishonest bait and switch, to be honest, especially as the advertised free gift was showing as available when I placed the order.

Anyway, lesson learned! As I said, I just wanted to let other people know as La Redoute are still running this promotion and the original, half decent looking free gift is still showing up as available. Wankers.

They've had that gift set before, we have one that's a few years' old so they're probably using up old stock and ran out.

Yeah that would make sense. It's just so sneaky and dishonest to reel customers in with the promise of something fairly nice when they're intending to send out something shit instead.

Tell Trading Standards. Sure, "gift may be an alternative of equal quality" or whatever but that grey one looks totally different. Also surely they shouldnt be showing the original gift as still available?

I'm guessing it's technically legal or they wouldn't be able to get away with it. There's no way a customer could know how much La Redoute actually pay for the free gifts they send out so they could easily claim that the items are of equal value even though it's blindingly obvious that the replacement item is way cheaper and crappier.

And as for the website still showing the original gift as available, they'd probably just say it was a technical glitch.

Am sure they've got their arses covered legally but it's a cynical, shitty way to operate IMO. Incompetent at best and borderline fraudulent at worst. Oh well, their loss as I do most of my shopping online and could have spent loads with them in future instead of bad mouthing them on here :)

I am guessing the pink one would look all cheap and crumpled when it arrives too. They have ironed it and filled it with padding for that picture

La redoute are wankers. Sorry, I won't give them my money any more.

I purchased size 11 converse for my son. I bought three pairs and as he was away at Uni I kept them of his return. He didn't want them so I decided to sell on ebay. I listed all three and sold one pair which had to be returned as being too big. The label inside the shoe stated size 11.5.
My fault for not looking at label before I listed them but as I had ordered a size 11and opened the box to check colours they looked huge and the right side.

Upon contacting la redoute to ask why they had sold me size 11.5 I was told In No uncertain terms that they don't sell half sizes and that I was trying to commit fraud by returning sizes they didn't sell! Bastards.

That sounds terrible Sunday! Actually, there are a shocking amount of reviews online about how awful they are. I'm quite amazed at their lack of concern for their reputation, given that most companies bend over backwards to provide decent customer service nowadays. Just wish I'd been aware of their crappy reviews before risking an order with them!

i bet they are equal quality, the pic of the pink and beige is just a better pic! they're going to make it look as good as they can aren't they?

i suspect it's identical to the other one aside from the colour.

Yeah you could be right. Free gifts are never the best quality, to be fair. I just can't imagine that nylon spotty bag ever being made to look nice, even with the most creative lighting and photography. Oh well, maybe I can ebay it for a couple of quid and put that towards a nicer hospital bag...