Last week I had an urge. An urge to update my wardrobe.
I don’t buy clothes all that often. I hate shopping for them, I hate trying them on, I hate that teeny creeping feeling that I’m about to have my eye taken out by a wayward coathanger. Neuroses aside, I prefer to buy online.
Dorothy Perkins had a sale on, so I headed over to their website and found a nice tunic-type top with a waist belt (I love a good waist belt). They were also having a 20% off sale, so I clicked buy, paid the amount I’d actually save on the top on postage (first frustration of the day) and headed to bed.
They kindly sent me a link to track my parcel, so track I did. I was a bit worried that it would turn up while I was at work, but I figured I’d be able to pick it up from a depot if it did. I was bored at work on Thursday and thought I’d check out and was delighted to find its status was “delivered” so when I got home I was a more than a little surprised that it wasn’t there. I decided to give DP a ring and find out where it was.
When I called, I was told I was 18th in the queue. Fair enough I thought, it’s just gone 6, everyone wants to call then. The hold music was terrible and I had no further updates as to where I was in the queue.
20 long minutes later, I’d checked Facebook, my bank account and made good headway through my Google Reader list, when they finally answered the phone. I’d pretty much forgotten what I was calling about by then, but did get the point across. I asked where my top was. They couldn’t tell me, but said they’d raise it with the courier and they’d email me within 48 hours. I hung up, relatively satisfied that something was being done.
Me being me though, I thought I’d try to speed it up a bit and tweeted @Dorothy_Perkins thusly:
So, that wasn’t very helpful. I also tried to contact the parcel service directly, but they also told me to contact DP.
I do realise it was then the Bank Holiday weekend, but she definitely said 48 hours, not 48 working hours, so I was more than a little frustrated when I still hadn’t heard from them on Tuesday. I decided to call again and demand my money back.
This time I was 14th in the queue at 7.58. After about 20 minutes, the music changed and I stopped getting the “Thank you for your patience” messages, so I knew I was being put on hold by a real life person. This was more than a little annoying.
After another 5 minutes holding, I was beginning to lose my rag and when the girl answered I just said the situation was ridculous, could I have my money back. She said yes, I could have my money back and she’d just find out what happened to my parcel. Now, I’ve worked in a call centre before and in many other different customer service environments and never have I been told it’s acceptable to keep someone on hold like that for any length of time without returning every couple of minutes to let the customer know what’s going on. I was on hold for another 10 minutes without hearing anything, When she eventually came back, I’d assumed she’d have a definitive answer. But no.
It turned out that the parcel courier hadn’t been able to find my address. Hmm….sat navs know where it is….Google Maps knows where it is….it’s in bloody great big letters on the front of the building for crying out loud! On top of that, when they’d said it was “delivered”, they’d actually “delivered” it to another parcel company without telling me or DP what was going on. Good job, son!
Apparently it would take 4-6 (wait for it) WEEKS to find out where the top actually was, so I’ve been given a refund. Or at least I’ve been told I have, it’s still not in my bank account or my PayPal account.
So, to sum up, they’ve lost my top, kept me on hold on an 0844 number for the best part of an hour and can take my money at the drop of a hat, but it’s going to take 3-5 days for it to come back to me. Maybe the top will eventually turn up with plenty of stories to tell about the sites it’s seen, but I doubt it. I just can’t believe how poor their customer service has been from start to finish. I won’t be shopping there again.
Leah Hunt 