Marks and Spencer refused refund with receipt!!

jennifernil

I would agree. My OH likes M&S shoes as they seem to fit his feet well(wide feet). He wears his shoes to death! Gets through about 1 pair per year, and that is wearing them 365 days for work and whatever! He has 2 or 3 pairs on the go.............a "best" pair for important business stuff.....a "using" pair for everyday use..........and an "old" pair for when he is in the garden or climbing on the roof..........(no, you don't want to know how he abuses them!!! )
ALL his shoes whether M&S or Clarks last about a year and cost about £40.
So a £17 pair on a 7 year old girl should certainly last more than 8 weeks!

jennifernil

OOOPS! pressed the button twice!!

trickytrolleys

philc sounds to me a student who works there on a saturday but thinks he is the chairman and takes his saturday job far too seriously.

i would also be inclined to listen to the customer feedback philc, rather than sales talk issued by Head office - who are more likely to have the biggest influence ??because i can honestly say that this thread has put me off M&S

fwhorn

phil c where are you?


Please answer your critics, or are you looking for your M+S spade?

By the way what does the C stand for. If any other MSE'rs can guess, answers on a postcard to M+S customer services, sorry no prize.:rotfl:

hammy_the_hammer

my point was that marks and spencers don't know if the shoes have been 'abused'...scuffed shoes with the sole detaching and broken velcro wouldn't exactly promote the case for a refund.
any of the people who disagree with the way m&s dealt with this case answer me truthly ....if you owned a little shoe shop and someone brought that pair of shoes back to you ..would you give them a full refund ???

fwhorn

Hi Hammy,

If I owned a shop then each case would be really on merit, in this case the answer would be yes. If a 7 year old can break the velcro fastner then i would say that there was a problem, and the sole coming away as well. Good service is good publicity in it's self. I think the post is not just about the goods not being as good as they was but the service you get as well. I do believe that M+S's service as been abused in the past, but I do feel the OP as been very harshly treated.

Just to let you know i do sell Trainers (ebayer) and if there was a problem like this then i would offer a refund first and then the option of a swap, as i value my feedback.

mrcow

hammy_the_hammer wrote:

....if you owned a little shoe shop and someone brought that pair of shoes back to you ..would you give them a full refund ???

No I'm not daft.....I'd offer them a replacement or alternative /store credit first....no point in giving them their money back if they are happy with an alternative product! (It's all in the bottom line!)

andyrules

The OP is actually saying that there's THREE different faults with this one pair of shoes.
now without anyone knowing the facts the shoes can have been used to climb up brick walls in , the child could have been wearing them on a bike and using the shoes rather than the brakes to stop with ..and the child stands on the back of the shoes to take them off as they can't be bothered to undo the velcro/laces.
for every child whose shoes are in good condition you will find one who has destroyed them ( at least ) that's what kids do with school shoes.
"don't play football in them" ...."yeah right mum"
if i worked in the shop i would suspect misuse.
i don't see how the sale of goods act would work in this particular case. scuffing of shoes would suggest abrasion ....by what? should they be brick resistant? angle grinder resistant?

I don't know many schools that allow 7 year olds to climb brick walls, and the reference to 'angle-grinder' was neither relevant nor helpful to this case.

Fact is, the shoes were sold for a child of approximately 7 years old, moreover marketed as 'scuff-resistant', so one should expect that the shoes should remain wearable for a reasonable time AND remain scuff free for a reasonable time. A manufacturer targeting a product at a specific market should thus make their product 'fit for purpose', ie 'fit for a 7 year old' to wear, and if they are a plain black style, then there is an implication that they are school shoes. It is simply not reasonable to market 'scuff-resistant' shoes at young children and then argue that the child has not been wearing them in a specific way. As the OP says, HOW does a 7 year old wear shoes? Some of them kick a ball around, some of them, heaven forbid, run around playing 'tig'! The very term 'scuff-resistant' implies that the shoes will stand up to the hurly-burly lifestyle of a child.

Additionally, the OP has now stated that her child tends to play gentle games and is driven to school. Assuming that for most of the day she sits in the classroom, the short life-span of the shoes amounts to a poor deal for the OP.

If I were the shop-keeper, I would value my customer and reputation and be questioning my supplier.

hammy_the_hammer

you'd go out of business then. sites such as these are full of threads where you can pull a fast one on a retailer / supplier of service.
your customers would value your help so highly that when the new asda opens and they start selling shoes at a pound a pair cheaper they'd shop there and take the chance if something goes wrong with them.
it also amuses me how other posters just take everything they are told at complete face value.
i can't say i've had a problem with m&s ...maybe i've been lucky

furndire

A small business would have probably done better than M & S and spoken to their supplier and let them look at the shoes.
M & S are trading on the fact they give good quality, and things are tested to be fit for purpose.