Yes, sorry, this is a rant about a company this week. I tend to shy away from these as sometimes the other side hasn’t had a chance to put their view across but I was so enraged by the end of my dealings with them this week I thought “sod it, that is my Ranty Friday”.
Let me wind back a bit. Over the weekend J asked if he could have some money to buy some clothes, particularly a new waterproof coat and some skinny jeans. Plus he had some birthday money that he wanted to spend on a pair of Converse shoes. I suggested he look on line and I just give him my credit card. Some might call that lazy. I call it “best use of time”. On Monday night J showed me some things on ASOS that he liked the look of, on his iPad. Rather than just give him my credit card (I am not that stupid) I logged on to the website on the computer. I have two accounts with them and couldn’t remember the password for the account I regularly so after much flaffing around I finally logged in with my old account.
Items duly added and it came to about £98. J spotted that if we spent £100 we would get free next day delivery. So we added a t-shirt to take it over £100.
Sure enough, at the check out there are a couple of options that you can choose from, one of which says “Free next day Delivery over £100” so having spent about £104 we went for that. Total stayed the same (ie delivery charges were not added) and off we went.
Email confirmation duly arrived and stated that my order was in place and that delivery would be here on Friday.
What?
Next day delivery should have been Wednesday (given that it was already 5pm on Monday night I didn’t expect here on Tuesday. Though take note ASOS you can order up to 9pm with Next and still get next day).
I immediately emailed them to point out their mistake and was told “we will contact the warehouse to see what we can do”.
Hmm it was only ten minutes after the order was placed so I was hopeful they would sort out their mistake.
Email the next day told me “Sorry we can’t do it”. Or words to that effect.
I was seething.
So on Wednesday I decided to Tweet them to see if anything could be done. I had an issue with DPD recently over a delivery. Guy in the depot refused to do anything, guy on Twitter had it resolved in ten minutes. Nothing to lose I thought.
I was asked for my order number
Good start
And then it all went downhill.
Fast
This was the first “solution”
That I could spend ANOTHER £100 and ask for next day delivery, and then when the goods from the first order arrive, send them back and get a refund. Leaving me £100 down for probably close to two weeks whilst that all happened (not to mention having to organise for the return of the parcel)
Second DM from them was starting to make me angry.
Couldn’t do it, despite me alerting them to the problem ten minutes after it happened.
I went back to them and told them I was very disappointed and this was the next response, it is now my fault
If the page is refreshed? Why would I do that mid check out?
Next though came this beauty. Sent at gone 10pm Wednesday night, that I woke up to yesterday morning:
Suggesting once again I return the first order when it arrives and place another order on Thursday with next day delivery. ARRIVING ON THE SAME DAY AS THE ORIGINAL ORDER WOULD ARRIVE.
On what planet is that an option?
How on earth does that help anybody?
I accept things go wrong. But this is ridiculous. What sort of solution to a problem is me ordering something on Thursday for next day delivery when the original order is due on Friday and they have known that from the first message?
I went back and told them I was livid at their suggestions. Why couldn’t they offer, from their end to cancel the first order on Tuesday morning, credit my account and re order it for next day delivery?
Why was there a shrug of shoulders?
There is no reasonable offer to resolve this issue. Yes, I admit they apologised profusely. And they were working late, two great points. But they didn’t come up with anything to actually resolve the issue.
Then they came up with the reason why I had not received the free next day delivery. Not only do you have select that option apparently but you have to then put NEXT DAY in the promotion code box.
Well I am far from stupid but I can assure you that didn’t make itself very obvious. Nor did any pop up box say “Oi, where’s your code?”. As the wife of a programmer it strikes me as being sensible for there to be a bit of code that says “ooh they have selected that option and their basket has over £100 in it so that is fine” or “they are trying to pull a fast one, give them this pop up window”.
Nope, I selected “Spent £100. Free Next Day Delivery” and assumed that I would have my goods the next day. Well, you sort of would, reading that, wouldn’t you? Only because it wasn’t obvious that I have to put a code in, as well as selecting that option, it failed to register.
No message. No pop up. No message saying “where’s your code”. Nothing until the email by which point there is nothing they can do.
Silly me.
And then to add insult to that injury it all went further downhill after that once I did get in touch.
Seems the customer is not always right when it comes to ASOS. But this customer does have the right to shop elsewhere, which I shall now be doing. They could have put this right on Monday night but they chose not to.
Do check out other blogs linking up to Ranty Friday this week.
Well this says one thing to me, that it is time ASOS rethinks their interviews to make sure their employees are equipped with a fair amount of common sense! The suggestions were simply appalling…
I’m still trying to get my head round the cancel and re order to get the same day delivery thing?! That’s madness. What appalling customer services!
Baffling. Really baffling!
That’s pathetic – a shame really as i have always thought ASOS to be quite good on customer service in the past , perhaps it’s all gone down hill now.
It does sound very over complicated and if they couldn’t easily resolve if for you i would have thought they would issue you a credit note or something to make up for the inconvenience.
Personally, I do think customer service when ordering goods online, is generally crap. I order a lot of stuff online and the amount of companies that blame their delivery counterparts is phenomenal. It’s as though they refuse to take responsibility for poor service. Delivery companies are given instructions by the company they work for, and yes, many do fail to deliver on time (I’ve often waited in all day for an item only to receive it at 6pm and on some occasions not on the day stated – happened the other week actually and both delivery company and company I’d bought from were blaming each other – absolute farce). However, it seems that as soon as we’ve placed that online order it’s then up to the customer to do the running, chasing and worrying about whether they will receive the item on time and intact. And as many online retailers take the money straight away from your account, you often find yourself out of pocket, and sometimes for a considerable amount of time.
But something that really bothers me about this case, Tanya, and it’s happened to me recently with BlackBerry after I complained onTwitter about their shocking service, is, that they conduct their correspondence via Direct Messaging. Only you, the customer, sees those messages and therefore the rest of Twitter doesn’t get to see what your supplier is fobbing you off with unless you go public and start publishing their DMs on your timeline – like you’ve done here. BB did the same with me – I publicly tweeted them and they got back to me via DMs, and completely fobbed me off. In fact, they more or less made the whole issue out to be MY fault, blaming EE as well, when I knew for a fact it was BB at fault. I find this very sneaky, very dishonest and very poor practice. It’s all well and good having social media to vent our frustration, but when a supplier cannot come up with a sensible solution, it’s very easy for them to then start liasing with their customers in private.
Thank you for alerting me to this company. I’m slowly ticking off rubbish online retailers and reading posts like this come in very handy.
CJ x
Thanks for your lengthy comment Mrs Jigsaw 🙂 That drives me MAD about BlackBerry. Their refusal to deal with me “publicly” was infuriating. I can understand asking for a DM in the first instance for the order number but after that I wish I had made it public now.
You are right, nobody will hold their hands up and say “yep, something is right here, how would you like me to sort it out?” Now THAT is customer service. And like you, I now have a list of companies I will no longer use.
I used to spend hundreds with ASOS, hundreds. Not anymore. Not that they will care of course.
Grrrrr! How infuriating! I am currently cross with another retailer who told us they would deliver my son’s birthday present yesterday (between 7 and 2, sigh). But it turned out the wrong order arrived at the depot – an exercise bike, so we are now currently in no man’s land wonder whether they have been able to ‘rush the order through’ as promised. Because it isn’t here yet! And his 10th birthday is on Sunday.
Sometimes the system just doesn’t work. They were (probably) not trying to be difficult but just couldn’t fix the problem for you. What I don’t get is why they offered idiotic ‘solutions’ instead of saying, we’ll give you a discount, would that help? It wouldn’t get you the goods any quicker but it might have taken the edge off your frustration. They must see you’re a good customer so I think they were very short-sighted, if not a bit stupid. Ah well, their loss is someone else’s gain… keep calm & carry on as someone once said x
You have inspired my rant today!! I have to say, what happened to me is even worst, because at least you had communication from ASOS, I had NOTHING! and they still have my money…such a disgrace!
oh how frustrating. I’ve not used them for a very long time. Terrible customer services.
Just tried to join the linky and it told me it already had my link (it hasn’t). 🙁
oh ignore it. Despite coming up as an error it has appeared!! Off to comment on everyone else now.
I’d be hopping mad too…..I have to say though in general online retailers are getting better. Hope you get some compensation!!
I’ve had this with a few companies lately – buy now at a super cheap price, fast delivery and then an email comes to say it’s out of stock and would I like to choose another product / wait for it to come in. Err no! Then it takes 3 weeks to get your money back! *head implodes*
Too many online retailers get away with this sort of behaviour! I have NEVER seen an online site where you have to type in Free Delivery, as well as ticking a box. Useless x
I feel your pain. I had this happen to me with an in-store interaction. When my son was born (11 years ago) I was given an receiving blanket and hat from a store called Old Navy (very big chain of family clothing in the US, do you have them there?). As I had a gazillion hats and blankets already, I wanted to take it back for store credit and get something I needed. I also had a $75 gift card to spend on myself as I needed some new things after spending the better part of the last year in maternity clothes.
I took the item back to Old Navy to get the store credit and shop (I had imagined I’d spend way more than my gift card as well). I didn’t have a receipt (as it was a gift) but it was clearly their product, tagged as an Old Navy garment and a paper wrapper emblazoned with “Old Navy” across it. They wouldn’t give me even store credit as they had changed their “no exchanges or refunds with out a receipt” policy only the week before. I told the store manager that I only wanted credit to get something else and was told that all they would do it exchange it for THE EXACT SAME PRODUCT-down to the pattern. I couldn’t even get a different pattern! Who would do that?!?!?!
I was livid (as well as being recently post-partum) and went to the parking lot where I called their customer service who wouldn’t budge on the policy either. They did however, after many converesations with managers and supervisors up the ladder, refund the gift card (I got a cheque a few weeks later). I donated the blanket set to charity and shopped elsewhere.
To this day I have not and will not shop there, even though they sell inexpensive kids clothes and the uniforms for my son’s school…I will not give them my money…
I tell everyone. You should too….
Oh dear, I’ve almost been caught out by their whole add the code box thingie before now. It does begger belief that they couldn’t simply put right the wrong given you contacted them straight away!
I had a similar issue with ASOS, partly due to their silly delivery company, who spent 10 days saying my address was unreachable. I live on a high street with deliveries coming and going every minute of the day…I also spent 3 days waiting in for the parcel after being advised it was out for delivery!.They too suggested to me that I re-ordered using a different delivery option, and then returned the original parcel when it arrived. But they wouldn’t refund the first parcel until they recieved it, despite it being clear it hadn’t got to me. I didn’t have an extra £100 knocking about to cover the cost of 2 orders, so just had to wait until the original one arrived- 14 days after ordering, and 3 days after the event my daughter had ordered the clothes for. In this case it was the delivery company at fault really, but ASOS offered no apology or solution other than me re-ordering. Unfortunately that means they have lost any future business from us, as we just cannot trust that things will arrive in a reasonable time.