xxxxxxx Retail Limited

Dear Sirs,

I am a great believer in setting out what I have to say clearly, and in ensuring that nobody I speak to is under any misapprehensions about what I mean.

Unfortunately, the people who write your advertising material have some way to go in this regard.

I also believe that shops are there for the convenience of their customers, and that sales assistants should assist (pretty obvious, by definition, eh?). Again, in your case, no.

I am prompted to write to you by two strange and unrelated incidents which happened today in my local xxxxxxx store. Let me recount these tales of sales apathy.

1. The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Sales Assistants
A case for Sherlock Holmes this one. My 12 year old son had walked to the shopping centre with his friend to spend money he had received for Christmas. He had £100 in his pocket (perhaps not very wise but there you go). He went into xxxxxx to buy a steering wheel for his Playstation. He stood and waited for 10 mins then asked an "assistant" (and I use that term in the loosest sense possible) what models were in stock. The "assistant" (I hate that word it seems so out of place here) responded with a cheery wave and smile and said he would check in a minute. Nothing...

Unperturbed, my son asked another "assistant" - same answer - same result.

Being a determined wee soul, he asked yet another - same answer - same result - absolutely nothing.

There may have been a fourth assistant - he's not too sure, one of them had a beard but he could have grown that during the time my son was waiting.

And then I happened to stroll into the shop after he had waited 30 minutes (See Case 2 for the reason I was there) and he told me, so I asked the Deputy Manager, who came over and told him there was nothing in stock, so he had waited 30 minutes for nothing.

I took some time to tell the Deputy Manager that I thought that this standard of service was pathetic and wholly unacceptable, and that he had lost not only that sale, but also another sale, the reason I was there in the first place. Read on...

2. The Case of the Magically Appearing Service Agreement and Delivery Charge.
An interesting case Watson, and one which typifies your Group's attitude to these mugs I mean customers who are daft enough to be taken in.

I wanted to buy a tumble drier. I looked in xxxxxx and I looked in Scottish Power at the same drier (a Zanussi something or other). The price was the same in both stores. I spoke to one of your assistants (not in "" this time cos she was good and did assist). The agreed price was £189.95. I decided to buy from xxxxxx but had to go and get the cash.

I returned 30 mins later (see Case 1 above for summary of ensuing stramash). Having stomped out, my wife persuaded me to return and buy the drier, and against my better judgement, I agreed.

So I waited for the same sales assistant, on the basis that she had been untypically helpful, based on my past experience in your stores. She was busy though and after waiting a while someone else agreed to take the sale.

I then needed the patience of Job and the resistance power of a small but well-equipped mid-african rebel army to refute the usual offers of service agreements etc, which would have added one third to the agreed price. This is irritating but quite normal in stores in your Group, and so far, no problem.

And then a charge of £11.95 was added for a delivery charge. This was discounted to £6.95. I pointed out that there were no advertising cards explaining that delivery was chargeable, that Scottish Power's price included delivery, and that in these circumstances, I was not paying one penny for delivery. She cancelled the sale. I left.

This would have meant that the invoice would have read:

To point at a zanussi tumble drier……………………………….. £189.95
To lift drier onto van and then take it out again………………….£ 11.95
Extra in case it breaks cos we have no faith in our product……£ 54.00 (?)
Total £ 255.90

A 30% increase over the advertised price. Oh dear.

In summary, two mysterious cases of a store with a death wish. And that was only one customer, in one day.

There's more!

I go into your shops dressed for work (suit, tie etc) and I have sales assistants effusing over me like trainee Uriah Heeps. I cannot get peace to look at the goods for fighting off staff with a stick.

I go into your shops after I have been gardening or fixing the car, looking like a Worzel Gummidge reject, and I have to chase the staff all over the store, or snare them on their way to the lavvy, to ask even the simplest question.

In both cases, though, my money is exactly the same colour. Odd, don't you think?

There's even more!

In February last year I shelled out over £1,000 to xxxxxxxxx(another worthy member of your retail group) on a computer and scanner / printer / desk etc package. In August it suffered meltdown, apparently, according to your man who attended to fix it, because of some software conflict. This conflict must have existed when I bought it, because the fault existed from the first minute I switched it on.

I had spent £24 on calls to your helpline and they solved nothing. I want that money refunded. By return.

It was a lot worse after the man came to the house and fixed it though - at least before then, I could use it, he left it so that it wouldn't even boot into safe mode, a fault that I fixed in 7 minutes.

There followed a week which can best be summarised as a comedy of errors, with people promising to phone me and failing to do so, with me spending a fortune, probably more than the national debt of a small third-world nation, in time and money trying to call your service number, and listening to interminable hours of pre-recorded piffle, and then when I did get through, the computer going downhill with each suggested "fix".

I ended up having to backup all of my data onto a CD and then restoring the operating system and factory software to the hard drive, and then re-installing all of my applications. This worked. So the fault was on the computer when I bought it.

And this raises another question. A very fundamental question. I knew when I bought it that I would want to make CD backups - we use this system at work, and I also work at home, on files that are too large for floppy disks, so I wanted mine to be compatible. I asked before purchase if the computer's spare drive bay could take an internal CD Writer. "Oh yes, no problem" said the "assistant" (note I am back to the inverted commas again here) so I bought it from your xxxxxxxxx store.

I had done nothing about installing a CD Writer until disaster struck in August, and I went into another Store (near my work) to buy an internal CD Writer. They wouldn't sell it to me. They said it wouldn't fit. They said that to their knowledge no CD writer on the market would fit. I removed the case and measured the space. They were right. Amazing and unprecedented knowledge and honesty, please send them a coconut with my regards.

But the external CD writers are more expensive, take up more desk space and are, quite frankly, not what I wanted when I bought this computer. So I still haven't bought one.

I could not be bothered writing to you on the computer stuff, partly cos a friend said that I would get nowhere. I was just relieved to get it working again. But now that the local xxxxxxx have rattled my cage, I would like something done about it.

So I want you to find me a CD Writer that will fit into the second drive bay as your assistant promised it would. I want you to order it, supply it and fit it… and all at your normal supply-only cost of an internal CD writer. No butchering the case, no rearranging internal components such as the power pack… I want the deal promised to me verbally at the time of sale. Fair enough eh?

Finally, my third party diagnostics package tells me that my computer is not millennium compatible, since the BIOS is over a year older than the computer is. Your shop says not to worry. It better work come Saturday… These Trading Standards people are ever so keen these days, and TV hasn't been the same since Esther went….

I await your comments on all of the above, and at least a refund of the £24 I wasted on your "lack-of-help-in-any-form" telephone lines. I hope I can wait with the same patience your customers display when hanging around in your stores looking for help. No, I mean real help. Please reply before I grow much older.

Yours faithfully,

Dear Sirs,

I refer to your letter dated 24 January, which you appear to have sent to me in error, instead of a proper reply to my letter of 28 December.

I note your comments regarding training. As a starting point, I would recommend any of the numerous books by Barbara Wodehouse, about the discipline and training of little puppies. Maybe if your staff could crack the concept of stick retrieval it might help them to fetch stuff when asked by customers (of any age). I trust you find this more helpful than your letter is.

Your letter then goes on to request evidence of telephone call costs. Oh dear. You should have stopped at the £24.00 boys, because that only covers the time I actually spoke to someone. There were innumerable other calls listening to pre-recorded messages, on land lines and mobiles, because of either the inefficiency of your help line or the number of customers needing repairs of defective products. I hadn’t included these calls before… but seeing as how I have to dig the bills out anyway, you’ll be getting a claim for the lot.

Or you can pay the £24.00 now and save me the bother, and you a lot of money. You will have to accept my word or call me a liar.

But what about the other stuff, which you seem to have ignored or forgotten? In particular, I refer to the misrepresentation made at the time of sale of this computer that a CD Writer would fit inside it, when it’s clear even to me now that there is as much chance of that, as getting a sumo wrestler into Woody Allen’s wetsuit. You missed that bit in your “reply”.

Or the request to find me a model of CD writer that fits as promised? You missed that bit too.

Or the incapability of your man to fix it? I had to sort it myself after he had visited… You missed that bit too.

So don’t miss this bit. I look forward to a proper reply that offers some real customer service, not merely a reference to your website http://www/xxxxxx.don’tgiveamonkeys.co.uk . A reply that offers some help with the CD Writer, a point on which, under the Sale of Goods Act, you are clearly at fault. A reply that offers some help with the cost of my phone calls, which solved nothing and left me worse off than I was before each time, again, a strange definition of “help line” which the Trades Description people might be interested in. A reply which might arrive quicker than the full month your last attempt took.

No wonder people, less patient than me, might be forced to more effective action, such as distributing leaflets outside stores in your group, demonstrating such concerns and your lack of interest. Obviously, given that these would reflect true events, it would be up to potential customers to decide on how these past events might influence their purchasing decision.

You might ask such people to move on, and in some cases you might even be entitled to do so, and they probably would… to another store. You will run out of patience before they run out of stores to visit. You might seek court action, and they would then be entitled to defend themselves for free. They might not win but think of the publicity…

Not that I would stoop so low, because I am confident that you can get serious, and act like a proper Customer Service Department and put this right. Go on, give it a try…you never know.

Yours faithfully,

PS (Don’t you think that letters like this have great entertainment value? It’s always been my ambition to get on the telly… With your experience of media relations, do you think I have a chance? Worth a try eh… I’ll maybe get round to that in …say… a fortnight?)

xxxxxxx Customer Service Department

Dear Sirs,

I thank you for your letter of 29 February, and apologise for the delay in replying, but I had to apply for a waste management license so that I could dig up the landfill site so that I could find the load of rubbish that contained my telephone bill from August.

Found it though!!

Then I spent another week filling it all in again, restoring the capping layer and rebuilding the house that has been built on top.

I have copied the last page, which shows three calls to your numbers. None of these solved anything. The total cost to me was £17.42 + VAT, a total of £ 20.47, which I note you intend to repay. I look forward to receiving your payment soon.

There were other calls from my mobile phone but I cannot find the bill for that.

But, again, what about the other stuff, which you again seem to have ignored or forgotten? I still look forward to a proper reply to the points in my letter regarding the misrepresentation that a Cdwriter would fit, and the deplorable “assistance” I got which left my computer completely inoperable.

I have had to go out and buy an external CD Writer, because I cannot wait for your tardy responses any longer. This cost me £229, £70 more than the equivalent internal model, and all because your staff couldn’t advise me properly in the first place. It’s a 4x4x6 model, and for that money I could have bought a fandabby 24x internal one… flummoxed again by your original bad advice.

So I am definitely not happy. Not about the duff advice. Not about the duff repair. Not about the inordinate length of time it takes you to write a letter. Not about the deplorable standard of service in your shops. Please act like Customer Services and not Endless Excuses. Fix it.

Soon, this time please.

Yours faithfully, but increasingly impatiently,

And this, dear reader, is where I discovered that the computer hadn’t been mended properly in the first place, and my relationship with them took a sudden turn for the worst…

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