John Lewis - surprised at such bad customer service

frustratedexjlemployee

This post highlights a couple of things that have gone horribly wrong with JL over the past few years and is why I've signed up here after a long time lurking.

broughton777 wrote: »

I bought a Dell Laptop from them in Jan 2012 - it stopped working in May 2012. There was no power at all. I called them and they said that would send out someone to collect it so I didn't need to take it into the store for repair - all sounded good and what I expected by paying above the premium for the laptop.

Was it the tech support helpline, or some other number you called? This will be important for the following:

The guy pitched up and tried to turn on the computer - which of course did not happen BECAUSE IT WAS BROKEN! He then said that would not take it away and that I had to call again and get it taken into a store!

It sounds like the person who you spoke to on the phone doesn't know how to use the tech support system. There's a convoluted series of screens that crop up when you want to send out an engineer. The problem is that the engineers are external contractors and seem to take a perverse glee in doing only what they have been asked to in the most awkward ways.

If the instruction was to go out and look at a faulty laptop, or something similar, that is all they would do even if the standard procedure is to take it away.

The engineers don't care if it makes JL look bad because they get paid no matter what. The person at the call centre should have known this, but if it was the normal helpline, not tech support, then they may have had to pass the request on to somebody else and lost something in translation.

So 4 days without a laptop wasted. I called their tech support who said that I could take it into store and they would issue me with a replacement while mine was being repaired

A JL branch may have five or six loan laptops, but other people request them too, and at this time of year, with kids finishing up school, the parents deem now the ideal time to bring in laptops that have had a niggling problem for the past six months, just to make sure it's being sent away really close to deadlines (and without backing up any data, of course).

What the call centre SHOULD have done is called your local branch and asked them if they had any spare.

so I went.

What day? if it was last friday, I can understand why your laptop still hasn't left the building.

When I arrived I told the tech support guy that I had discussed about a replacement with the tech support team, he said that none were available and then wrote on my form that I had not requested one.

Gotta stop you there. he did not "write" it on your form. It's the default option on a drop down box. You can choose "loan not requested," "requested" "requested but not available" and a couple of others I forget. The important thing is the box does nothing. Nobody reviews it, it won't place you in a queue because loan machines are booked out on a totally different system.

I called up tech support one week later to see the status of my repair and when I was going to get it back and was told that it had not even left John Lewis Oxford Street yet!!!!!!!

Like I said, if it was this week, then the long bank holiday is to blame. My branch always had goods picked up for repair on a tuesday. If someone brought something in on a wednesday, it'd be picked up tuesday.

If there's a tuesday bank holiday, the couriers will skip it and do the next one.

Also, if someone brought something in on a friday, depending on the manufacturer, it wouldn't go until the tuesday after. The reason is that some manufacturers (I don't recall the procedure with Dell) require you to jump through a number of hoops before they will authorise an engineer to look at them, and they dont work weekends or bank holidays, and they clock off early on fridays, so you can't get anything booked in until monday if you're lucky.

This has now taken 2 weeks to get no where, it feels like I have been passed from incompetent pillar to incompetent post and I am very disappointed in the whole service by John Lewis and their approach to my situation, they do not seem to care!

There are two big reasons for this.

JL saw fit to close the in-store call centres to save costs (and sadly, it's customer attitude that necessitated cost cutting) and centralised them in hamilton, exeter and didsbury.

Back when we had internal call centres, if there were any queries like yours, if the person didn't know the answer and couldn't get through to anybody on the internal phones (we had three phones, and twelve members of staff. Everyone was usually with a customer) they could run down and ask us. They could have looked to see if there were any loan machines and put one to the side for you.

The central centres can't do this, and unfortunately assume too much because they've never set foot in a branch and seen what we actually do/did.

The thing about staff not caring isn't true from an in-branch perspective, because I know that the guys in branch hate it when stuff goes wrong. It's infuriating when the call centres put us in that situation, but sometimes there's nothing they CAN do. They can't teleport goods out of the branch, or pull a loan machine out of thin air, and giving a grovelling apology for something that isn't your fault is just going to sound false.

The conflict is that the call centres aren't JL staff. Not really. The biggest motivator for the in-store staff is the bonus. That's a share of the profits, and the market is squeezing profits continually, so the store staff are trying to hold onto it by making customers happy, and by stopping needless expenditure. It's what motivates them to do their best, and when you understand the "cycle" it really does make you think. However, any "goodwill" payment is coming out of their personal pocket.

The call centre staff aren't really JL, and they don't get the bonus. they don't care if the company isn't making money, or if customers are getting !!!!ed off and going elsewhere because they don't see any difference in their paypacket.

So when the call centre !!!!s up, and the branch has to sort it out, it breeds resentment because I would be giving you MY money to say sorry, when it was THEIR fault and they're not seeing any punishment.

And you could ask why your laptop wasn't booked in sooner if you brought it in on a friday morning, and that's because they just don't have time. You might have two or three (possibly four) aftersales guys in a branch. The majority will be customer facing, with one in the back working through a mound of returned goods, most of which are frivolous returns emblazoned with outright lies from customers who can't grasp that they don't need to invent a fault to return something.

They don't have the time to do the admin stuff as well, when they're trying to keep their head above a rising tide of unwanted gadgets, and suffer through torrents of abuse.

There used to be admin staff on the teams, and a much larger department, but they were made redundant and it shows, when they have to drag a teenager on £6.50 an hour off the shop floor to cover their job (which they get about £8ph for) so they can actually get the admin finished, which of course then creates threads on here where people moan that they didn't get served fast enough, or that staff were "just talking," (usually means they were trying to work out how to sort out a collossal screw up, but it's inconceivable that two people may need to collaborate to do their job, and it must all be socialising).

My advice to all of you is to avoid the call centres, because stuff like this happens. Ask to speak to somebody in your branch, and they will try to put you through. If they refuse, then they are failing at their job.

The people in the shop aren't trained (Hah, as if we ever got training. that was one of the first things to be cut) but they do try, because mistakes cos them money out of their own pocket, and anybody who has been there longer than a year will bust their balls to get your problem sorted out and get you sent away happy.

I'm sorry to say that the call centre staff don't have the knowledge, motivation or skills to do JL proud. Before I left (the pay was !!!!!), I would spend most of my day trying to fix ONE screw up from a call centre person. The call centre saw the customer for maybe ten minutes. I would be chasing up stock, and writing up reports for five hours, not to mention endless phonecalls to smooth things over.

I know this post turned out a bit too long, but it's because it's frustrating as hell to see that the call centres are still getting it wrong, and even more frustrating to see that it reflects badly on a lot of my friends who have done nothing wrong and are worried for their jobs, and are damn good at them to lose customers and possibly end up out of pocket because of such a tiny, stupid error that went too far.

broughton777

Well - John Lewis did finally get my computer fixed. It was a very frustrating month but I guess the organisation behind any huge company is enormous, and they did send the computer back to me fixed and working.

In reply to the post above which is helpful - it was always the tech support helpline I dealt with. No-one would take ownership of my problem, but finally a guy gave me his name and promised to call back on Monday, which he did and he sorted it. So it probably depends who you get through to by luck.

In reply to Georgiesmum - I also had had no problems before with exemplary service and they did sort this eventually and when you boil down the working days excluding the long bank holiday, they probably did o.k. They did always try to help, and I was getting very impatient.

gregg1

In reply to frustratedxjlemployee - that info is all very well but the bottom line is that the op paid a lot of money for a product which broke down after a very short period of time. Op should absolutely not have been put through that fiasco regardless of in house politics etc. i also take exception to the comment that it was "customer attitude" which resulted in jl closing call centres. I am not surprised if customers become agitated if they receive this sort of treatment, it works both ways and the bottom line is this. No customers, no business, so start looking after your customers properly JL!

bazster

Sorry, just noticed the date of the original post.

frustratedexjlemployee

gregg1 wrote: »

i also take exception to the comment that it was "customer attitude" which resulted in jl closing call centres. I am not surprised if customers become agitated if they receive this sort of treatment, it works both ways and the bottom line is this. No customers, no business, so start looking after your customers properly JL!

By customer attitude, I mean that they want things cheaper than websites, while receiving better customer service than the web, and being able to see the goods.

To achieve that, costs have to be cut somewhere. That sadly meant the loss of the internal call centres amongst other things and as a result, yes, customer service has suffered, because they've hired people with no technical knowledge to work in tech support.

I remember a man who had spent ages on the phone to tech support because his wifi wasn't working. They concluded it must be faulty and suggested he came into the branch for a refund.

He was referred to me (Jl wouldn't employ me as tech support, or pay me tech support wages, but everybody came to me in a panic when they didn't know anything...which has absolutely nothing to do with why I quit, honest :rotfl:) and in approximately a minute, I went into device manager and enabled the wifi adaptor, which he had somehow disabled.

Why nobody thought to check device manager I'll never know. He left happy, but it was another fail for the super-cheap call centre whose tech support knowledge is limited to reading an etch-a-sketch im sure.

Glad OP got his laptop sorted now, though.

Elvisia

Fed up to the back teeth with John Lewis, I went into the store to look for a new TV with my mum, which is for my dad having end of life care at home. His TV is virtually unwatchable as it's a good 25 years old, and since he's not able to move out of his chair all day watching it is all his does. Went into the store and found a Panasonic which was 37inches, perfect as his sight is deteriorating and he needs a big screen. The price was £549, and we asked the salesman about it, and asked TWICE whether the price would change, we were worried it would go into clearance and be discounted. We said we'd like to take the TV but he kept saying "go home and think about it, then come back in a few days when you've made a decision". Thought this was excellent customer service so went home, spoke to Dad, agreed we could all stretch to £549 if we pooled our pennies and tootled back into John Lewis to buy it. It was now £100 more expensive, apparently it had been on a price match. Wrote to JL to complain who said their sales staff didn't know when things were on price match, and if the price changed over 28 days they would match it. Apparently it is not their fault their TV sales staff do not know the price of their TVs, it was only on price match for a few days so surely he'd realise some of his stock was now £100 cheaper.

I am so fed up, I had to fork out £100 extra which we can't afford, but Dad had his heart set on this rotten telly by this point. Furious at JL, this is the kind of stunt I would expect from any other store but not them. Mum and Dad will only buy from them as "they trust them" which is a joke.

I understand they don't have to honour this price but we asked already to buy the TV and the salesman said go away and think about it! Had we taken it then we'd have saved £100.

I will not be shopping in there again.

Mara69

Should have researched online - a quick Google shows Play selling a 37" backlit LED Panasonic for £500 delivered. HCS direct are selling it for £480 delivered.

Elvisia

I did research online but JL are the only place that has a 5 year guarantee *sigh* - my parents' decision not mine - as Amazon had the same TV at about £520 at the time. I bought mine on Amazon without a guarantee as I don't see the point of paying for a guarantee that is large portion of the cost of the TV (she says until something goes wrong!!).

Helix

Elvisia wrote: »

Fed up to the back teeth with John Lewis, I went into the store to look for a new TV with my mum, which is for my dad having end of life care at home. His TV is virtually unwatchable as it's a good 25 years old, and since he's not able to move out of his chair all day watching it is all his does. Went into the store and found a Panasonic which was 37inches, perfect as his sight is deteriorating and he needs a big screen. The price was £549, and we asked the salesman about it, and asked TWICE whether the price would change, we were worried it would go into clearance and be discounted. We said we'd like to take the TV but he kept saying "go home and think about it, then come back in a few days when you've made a decision". Thought this was excellent customer service so went home, spoke to Dad, agreed we could all stretch to £549 if we pooled our pennies and tootled back into John Lewis to buy it. It was now £100 more expensive, apparently it had been on a price match. Wrote to JL to complain who said their sales staff didn't know when things were on price match, and if the price changed over 28 days they would match it. Apparently it is not their fault their TV sales staff do not know the price of their TVs, it was only on price match for a few days so surely he'd realise some of his stock was now £100 cheaper.

I am so fed up, I had to fork out £100 extra which we can't afford, but Dad had his heart set on this rotten telly by this point. Furious at JL, this is the kind of stunt I would expect from any other store but not them. Mum and Dad will only buy from them as "they trust them" which is a joke.

I understand they don't have to honour this price but we asked already to buy the TV and the salesman said go away and think about it! Had we taken it then we'd have saved £100.

I will not be shopping in there again.

Don't see what John Lewis have done wrong really. Whenever I have been in there they don't have people dedicated just to selling TVs, the staff cover the whole electrical department which has a few thousand items. How can you expect anyone to remember the price of all those items, plus if it has previously been higher or lower and is about to change?

frustratedexjlemployee

Helix wrote: »

Don't see what John Lewis have done wrong really. Whenever I have been in there they don't have people dedicated just to selling TVs, the staff cover the whole electrical department which has a few thousand items. How can you expect anyone to remember the price of all those items, plus if it has previously been higher or lower and is about to change?

We used a system called Mainframe which DOES say when something is on undersale (there's a U next to the price) so if they looked on there, they would have known, but could not have known when the price would go up.

However, if it was me, I would have reserved the item for a couple of days to ensure the price was held, or honoured the price anyway when OP came in.

However, asking "is the price going to change" is a bit silly, because of course the price will change one day, but we never got forewarning of price changes. They changed and the first we found out was when the new price tickets arrived.

Just a word to the wise, though, JL doesn't have "sales" it has clearance. What that means is ex display/returned stock etc gets put out en masse. It's no different to any other time of the year. Current stock will not be reduced.

There may be special buys, but a current Panasonic will not be reduced for clearance.