Debenhams direct have messed up gift from wedding list

shell820810

My mum just got an email 2 days ago to say that most of an order she placed from a wedding list in October had not been fulfilled?! :eek:

The wedding was in October, and now we dont know if the recipients ever got their gifts.

I called Debenhams direct and they said I needed to deal with the store.

I spoke to the store manager, who had to pull out files etc, and long story short, he doesnt know if they got it or not either?! :eek::eek:

He said there is a note on file saying my mum was called on 19th Oct, and a message left. He doesnt know what was on the message.

My mum says the only time she was contacted by Debenhams was to be informed that her original purchase was out of stock (different to what we are querying now).

He began by saying that the items were definitely sent, and I then asked for a receipt and he checked another file and couldnt find one. He then said he needed to check with another member of staff who done the order, but she might not remember. :mad:

He said that normally if debenhams direct dont have the items in stock, the order is cancelled, but sometimes the store can source the items, which they did in this case. So, then i asked why was there an issue then. He said they would've needed to call to get payment details again, as it was the store and not Debenhams direct. My mum never got any call/message.

The family had clubbed together and spent £160, and according to Debenhams direct, only a £32 gift was sent.

The couple have sent their thank you cards, and they will probably think we are so cheeky with a small present.

I am going to have to ring the bride and find out what she did actually get. How embarassing?!

Mum cant find ANY payments coming out of her account (the card expired Nov 10) , so has to buy another present at £160 odd, less than a month after xmas that she hadnt budgeted for.
I assume they will try to charge full postage costs on a quarter of the orginal order.

Obviously if my mum had been checking her account, she might have noticed sooner that no payments were taken, but she doesnt do online banking, and doesnt pay that much attention to her statements.

If we had gotten notification sooner, it wouldnt be an issue, but 3 months after the order was placed is absolutely ridiculous.

Complete nightmare.

Any suggestions what approach i take with Debenhams on this?

fluffnutter

It does indeed sound a nightmare.. but it sounds like you have an action plan. What specifically would you like help with?

shell820810

I dont know?!

It just annoys me that Debenhams will have no consequence of their poor service, and yet my mum is majorly inconvenienced this month financially, having to spend £160 extra that she did not anticipate. She is a single mum of 6, working 20 hours a week as a nurse. its a big % of her monthly disposable income.
And also the inconvenience of having to ring this girl up and explain the whole situation.

madtrekker

Debenhams are rubbish! A few years ago, a very close relative was getting married and I chose something from her list. I purposely chose a single high-value item as that's what I wanted to give.

Anyway, the item I purchased went out of stock (after we ordered online) and so instead they sent a load of "bits" off the list to make up the value. A few flannels, a few forks, a plate and so on.

I know the total spend was the same and it was all stuff on the list but I really wanted to buy a special present for this relative that would be valued for many years. Reading it back it sounds a bit silly I know, but I wasn't best pleased.

shell820810

madtrekker wrote: »

Debenhams are rubbish! A few years ago, a very close relative was getting married and I chose something from her list. I purposely chose a single high-value item as that's what I wanted to give.

Anyway, the item I purchased went out of stock (after we ordered online) and so instead they sent a load of "bits" off the list to make up the value. A few flannels, a few forks, a plate and so on.

I know the total spend was the same and it was all stuff on the list but I really wanted to buy a special present for this relative that would be valued for many years. Reading it back it sounds a bit silly I know, but I wasn't best pleased.

To be honest, I would've preferred they did that, than send nothing and tell me three months later. Seriously, have you ever heard of customer service like it.

Torry_Quine

Why didn't she notice that the full amount hadn't gone out of her account? i know you saud she doesn't pay much notice to her statements but if it is a large amount for her surely she noticed she had more money to spend?

fluffnutter

TBH, shell, your mum doesn't have to spend £160. That's an awful lot of money to spend on a wedding present. Mind you, that's what the family clubbed together isn't it? So at the moment your mum is benefitting from this cash that wasn't taken from her account!

talulahbeige_2

Why do "the general public" think that companies should take all the responsibility for their own inability to look after there personal finances

If your mum has a small disposbale income then why doesnt she keep track £160 coming out of her account, or how did she not notice that it hadnt come out!

upallnighteatingcheese

I got married last September and had a wedding list with Debenhams, and later wished we hadn't.

In the end, everything turned out fine, but with a million other things to do in the lead up to our wedding we didn't need the extra hassle of calling Debenhams every few days because another present had been messed up.

As soon as we posted the invites, people started to buy us gifts from the list, but it wasn't till I was talking with a mate a few weeks later that I realsied everyone was getting charged postage which wasn't meant to happen. We had to call everyone that had bought us a present so far and ask them to call Debenhams to get a refund on their postage as Debenhams wouldn't automatically refund them.

Then my sister bought us a cutlery set which she opted to have posted to her and it turned up scratched to bits.
She complained and they sent out another set also scratched to bits and with the presentation box damaged.
The third set arrived with bits missing and eventually she kept a box, and bought the same cutlery instore to put inside it.
To be fair, Debenhams gave us an extra £20 on our gift card for this hassle.

Another guest bought us two gifts. The second gift was never added to our list as purchased even though the instore assistants confirmed it was in the warehouse with the rest of our gifts....surprisingly this never arrived after the wedding with everything else and we had to call them up again.

This was just a few of the issues we had with the Debenhams wedding service and at the end of it all we wished we had gone with somewhere else as the Debenhams systems just don't don't seem to be setup very well.

One thing (which is in the t&cs) is that with other places like John Lewis if you buy their vouchers then you can spend them on whatever you like.
If you get Debenhams ones then you can't spend them on electricals (tvs etc) because their electrical department is actually a different company.
This didn't effect us too much but it was a surprise to see that ( i missed it when we signed up.)

fluffnutter

Moral of the story? Don't have a wedding list. If you do want some reward for getting hitched, why not be really crass and ask for the cash?

Katie-Kat-Kins

That is pretty poor service, I would make a complaint and make a big deal of the embarrassment caused by having to approach the couple now so much later. Debenhams don't actually have to DO anything as you aren't out of pocket but it is really shoddy service.

I would also write a letter about it and send it to the bridal magazines, and post on the weddings section of this forum as a warning. Brides don't need the hassle of messing around with the wedding list, they get a wedding list to save hassle!

I had two wedding lists, the main one with john lewis and one direct with a local company for our tableware (by buying it direct our guests were able to buy seconds and get various discounts rather than paying the john lewis prices). The service from each was brilliant and trouble free.

I chose John Lewis because they didn't charge delivery like debenhams and had a better range. The service integrated well between their online and instore shops and we had no complaints whatsoever. There was one item that went out of stock but John Lewis approached us first, it was towels and we were able to switch the list to some others that were similar without fuss, and I don't even think the guests realised! We were also able to switch one or two things so we didn't end up with incomplete sets.

The local company - Denby Pottery - were amazing, the service was terrific, both to us and to our guests, our guests commented on it and afterwards we wrote a letter to praising their staff. They couldn't have done more to help us, they even allowed us first quality goods where seconds were on low stock, and advised our guests on offers available, and also tipped me off about an upcoming 2for1 so that I got more for my money when spending the vouchers I got as a free gift for having my list with them!

I would highly recommend both companies for your wedding list.