Shambles
I have a confession to make. My family and friends might disagree, but I am not the most patient man in the world. Remarkable in some ways, since I spend a lot of my life in a nation famed for being laid back.
At the beginning of last week, I decided that most of my Christmas shopping would be done on line. Mistake. I’m looking out of my window at a snow-free environment; temperatures have been above freezing for close on a week now, and everything is back to normal. For all that both DHL and ParcelForce have effectively declared Scotland a no-go area. Fine, they must have major backlogs to clear. However they have also declared themselves no-go areas when it comes to customer information. You can get through to a depot, but it’s bloody difficult, and when you do, it isn’t worth it, as they don’t even know where your consignment is within their warehouse, far less can they tell you when you might receive it . . . or even whether.
But it’s not the carriers alone. My phone rang a few days ago; I picked it up and an automated voice told me that ‘Due to the adverse weather, your TESCO wine order has been delayed.’ Then the line went dead, and I’ve heard nothing since. Sorry Mr T, but to me customer service involves real people, not computers. The people at DHL etc, might not be able to help, but at least they are invariably sympathetic.
There’s worse. Last night I had an email from Marks and f*cking Spencer about another order; it said that home delivery would not longer be possible, but that I could log on to my account and specify store collection. I tried; the system wouldn’t let me. I decided on their second option, cancellation: that wasn’t possible either. In fact their system wouldn’t let me alter the order in any way.
This morning they sent me another email, contradicting the first. It told me that I will receive my purchases after all, in two parts, by December 24 (estimate). So now I’m one of thousands of M&S customers who don’t know where they stand, and I’m not happy. Twiggy herself could turn up on my doorstep to apologise and I wouldn’t let her in, far less offer her coffee and biscuits. They could send Jamie Redknapp, another front of house star, (Isn’t that guy lucky that he has his mother’s looks, not his dad’s?) and I’d tell him to piss off back to Thomas Cook, or Sky TV, or wherever. Peter Kay? I’d nut him.
This is supposed to be the season to be f*cking jolly. Not around here it ain’t.
Quintin Jardine's blog 
You too?!! M&FS indeed. We have a war story too!! We ordered 11 items online. They acknowledged that 11 items had been ordered. The proceeded to tell us our eight items would be dispatched in so many days. When they revised this and delayed delivery twice and I tried to cancel I couldn’t ‘cos the order was already in the system and no amount of coaxing, cajoling, demanding or otherwise could change this. All this time no explanation of the missing items until pressed!! Still, managed to weedle GB25 out of them in lieu of inconvenience, by way of scant consolation. We used to be huge M&S fans when we lived in UK and since and looked forward avidly to visiting their HK store again when we next visit from Oz in March but the sparkle has faded