I clicked for a £1,350 laptop but someone else collected it...
I BOUGHT a laptop from John Lewis, costing £1,349.95.
I ordered it on a computer in the John Lewis store in Oxford Street, London, as they didn’t have it in store, and chose next day delivery to a Little Waitrose. When I went to collect it, I was informed it had already been given away to someone else.
This person had presented the order number and an ID that had to be fake.
I was told to call the police and Citizen’s Advice, who both informed me I should be entitled to a refund.
I wrote to John Lewis, and after a two-and-a-half week investigation (that I was told would be 72 hours only, and during which I was given numerous deadlines for a resolution that it missed again and again), I was informed I would not be given a refund, as John Lewis didn’t see that it had done anything wrong.
A. S., by email.
This is a puzzling case and i am disappointed by John Lewis’s response. We expect ‘click and collect’ to be a secure way of shopping, but this has raised doubts in my mind.
The facts as i understand them are that you bought the laptop on the John Lewis internet site at a John Lewis store and had it delivered to a Waitrose store — which is part of John Lewis.
Yet it seems that a fraudster has managed to take the laptop, and you are left to foot the bill.
John Lewis insists it followed the correct procedure. The person who collected the item had the confirmation email and valid identification.
John Lewis argues that this suggests your email may have been hacked, but i wonder if you were a victim of ‘shoulder surfing’ in the store and someone watched as the order was made.
i can’t help thinking that in the much-criticised world of banking, if someone went into a branch and withdrew your money, the bank would have to accept liability — as long as you hadn’t been frivolously careless.
A John Lewis spokesman says: ‘We take matters like this incredibly seriously and have investigated this as a matter of priority. We have now reported this to Action Fraud and the police and cannot comment further while the investigation is ongoing.’
There is one other avenue you could pursue and that is to try to get the money back via your payment card. i spoke to a banking expert who, like me, feels that John Lewis has taken payment for goods you have not received.
so you could ask your bank to initiate a process known as chargeback.
This would put the onus on John Lewis to prove it had provided the items to you. if it cannot, the bank could reclaim the money on your behalf.
The other option, if you paid by credit card, would be to make a claim under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.
This makes the credit card provider jointly and severally liable if a firm has failed to provide goods for which you have paid. Phone your bank and explain precisely what has happened and ask them to start the process.
having said all of this, i have one further concern: you didn’t provide me with a phone number or respond to my emails. i’m going to assume you have changed your email address fearing your account had been breached. in any case, change all of your internet passwords just in case you have been hacked. MY MOTHER died in March. She lived alone in Wales and I live in Kent. As executor of the will, I needed all her mail redirected to me and paid £46.99 to Royal Mail to cover six months. Two letters were redirected at the end of April, then nothing.
I visited my mother’s house in July and found a mountain of mail in the hallway, some important for the probate process.
I complained to Royal Mail customer services and this instigated a deluge of correspondence and emails from them, none acknowledging they had failed to redirect the mail.
R. R., Kent.
MY Chief concern when i read your letter was that you had been dealt with so insensitively. When will big organisations learn that bereavement is a dreadful and traumatic event?
every time you have to explain that someone close to you has died, it drags those awful feelings to the surface again. Yet Royal Mail’s customer services seem to have shown little consideration or sympathy, repeatedly telling you: ‘We understand and are sincerely sorry for any convenience you have experienced and i would like to thank you for your patience with the matter.’
Those ‘sincere’ assurances begin to wear thin when you read the same cut-and-paste paragraph on four emails!
in your full letter you tell me Royal Mail came up with all sorts of bizarre excuses for failing to fulfil its contract. You had to deal with several departments repeating the complaint in great detail.
A Royal Mail spokesman says: ‘After a full investigation, we have identified errors in our process in this case and these have been addressed and rectified.
‘We also apologise to your reader that she was not dealt with sensitively and with our usual professionalism. We have contacted the customer direct to apologise and she is receiving a full refund and further compensation.’
i have agreed not to reveal the amount of compensation on this occasion. suffice to say i regard it as a substantial enough sum for the distress you have been caused.