Since John Lewis opened their shop in Cardiff a few years ago, I’ve been in love with them… loved the ambience of shopping there, loved their little baby feeding area, loved their brand and Christmas TV ads… And I even did my pregnancy yoga classes in their community room last time around!
But they let me down this year, and I wanted to share it as they’re still mis-selling to customers which I can’t believe (spoiler alert… It’s only over a £40 bag but it’s the principle!)
- For Christmas, I wanted to get the OH a new toiletry bag as his was battered!
- Shopped around and decided on Ted Baker…
- Lots of different stores (online) had different ones, and prices were quite similar… But most were wipe-clean fabric whereas John Lewis had one for a similar price (£40) that was made of leather so I plumped for that one
- Christmas Eve when it came to unwrapping it and wrapping it, imagine my disappointment that it wasn’t actually made of leather!
- As I’d bought him a few things to go in it, I decided to give it to him anyway… I didn’t have time to sort anything else out!
- He loved it and started using it right away, transferring all this toiletries into it
- I wanted to let John Lewis about it, as a huge fan I wasn’t overly annoyed but they needed to update their website and they might want to offer me a voucher to thank me for letting them know
- I did this, but they took a month to reply and confirm via the supplier that it wasn’t leather
- They offered me £10 as a gesture of goodwill
- But by this point I was a bit annoyed… They still hadn’t updated their website, so they were still misleading customers and when I looked into it a bit more I realised I could take them to court through the Sale of Goods act for mis-selling
- IKEA actually got done for this around the same time for selling sofas that they were claiming to be leather that weren’t leather!
- Since then there was a bit more back and forth with them to try and get more than £10 out of them as they weren’t taking it seriously (website still wrong) and I was saving them a fortune in legal fees/bad publicity
- Alas, last week I settled for £15 as I don’t have the time or energy to argue any more…
So the last screenshot I took a few weeks ago (so 4 months later) and it clearly says ‘leather’ twice…
Now checking it today I can see they’ve changed the first sentence to ‘leather look’ but they still have a misleading sentence ‘mature-looking black leather’…. IT’S NOT LEATHER!!!
So I know this might read a bit ‘first world problems’ and I know we have far bigger things to worry about… But I needed to get it off my chest!
I think it’s been pretty poor for a company that has such strong brand and customer service values and ‘never knowingly undersold’. The most frustrating thing about it all has been how long it’s taking them to update the website… Working in marketing and being a blogger, I know it’s a 2 minute job and surely they’d prioritise inaccurate info?!
Rant over. Thanks for reading.
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