DrEvil

As was obvious from a previous thread, I recently bought a dinning room table and chairs.

Now, I can't fault them on the time it took them to send it out, but the whole procedure fell over when Parcel Force got involved.

I have since found out IF you are in a catchment area for a JL store, and order from the store, you get morning or afternoon delivery. If not, you get Parcel Force, 9-5 delivery.

If I had known this, I would have hired a transit and picked it up myself from a store, but I didn't, so ordered from JL Direct (online).

Now, back to the issues, not only did 1 order go through two couriers (both Royal Mail, but different devisions) which meant trying to get both to deliver on the same day. But, my initial conversation with PF was unpleasant as the guy was basically rude and unhelpful.

Once delivered, I found that some of the legs were damaged. Well, this is where the fun started, as they basically said, oh we will ship another table out and you will need to take another day off (bare in mind I'm self employed). So I ask if I could take the table legs into the Kingston branch to exchange them... Ah, no, can't do that, we are different companies. Can I speak to a manager/supervisor, no sir they are all too busy, they might be able to call you Monday or later in the week. Basically, the person on the end of the phone was fairly disinterested - as per usual with Call Centres.

Anyhow, after eventually loosing my rag with them, I hung up and call JL in Kingston. Now although they couldn't (due to the different company thing + no spare parts) replace the legs with brand new ones, they came up with a suitable work around, replaced the legs with 1 week old display model legs, which weren't damaged and were generally vary polite and apologectic.

So in short, not impressed at all with John Lewis Direct or their choice of couriers or their lack of response to email or their call centre. So will only use John Lewis stores from now on and if I need to buy a large item, I will take a transit van and a mate to collect it - works out cheaper than taking a day off.

Still in awe at the 'we're different companys so can't do that' comment!

All IMHO of course.

SteveLegacy

You'll notice that the stock they hold online, is totally different to that in the shops. Even worse is that if someone buys a guft voucher for you from the online bit, it cannot be used in the shops, as happened to us as a wedding present, the online is a bit cack really, best avoided.

DrEvil

Steve - couldn't agree more - they've offered me a voucher for the online bit, I'm going to ask if this could be a real JL voucher, unless they are prepared to cover loss of earnings for the day I take delivery and the extra day I have to take to get a undamaged one delivered!

SteveLegacy

Ah, but they can't give you a voucher for 'proper' JL, different company, you see!!

We had fun with the real JL for our wedding list, was a bit of confusion on the delivery date (Which might have been my fault!!), anyway, we were out when they tried to deliver the stuff, so we rang and the wife pleaded with them (Just married, back from honeymoon, dont want to wait another fortnight etc), and they sent an employee who had an Espace over with it all loaded in the boot that afternoon!

Sorted!

KimA

Told ya you should have gone to Argoose

DrEvil

Kim - we have for the sofa bed for the spare room!