Industry: Retail
Annoyed By: Elizabeth and Victoria of Express Furniture Caroline Street, Wigan
After turning up at 2 o'clock (despite being told that my husband would be out shortly after 2 to collect a child from school), the delivery men decided that a 15ft by 20ft room with a single bed and a small bedside table, was not quite big enough to assemble a 5ft wide wardrobe, which had been described as fully assembled on the website.
Having then been ordered about by the spatially aware delivery men to move this and that, whilst still on a tight schedule to pick up our school child, he was then told we would have to have the wardrobe re-delivered another day, when we had re-arranged our house to allow for the flat packed wardrobe to be taken upstairs and through a bedroom door. We were not told an estimated date for the next arrival, so I decided to ring up the store on Caroline Street, Wigan to find out when they were expecting to re deliver.
The phone was answered by a woman, who, once I had given my name, decided it would be customer friendly to greet me with a motor mouth reception of pre empted excuses for why it would be impossible to deliver our fully assembled, flat packed furniture today.
It was made clear to me that I had been rather stupid in thinking that the wardrobe which had been described as fully assembled would actually turn up, fully assembled, and I was told to "use some common sense". At this point I would like to make it clear that we have previously ordered a fully assembled item from this company, and it did arrive fully assembled.
Carrying on from this first insult, it was obvious that our punctual delivery men had already rang this woman to complain about their difficult route of up the stairs and through the door, because she nicely asked me, and I quote, "How the HELL" I expected these men to get our flat packed furniture past a book shelf which was outside the room. Strangely enough, I didn't take kindly to the way she had addressed the issue and asked her, with a tone of shock, to repeat what she had just said, to which she excused herself by saying "well I didn't swear." I explained that I had deemed it an unsuitable way of dealing with the situation as I would not use that language to anyone either inside or outside of my profession (teacher), to which she sarcastically replied "Well that explains it all, doesn't it?"
At this point I had put up with enough and asked to speak to the manager, she replied "HE is not around". I said that I was aware that managers could always be contacted in case of emergencies and that I would imagine he would see it as an emergency that he was about to lose £700 from a regular customer. Eventually the conversation came to an end and the phone was put down.
Within a minute of the phone being put down, it was ringing again and this time a very similar accent and a very similar voice was on the other end telling me, firstly "this is Liz again" and then that I was now speaking to the manager. Obviously, I had my doubts of this new woman being anyone other than the same woman I had just been speaking to since her name was also Liz, so I asked to speak to the other woman again, we then went through a childish game of what sounded like her covering the phone with her hand while Vicky, 'the other person' muffled out a "hello". When questioned about her identity and being told that I didn't believe I was speaking to anyone new, she repeatedly denied that she was who I had just been speaking to, to which I asked "so is your name Liz Again?" There was an eery silence, and after this she didn't have much to say other than keep on denying that I had already spoken to her, out of which an obvious question arose, if she was actually the manageress why had I been told before that HE was out when I had asked to speak to the manager?
At the end of this conversation I was told that I had been given a full refund, and I was warned twice to never enter their store again, clearly this company do not take kindly to any complaints about bad customer service.
Overall this company offered terrible customer service from delivery men to an impolite sales woman, or sales women, you decide! As a paying customer I was shown no respect whatsoever.
This company will NEVER get my service again.
