B&Q – the Complaint Letter
Posted: Mon 7 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, D4D™ 4 Comments »Following on from the B&Q saga, this email has just been sent to their customer services…
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am emailing you because I am utterly furious about the incompetent way our order has been handled by B&Q. At the end of December we placed an order via your website for 2x3000mm Stardust black worktops and 2x worktop edges. Personally, I wouldn’t have thought that this was a complicated order, but when it comes to B&Q, I’m obviously grossly overestimating their capabilities.
We first received the order at the start of January. This managed to consist of 1x3000mm Worktop – in Blue – and 1x1000mm wall unit carcase, 1x800mm wall unit carcase, and 4x 500mm cherry wood finish doors. In short, epically, spectacularly wrong.
We organised a re-delivery, and for the delivery company to remove the incorrect items. This time they turned up with two worktops. Great. Except they’re Red Marble finish. And we got a metal hanging rack as well.
For a third time we organised a re-delivery, and an uplift of the incorrect stuff. My partner checked it before it came off the lorry, and this time we had 2x 3000mm worktops. In Grey. We didn’t even take the worktops off the delivery truck. As for the items that were delivered incorrectly last time? Your wonderful delivery service hadn’t managed to detail that there was anything to come back, so they didn’t take anything.
To date we’ve now had three deliveries, none of which have been correct. We’re still waiting for the correct worktops, and the worktop edging. We’ve still got two Red Marble worktops we don’t want, and haven’t ordered, as well as a wall carcase we don’t want and didn’t order, and a metal hanging rack we don’t want and didn’t order.
Is it too much to ask that B&Q manage to sort out this delivery immediately? I can’t believe that this is how B&Q normally operate – otherwise you must be losing hundred of thousands of pounds per year delivering unordered items to people.
I would also like to point out that I’ve just risked serious damage to myself by looking at your website and nearly busting a gut laughing at your statement “Supporting our employees, delighting our customers“. “Committed to great service” is also – in our case – an outright lie.
I would like to be given a call today (Monday 7th February) on 07xxx xxxxxx to tell me what B&Q intend to do to rectify this utter farce. So far it has cost my partner and I 8 hours off work to be present for deliveries, and god only knows how much time in phone calls, emails, and trying to fight our way through the most obstructive AVR phone system known to man.
At this precise moment, I intend to never shop with B&Q again, and would heartily advise anyone else thinking of doing so to go to Dodgy Bob’s DIY Warehowse instead of using B&Q’s “services”.
I hope we can bring this matter to a swift and satisfactory conclusion, and I look forward to receiving your call.
Sincerely
Lyle.
B&Q – Tossers
Posted: Fri 4 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Weirdness 3 Comments »This time, the stuff didn’t even come off the lorry. The worktops were light grey with black flecks, instead of the expected black with grey flecks. You have to wonder at the epic degrees of twuntdom necessary to fuck up an order to this level, don’t you?
The worktops from the last ballsed-up delivery are still in the house too – the arsewipe bureaucrat tossnerds hadn’t even managed to tell the delivery company that they were supposed to be collecting anything.
Snotty letters will be getting written this weekend, I suspect. Copies will be placed on d4d™ as and when they’re written, which pay provide some level of amusement out of the entire farce process.
B&Q – The Tale Continues
Posted: Fri 4 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Weirdness 2 Comments »Over the last month, we’ve had endless hassles with B&Q. The initial order was remarkably simple. Two black(ish) three-meter-length worktops, and two laminate worktop ends. You wouldn’t think it was rocket-science, would you?
In the first order, they sent one blue worktop, two kitchen wall-units (1x1000mm and 1x800mm) and four 500mm cherrywood kitchen doors. You’ll note, the doors weren’t even going to match up with the wall units that we received but hadn’t ordered.
In the second one, they managed to deliver two worktops (and take away most of the problem delivery, except for one of the wall units) but also put in a metal vegetable rack, and something that now escapes me. And the worktops were a very nasty reddy-marble finish. Nowhere even in the vicinity of “black”. They were supposed to deliver “in the afternoon“, which translated to 11.30am.
Today is the third attempt. They’re supposed to be delivering in the afternoon, and give Herself 30 minutes notice so that she can get home from work to check the delivery.
So why have they called at 9.45am to say “we’re at the house – where are you?” ? Something makes me think there’s no fucking chance the delivery’s going to be right this time either. I just hope the blood’s been wiped off the street by the time I get home this evening…
B&Q – Again!
Posted: Wed 26 January, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Letters Leave a comment »The delivery from B&Q yesterday, as it turned out, wasn’t OK. In the least.
Three items delivered – two 3m length worktops, and a metal storage rack of some sort. Only the worktops were some kind of reddy “marble” finish that’s fucking vile, and is nowhere near the black ones we ordered. And the storage rack is something we hadn’t ordered at all.
They did manage to take away the stuff they’d delivered wrong last time though. Well, they took away three of the four bits. Maybe next time they’ll get it right. But currently I’m not overly optimistic that they could find their arses with both hands and a flashlight, let alone manage to deliver an order correctly.
10,000
Posted: Tue 25 January, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, General, Health, Resolutions 1 Comment »Today, Gordon’s talking about pedometers, and how many steps people walk in a day. As it’s something that’s good to do as part of the healthy thing, I thought I’d have a quick count-up of the main part of my walking each day.
Thanks to the B&Q delivery (still cocked up, but less cocked-up than it was) I was able to count my walk to and from work. just for this post (He lies, in a fit of “look what I do for you people” pique) It works out as roughly 2,100 steps, although I’ll be verifying that tonight. So assuming I walk both to and from work (I do most of the time, but occasionally get a lift from Herself) just the walk nets me approximately 4,000ish paces. Not bad considering that the average is only 3,000 per day, and that doesn’t take into account the walking I do around the house and office, at lunchtime, or when we take Hundus for a walk. So I reckon that on a normal day I probably average about 5,500-6,000steps – possibly more, but I doubt I break the 7,000 on average.
What interested me more was my walking speed – those 2,100 paces took me approximately 20 minutes. That’s 105 steps per minute, or 1.75 per second. Fairly fast, I’d say.
B&Q – Revisited
Posted: Tue 25 January, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services Leave a comment »Well, it’ll come as no shocker whatsoever to know that B&Q have the strangest concept of time known anywhere outside BT.
The delivery (and removal of items wrongly delivered last time) was scheduled for an “afternoon” slot. OK, no worries. But why are they now delivering it at 11.30am? Since when did that become “Afternoon”?
B&Q revisited
Posted: Fri 14 January, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Sweary 7 Comments »About two weeks ago, we ordered some items from B&Q’s website – nothing particularly special, two lengths of kitchen worktop and some doors to replace the current ones on the units. Not bank-breaking, about £250 all told.
Because I’m a twunt, it ended up being two orders – one for the doors, one for the worktops. Fair enough, that’s my fault, and I don’t have a problem with them for that part of it.
When all the stuff arrived at B&Q’s branch – all on the same day, I should point out – they decided in their infinite wisdom that the two deliveries should go out via two different carriers. Why, fuck only knows. But that’s how they decided to do it. Ah good – insanity from the start.
The deliveries arrived yesterday and today. The unit doors delivery was done by Parcelforce, and one of the most spectacularly unhelpful and braindead semi-primates known to science. He couldn’t bring both packages to the door, so I had to carry one. The one he carried (bearing in mind it’s wooden doors) was dumped right on the door jamb, and the packaging for the one I was carrying was split. “Not my problem, mate, I just deliver them. If you want to complain you’ll have to call someone. I just deliver ’em.” I think this was a pre-programmed speech, operated by use of the expression “where do I say on your little computer ‘packaging damaged, goods uninspected’?”. But I digress.
The second delivery – supposedly two 3m lengths of worktop, and an end-cap for the worktop – arrived today. Only – well – it’s one worktop. In the wrong colour. It’s also two 1000mm wall units in “cherry”, four cherry-wood doors, and a 400mm door. None of which match. None of which we ordered.
We now have to organise to get all the stuff taken away, and then re-order what we wanted. In short, the entire thing has been about as organised as elephants working in a jelly factory. Fucking farcical. I wonder if Richard Branson is the B in B&Q?