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In which my friend gets accused of fraud.
This one looks like it's being sorted out. But it's a story worth telling anyway...
Quite obviously, I live in Finland. I have a very good friend who lives in England, and I like to look after her a bit. Due to the distance, this often takes the form of care packages rather than visits. However, I do often have trouble finding stores which will let me pay from Finland yet deliver to England. Little things like not allowing anything other than "United Kingdom" in the Country field for the Billing address.
My friend, who I'll call J here, dislocated her knee a few weeks ago, so it has only just healed well enough to begin exercising it back into shape. The doctor had recommended using a Wii Fit system, if possible, to speed up the process - so that's what this particular care package was about.
So I found that a well-known high-street consumer-electronics chain (C) had a reasonable bundle deal and would take payment from Finland. Good so far. They would even allow a normal-price delivery date of the coming Monday, since everything was in stock. Splendid. Place the order.
Oh, so they have to run it through the extra checks... but they'll send a confirmation mail if they can resolve it without any more input from me. Good thing too since I've just been through the Verified By Visa mill. (My bank uses a list of one-time passcodes for authentication, so it's about as secure as you can get.) Confirmation mail arrives, says it's still on for Monday delivery. Great.
I tell J to stay home for Monday, rather than going out to visit her mum and gran as she often does. But Monday passes, and no delivery.
Strike one.
I call that evening - their lines are open later than the delivery window - and ask where it is. The catch-all service number, BTW, is 0870 and therefore not callable from a foreign phone - but I eventually get SkypeOut to connect. The calling rate for 0870 from Skype is pretty damn high, too.
Strike two. http://saynoto0870.co.uk - which didn't help this time because they have *so* many stores and cryptically named departments.
Hi, what's the postcode on the order? I give the delivery address postcode, as being British it will make more sense to the computer. No, actually we can't look it up that way, do you have the billing address's postcode? Fine, it's 00xxx Helsinki.
Perhaps I'd better give you the order number instead. Okay, that worked.
Apparently the order was never sent to the warehouse. Yes, even though I got a confirmation mail with a delivery code on it. Oh, and we're out of stock now, but we have more coming tomorrow - we'll get someone to call you sometime tomorrow and arrange another delivery date. Yes, it's okay for us to call you, even though your number is international. Well, okay.
Tomorrow passes, no phone call. Strike three.
I call again that evening. Hi, what's the postcode? Let me just give you the order number straight away.
Oh dear, we see what's gone wrong here - we can arrange a delivery date for you right now. In fact, we can deliver it on Friday for you. Right, thanks.
Friday comes, so does the package. Yay, all is right with the world.
Erm, nope. This afternoon, J gets a phone call from C. Apparently, C believes that J received *two* instances of the order, and demands to know why only one of them was paid for. And threatens J with legal action.
Strike four. (We're obviously playing Finnish rules, they're a little strange.)
J is upset, tells me, insists that only one arrived. I promise to clear it up - so back to the phones.
Now, to their credit, C's service agents seem to be competent enough. They read the order notes and figure out what's going on, without me having to explain too much. They even have authority to Get Things Done, or at least to delegate to someone who has authority in a particular field.
In this case, it is determined - by liason with the courier P - that the "missing" delivery was delivered a week and a day after the actual delivery, to the house *beside* J's, and was signed for by somebody named D (or at least claiming to be). Given that J was probably out of the house on that particular Saturday, one can see why. But at least one of the neighbours is not reliable - and I suspect that's the one the delivery went to. Not to mention that this re-delivery was not arranged with either of us. Which is why the first J knew about it was C's nasty phone call.
So now D is holding several hundred quid's worth of *extremely* eBay-able stuff that should never have been dispatched in the first place, and which nobody has paid for. Needless to say, C is really displeased about this, but has determined that it's not our fault and it's now their cue to trace D. And they'll call me back, instead of having me on hold on 0870, when they've figured it out for certain.
Or at least they *say* they'll call me back. I hope they actually do so.
So let's review the Fail:
If/when I get the callback, I think I will have to "respectfully suggest" that the above failures are addressed to prevent repetition.
Quite obviously, I live in Finland. I have a very good friend who lives in England, and I like to look after her a bit. Due to the distance, this often takes the form of care packages rather than visits. However, I do often have trouble finding stores which will let me pay from Finland yet deliver to England. Little things like not allowing anything other than "United Kingdom" in the Country field for the Billing address.
My friend, who I'll call J here, dislocated her knee a few weeks ago, so it has only just healed well enough to begin exercising it back into shape. The doctor had recommended using a Wii Fit system, if possible, to speed up the process - so that's what this particular care package was about.
So I found that a well-known high-street consumer-electronics chain (C) had a reasonable bundle deal and would take payment from Finland. Good so far. They would even allow a normal-price delivery date of the coming Monday, since everything was in stock. Splendid. Place the order.
Oh, so they have to run it through the extra checks... but they'll send a confirmation mail if they can resolve it without any more input from me. Good thing too since I've just been through the Verified By Visa mill. (My bank uses a list of one-time passcodes for authentication, so it's about as secure as you can get.) Confirmation mail arrives, says it's still on for Monday delivery. Great.
I tell J to stay home for Monday, rather than going out to visit her mum and gran as she often does. But Monday passes, and no delivery.
Strike one.
I call that evening - their lines are open later than the delivery window - and ask where it is. The catch-all service number, BTW, is 0870 and therefore not callable from a foreign phone - but I eventually get SkypeOut to connect. The calling rate for 0870 from Skype is pretty damn high, too.
Strike two. http://saynoto0870.co.uk - which didn't help this time because they have *so* many stores and cryptically named departments.
Hi, what's the postcode on the order? I give the delivery address postcode, as being British it will make more sense to the computer. No, actually we can't look it up that way, do you have the billing address's postcode? Fine, it's 00xxx Helsinki.
Perhaps I'd better give you the order number instead. Okay, that worked.Apparently the order was never sent to the warehouse. Yes, even though I got a confirmation mail with a delivery code on it. Oh, and we're out of stock now, but we have more coming tomorrow - we'll get someone to call you sometime tomorrow and arrange another delivery date. Yes, it's okay for us to call you, even though your number is international. Well, okay.
Tomorrow passes, no phone call. Strike three.
I call again that evening. Hi, what's the postcode? Let me just give you the order number straight away.
Oh dear, we see what's gone wrong here - we can arrange a delivery date for you right now. In fact, we can deliver it on Friday for you. Right, thanks.Friday comes, so does the package. Yay, all is right with the world.
Erm, nope. This afternoon, J gets a phone call from C. Apparently, C believes that J received *two* instances of the order, and demands to know why only one of them was paid for. And threatens J with legal action.
Strike four. (We're obviously playing Finnish rules, they're a little strange.)
J is upset, tells me, insists that only one arrived. I promise to clear it up - so back to the phones.
Now, to their credit, C's service agents seem to be competent enough. They read the order notes and figure out what's going on, without me having to explain too much. They even have authority to Get Things Done, or at least to delegate to someone who has authority in a particular field.
In this case, it is determined - by liason with the courier P - that the "missing" delivery was delivered a week and a day after the actual delivery, to the house *beside* J's, and was signed for by somebody named D (or at least claiming to be). Given that J was probably out of the house on that particular Saturday, one can see why. But at least one of the neighbours is not reliable - and I suspect that's the one the delivery went to. Not to mention that this re-delivery was not arranged with either of us. Which is why the first J knew about it was C's nasty phone call.
So now D is holding several hundred quid's worth of *extremely* eBay-able stuff that should never have been dispatched in the first place, and which nobody has paid for. Needless to say, C is really displeased about this, but has determined that it's not our fault and it's now their cue to trace D. And they'll call me back, instead of having me on hold on 0870, when they've figured it out for certain.
Or at least they *say* they'll call me back. I hope they actually do so.
So let's review the Fail:
- "System failure" prevents dispatch but not confirmation mail.
- Unable to cope with postcode searches involving foreign billing addresses but domestic delivery.
- Promised callback did not materialise.
- Duplicate and superfluous re-delivery.
- Extra re-delivery's date is not negotiated or even notified to customer.
- Accuses customer of fraud without checking the facts.
- Threatens legal action without double-checking the facts.
If/when I get the callback, I think I will have to "respectfully suggest" that the above failures are addressed to prevent repetition.
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