Debenhams Direct online shopping disaster
This is my experience of shopping through the website of this major uk (high street and online) department store. I feel that I have been treated badly so please consider this review and do a little research before parting with your hard earned cash.
I ordered a dress from Debenhams Direct and the money flew out of my Visa account in seconds. I was promised a 4 to 5 day delivery so after day 6 with no sign of the goods I started chasing. As there was no contact number, I decided I'd email them.
11 days later I am still e-mailing them and I get various responses. These range from 'thank you for your e-mail which we will respond to in 4 days', to 'the courier company has lost your dress', 'the courier company reported your dress damaged', 'we have no idea where your dress is', 'we have ordered you a replacement', 'your dress is in transit', 'we are an internet service so we cannot call you', 'thank you for your e-mail we will respond in 4 days'.
The best one was 4 days ago when they supplied a telephone number that guess what... did not work! Eventually started e-mailing them a couple of times a day in bold text, asking for a refund as I had to find an alternative dress. I printed all the e-mails out and sent them to Debenhams Managing Director (1 Welbeck Street, London) suggesting they reimburse me my hourly rate for the time I have wasted on this order including finding another dress.
Telephoned their head office on 0207 408 4444 by going through directory enquiries. They ignored my question whether Debenhams Direct is outsourced to people who cannot speak English and therefore are incapable of making a phone call in the interests of customer service. After some fairly blunt talk on my part, they contacted Debenhams Direct and organised a refund (18 days after placing the order) and only because I was not about to take no for an answer.
How stressful? My experience with Debenhams Direct, it is the worst online shopping service I have encountered. Not once did they think to contact me and tell me there was a delay. They seem to think it is OK to leave a customer dangling with no information for 17 days plus... just madness. Don't they have processes in place to deal with lost/damaged goods and contacting their customers? It's not rocket science!
Comments from visitors
Stayed in all day no one turned up to collect. Phoned again "Sorry we will collect tomorrow (Friday) between 8.00am and 6.00pm. They didn't turn up and after seeing other peoples gripes I will tale it back to the local store and (hopefully) get my money back. Seeing other peoples gripes this seems to be the only way.
Asked to make a complaint and they said i would be on the phone for at least 30 minutes trying to get through to the head office complaints team - oh yeah, at my own cost of course!!!
Ordered and arranged delivery of table and chair,s , I made specific times between 12.00h and 16.00h as we where having a decorator in doing some work in hall, at 11.50 he saw a card being put through letter-box and called on my husband who noted it was from the delivery company he ran after the van but they didn't see him, he then phoned me I in turn phoned VENTURA and basically told I was lying there was no-one at home I have contacted Debenhams about this but am waiting on a reply it was only yesterday so I will wait afew days to see what happens
Please someone from Watchdog, trading standards or someone do something about this!!!
i was trying to sort out a problem with an order and had gone through emails, phone calls no one would help so was eventually put through to head office. after explaining the problem to her the phone went dead....where do i go from here? I've been trying to sort this out for 3 days now i'm in tears!!!
My complaint was carefully worded and specific but yet that meant i deserved a preformatted answer that wasn't relative to my complaint.
To compound this there was barely an apology in the email.
Disgruntled of Croydon - 31-Oct-11 20:31





