8th September, take M&S clothes back to participating stores and get a £5 voucher!

St_Ivo

My wife has been using this scheme for some time as she often donates unwanted M&S items to our local Oxfam shop. She receives one £5 voucher per visit and uses it in the same month. Just today she encountered a snag which seems to me to go against the spirit of the scheme and also against the well understood trading ethos of M&S.

Two weeks ago she purchased several items for a total of £56.xx and paid £51.xx by using the Oxfam voucher. Unfortunately, she needed to return one item, priced at £12.00, as it just didn't suit her. At the returns desk they wanted to refund just £10.87 as the till had apportioned the £5 discount across all items purchased even though the total spend on that transaction was still over the £35 threshold.

We queried this with the assistant who was very robust in insisting that the till was right! "Computer says NO" sprang to mind. Despite our equally robust insistance that this was neither right nor fair, she was not going to be moved. We asked her to call the store manager to discuss it with us in the hope that this would avoid a lengthy escalation through various levels of manager. That didn't quite work but we settled for a lower manager who at least understood the apparent unfairness of their 'new' it seems till system.

He found it necessary to call his boss who of course fairly quickly said he should refund the full £12. He thought that would be the end of it and was a bit takenaback when I asked how he would be reviewing their procedure to ensure this didn't happen again to us or indeed, any other shopper. The original assistant then offered "It is queried by lots of customers but we just say no!" The manager said he will discuss with his Admin Manager and other stores to see what they do.

Although there wasn't a lot of money at stake I felt there was a point of principle involved. Am I just getting even tighter in my old age or did M & S get it wrong? Has anyone else fallen foul of this?

bcl999

Not this one but I have had a similar experience with one of their own "£10 off £100 spend" vouchers which they apportioned to a returned item even though the spend was still over £100 after the return had been deducted. They gave the same reason i.e. "the till/computer system can't be wrong". I had to send an e-mail complaint to HO get it sorted out.

I've also been refused my delivery charge refund ( as per DSR) in-store when returning an entire on-line order. It has happened several times. (I prefer to return in-store and know that they have received it and I have had my refund rather than use the post return option.) If you then e-mail them, they refund the charge but I wonder how many people don't bother to follow up? I've brought it to the attention of [EMAIL="Chairman@marksandspencer.com"]Chairman@marksandspencer.com[/EMAIL] each time it has happened but nothing has been done about it.