Long wait for John Lewis curtains

I paid £1,283 in respect of an order for made-to-measure curtains from John Lewis for the large French windows in my living room. They were to be fully interlined because we live in a conservation area and cannot have double glazing on the original windows.

Payment was taken in full at the date of the order. Two months later I am still waiting for the curtains.

In addition, I was told today that the chosen material is not even in stock despite it still being advertised online as available. So my curtains have not even been started while I have been waiting all this time.

I have complained to John Lewis customer services online and could paper the house with its profuse apologies along the lines of: “We are sorry you have been left upset.”

In the meantime we have a freezing living room and a soaring heating bill. We have been faithful customers of this retailer for nearly 50 years but are rapidly losing respect for it. TINA JANERING, LONDON

Trusting John Lewis, around the time scheduled for delivery of the curtains, you took the old ones to a charity shop. You had no idea that you would be left without curtains as winter drew in.

It seems the material was supposed to be sourced from another store. This simply had not been done, despite your many attempts to chivvy things along.

After I contacted John Lewis the material was at last obtained and the curtains made up and delivered.

This was two and a half months after you had paid.

A John Lewis spokesman said: “We are extremely sorry for the time it took for Mrs Janering’s new curtains to be made and fitted.

“Providing the best service for our customers is our absolute priority and on this occasion the customer’s experience was not acceptable.”

With prodding from me it paid £300 for goodwill. It has also sent flowers. package is £44 per month. This was much less than the £66 we had been paying before, as we were dropping some elements of the service.

Now we have received a statement from Virgin Media that the new monthly bill would be increased to £47.99.

We considered this too high for what we were getting, so decided to look elsewhere for a cheaper service. We intended to leave Virgin Media.

At the bottom of Virgin’s notification it said: “We hope you want to carry on enjoying all this.

“But if not, don’t worry – you can change or cancel your package at any time before October 31 2017 without paying any cancellation charges.” HM, SOMERSET

You were cross to get notice of a rise so soon after settling on a new deal and asked to cancel the whole service.

You scouted around and found and committed yourselves to another provider. When you called Virgin Media to activate the disconnection it now offered a better deal of £41 a month.

It was too late to change though and you went ahead with the cancellation. Virgin Media had said it would charge £111 for disconnection.

My involvement led to Virgin Media clarifying that the second letter had been sent by mistake.

You would have been exempt from the price increase as you had recently re-contracted.

Now, in a change of tack, Virgin Media said: “We apologise to Mrs M for any confusion caused by the price change letter she received, and we have removed the disconnection charges as a gesture of goodwill.”