{"id":337,"date":"2008-12-15T18:43:05","date_gmt":"2008-12-15T18:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=337"},"modified":"2009-05-17T15:54:41","modified_gmt":"2009-05-17T15:54:41","slug":"a-letter-to-littlewoods-direct-or-why-youve-got-to-read-the-small-print","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=337","title":{"rendered":"A letter to Littlewoods Direct. Or why you’ve got to read the small print"},"content":{"rendered":"

People who follow my tweets<\/a> may have already heard my moaning about Littlewoods on Friday, but I’m still hacked off about it enough to post about it here too. <\/p>\n

I have written them a letter (in the perhaps misguided belief that paper letters get more attention than emails). The contents are posted below to share my ranting and whining more widely. <\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome… am I being too ranty and unreasonable? How much responsibility do we consumers have for reading small-print? <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dear Sir \/ Madam,<\/p>\n

Last week, I received a gift voucher for Littlewoods Direct. It promised \u00c2\u00a330 off for new customers making an order of \u00c2\u00a360 or more. I needed to get some Christmas presents, so thought I’d give you a try. At first, all seemed well – I signed up, made the order, entered the voucher code and got what I thought was a good price for the presents I was buying. <\/p>\n

Things started to go wrong when you delivered them. <\/p>\n

We were out when the delivery arrived, so your driver helpfully left them in our front garden. On a day of heavy rain. The boxes were pretty much destroyed – the cardboard being so sodden that you poked your fingers through it if you weren’t careful, and all the paperwork that came with it had turned into a papier-mache-style mush. <\/p>\n

I dug out your customer services number, and rang to get this sorted. <\/p>\n

A customer services person arranged for new items to be delivered, and a date for the damaged ones to be collected. They apologised, and sounded very polite and helpful. I thought this was all resolved, and hung up a happy customer (if a little unimpressed with your drivers). <\/p>\n

Then I got the email confirming the new delivery. You had charged me another \u00c2\u00a33.95 for delivery – which seemed unreasonable considering it was your fault that I needed another delivery in the first place.<\/p>\n

And you hadn’t included the \u00c2\u00a330 off voucher. So even after I claim back the money you charged my credit card for the original order (which you still refuse to let me do until you get around to collecting the items on Friday) I was being asked to pay an extra \u00c2\u00a334 because your drivers screwed up.<\/p>\n

I phoned again, assuming this was an oversight.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t – it was intentional.<\/p>\n

I spoke to a different person this time, who explained that I wasn’t actually elegible for the voucher code. When I pointed out that I was elegible for the voucher the first time I put the order through, he said I hadn’t been, and that even my first use of the voucher would have “been bounced” eventually.<\/p>\n

I learnt that your system is set up so that it lets all voucher codes through at the point of sale, and that transactions where vouchers are used are manually verified after the sale has completed. Any transactions where a voucher was used by a customer not entitled to use it are then charged the cost of the voucher. <\/p>\n

So, to be clear, at the point of sale, you:<\/p>\n