Morrisons - wrongly accused of theft and no apology after 3 months!

abbyfabulous

Hiya all, would someone be able to help me - I need to know who to complain to. My tale is below:

Short story (long version underneath - didn't want to bore ppl!!): 11/07/10 Bought £20 of petrol, paid in kiosk at till; police visited 1 hour later telling me I'd been accused by morrisons of theft of £10 of fuel - luckily still had receipt, police happy and case closed. Wrote a long letter to Morrisons customer service saying I wanted written explanation and apology. I've had to call them 5 times and finally had a verbal apology from head office representative and told that store manager would write to me - I gave them a deadline of 14 days to put it in writing!

It's now 14 days and no written apology. I've waited 14 weeks so far for an explanation and apology for what I consider to be a real mistake on their part. I've had to call 5 times for a verbal apology and now I'm livid that they haven't had the decency to write. Surely it shouldn't be this hard!!!!

Who can I write to now to say what a bad experience I've had over all with customer service and to get some action. I've actually got all the dates of calls and who I spoke too and what I was told and am absolutely fed up of calling them!! My grievance now isn't just with the petrol station and store manager, it's now with customer services too!!!

Store was Cardiff by the way

Thank you for any advice!!

AbFab xx




Long story:

11/07/10 - my husband put petrol in our car while I went into the kiosk to buy a drink and pay for both - paid £21.50ish. We went home, 2 hours later there was a police van outside our drive and two policemen inspecting my car who then knocked on my door. They said they'd been given my license plate number as the owner had stolen £10 worth of fuel, the female dirver looking around the kiosk before leaving and driving away without paying. I showed them my receipt and they were happy enough and called the police station to say it was an error and gave me a reference number and a business card (which I still have with the receipt).

So I was pretty annoyed at being accused and wrote a letter to customer services address on the website which I sent on the 12/07/10 as I wanted to know why they accuse innocent people of crimes. It was so embarassing being questioned by the police on my drive, kids were watching and curtains twitching!! I understand that mistakes happen and I just wanted an apology and an explanation and I put that in the letter.

06/09/10 - I called Morrisons customer services as I'd had no reply - was told they'd chase it up

13/09/10 - I called again - given the name of person dealing with my complaint and told he'd call me back (he didn't)

23/09/10 - I called again - was told that the general manager of the store had said that the matter was resolved and he'd contacted me and 'closed the complaint' or something and that a customer service manager would call me back (they didn't)

25/09/10 - I called again - asked to speak to a manager but no manager available. Told that they'd escalate my complaint and forward it back to store manager and area manager as they'd sent complaint to store manager alone twice and he'd 'closed the complaint' twice.

06/10/10 - I called again, a bit angrier now and eventually had a verbal apology from customer service representative and was told a written apology from the store manager was on the way. I told them that they had a deadline of 14 days or I'd take it further.....................





EDIT - having read several comments I replied later - but here's my repsonse

OH MY GOD - I can't believe what some people have said!! Someone saying I should apologise to them!! For What!!

I don't want money or anything like that - I want a written apology saying sorry X happened, it happened because of Y and we're doing Z to hopefully prevent it happening again. I don't want anyone sacked, I don't want compo, I want the people in charge of the store to step up and admit fault. Sadly we're in a culture where it's all 'pass the buck' and I wanted someone responsible to apologise (i.e store manager who is responsible for the petrol station)

I had an apology off a representative in North England who had nothing to do with the incident. I want the store manager to step up and say sorry!!

I haven't been pondering this from month and my life is not so sad that I've been stressing over it. I'm just angry that they haven't bothered to apologise to me and have repeated ignored the matter. I have no intention of taking anything further, where the heck could it go. I was mearly hoping for someone to say - try contacting such and such a department but massive slurs on my character.

Thank you to the people who have written constructive comments and to the rest - think before you speak!! People have feelings

WhiteHorse

Write to them (Recorded Delivery of course), stating that their response has been unsatisfactory. You could point out that the incident is now in the public domain and that they are receiving a great deal of bad publicity (readership of MSE is in the millions). Perhaps mentioning that you will be contacting the local paper ("innocent customers ordeal at hands of bungling staff and uncaring store"), will also help them focus.

Interesting that they won't put anything in writing. They know they are on thin ice.

jenhug

so you want a letter of apology? you could write to head office and tell them whats happened, though i don't know how it means any more whether its verbal or on paper, although i'm assuming you are expecting vouchers or something as compensation?

Velcro_Hotdog

Will a written appology turn back time and make it never happen? Someone made a mistake, you were not charged with any offence. Why not just let it go and stop wasting peoples time?

inspace

Yep dont mean to be rude but get over it - life must be very dull if thats all you have to worry about. If it happened to me I would just laugh and move on.:D

Sooler

This been going on for 3 months !!!! Let it go - sheeeesh!!!!
I doubt you were even 'accused' - suspected more like. So you didn't do it. There you go.

Freddie_Snowbits

What apology do you want? Do you want all the staff in the petrol station to be sacked because of their incompetance? Will that avenge your feelings.

No. God knows I have been stopped by the old police more than once driving my car, we have had a chat about ahwt has happened and both got on with our days. All the police did was to go round and ivestigate an alleged case of petrol theft, found you were innocent and left it at that. B all and end all. Apart from a short period of time, you have not lost anything have you.

Sorry, I cannot be of sympathy to your feelings, but today the sun is out and I am going to sit outside the D&D later.

Norant

Hello.

I see that you have stated that you have had a verbal apology from Morrisons head office,they could write that very same aplogy...would that really make any difference.

I would have been happier to find out that the allegations had turned out to be false,good luck anyway.

pjcox2005

Got to admit I'm with the rest, why can people in general no longer appear to accept that mistakes happen and unless serious should be treated exactly as that with people getting on with their lives.

A verbal apology has been made for the situation, which at the end of the day only impacted you by wasting 2 mins of your time.

pjcox2005

WhiteHorse wrote: »

Write to them (Recorded Delivery of course), stating that their response has been unsatisfactory. You could point out that the incident is now in the public domain and that they are receiving a great deal of bad publicity (readership of MSE is in the millions). Perhaps mentioning that you will be contacting the local paper ("innocent customers ordeal at hands of bungling staff and uncaring store"), will also help them focus.

Interesting that they won't put anything in writing. They know they are on thin ice.

Sorry whitehorse but I've also got to pick this up. 'They know they are on thin ice', is it really that thin. If they put it in writing would anything actually happen? I doubt we are going to get the lawsuit of the century from this incident.

tbw

Its all very well telling the OP to 'get over it' - she probably would have forgotten about the incident weeks ago if Morrisons had take the incident seriously instead of just shrugging their shoulders and ignoring a customer who has been upset through no fault at all of their own.

When it originally happened, the store manager should have accepted that, for whatever reason, his staff had got their facts wrong and made an allegation which caused embarassment to a customer. And yes, I can quite see that a police car outside, coppers on the door step and a bit of an excited confrontation as the OP probably got a bit agitated when accused of theft, twitching curtains and neighbours thinking the worst, would be an uncomfortable and embarassing situation.

If the manager had had the sense to phone her immediately to apologise - and send someone round with a nice big bunch or Morrisons flowers - the OP would have been OK with it all. Now, after she has been ignored by Morrisons so many times and the manager has lied about having spoken to her (unless of course she wasn't the only woman accused of stealing and he's actually rung a different customer!) the situation and her annoyance have all festered and got blown up out of all proportion.

Mistakes do happen, thats life, but the trick to good CS work is to accept reponsibility for the mistake, apologise (I do like to see management grovel!) and make some small suitable gesture (flowers , chocolates or a bottle of wine perhaps). Morrisons need to get their CS act together.