Debenhams Online Cancellation Policy

MaximumFish

Hi all.

I'm currently living in Australia and yesterday I ordered a few things from Debenhams for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. We admittedly left it a little late as the anniversary is on Sunday and they state 3-5 days for delivery. When we found the same items on Amazon with next day delivery we of course re-ordered from there and attempted to cancel the unshipped order from Debenhams, as all (or most) other online retailers are more than happy to cancel an order right up to the point of shipping. This is where the fun started.

For some bizarre reason, they only allow orders to be cancelled for up to 30 minutes after it is placed. Quite how this works when ordering outside of office hours is a subject for another thread, but they've flat out refused to cancel it. No problem, we'll just get my parents to take it back to the store when it arrives; except that if we want a refund we'd have to be present with the card used to make the order! Alternatively we can get my parents to courier the order back to their depot, at which point we'll have to wait FIFTEEN WORKING DAYS for the refund to process! All this to cancel an as yet unshipped order!

I started a thread on their Facebook page asking why they have this ridiculous policy and after getting me to confirm various details privately with a promise to see what they could do, they simply reiterated the exact same spiel:

"Hi Mike, we are unable to cancel the order after 30 minutes of the order being placed. Sorry about that, can we help you with anything else? Thanks."

Followed by:

"Hi Mike, we appreciate your comments and we're sorry for any inconvenience or disappointment caused. all your feedback has been logged and will be internal reviewed for future changes/improvements. Thank you."

Brilliant, thanks for the help there, Bub!

So what are my options now? I've half a mind to tell my parents to reject the delivery and make a charge back to my card, but I know that'll take forever to go through, too. If I just have them reject it and don't make the charge back, will the order be cancelled and refunded when the package is returned to sender?

Looking for the quickest route to a refund here, preferably with as little hassle to my parents as possible. Debenhams is supposed to be a premium establishment!

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Mike

halibut2209

I'm not sure many people here will be familiar with Australian law

wealdroam

Under UK law, specifically Distance Selling Regulations, Debenhams have up to 30 days to refund you.
That's from the date of cancellation.

MaximumFish

halibut2209 wrote: »

I'm not sure many people here will be familiar with Australian law

Australian consumer rights are pretty much that they have none! This, however, was ordering from Debenhams UK with a UK card to be delivered to a UK address. It just happens that I'm currently in Australia so can't go to a store with my card for a refund.

Under UK law, specifically Distance Selling Regulations, Debenhams have up to 30 days to refund you.
That's from the date of cancellation.

30 days huh? So the 21 days we've been quoted (15 working days) is reasonable as far as the law's concerned.

What about the whole thing of them insisting that we wait for it to be delivered before we can cancel, lumbering us with additional cost to have it returned?

Gah, I just expected better from Debenhams!

Littlestars_2

When you place an online order it goes through stages of processing and its the same where i work orders can only be cancelled up to a certain point (roughly the same time 30 mins) as by then the relevant warehouses would have notifications and started packing the goods for delivery so there is no way to cancel an order once it has got to that stage (i can only assume they have a similar system to the one in my work). The only thing at that point is to ask that the goods be rejected when they are delivered so they are returned for a refund.

So your best bet may be to refuse delivery so it is sent back for a refund but i would double check with them if this is the best option.

bris

Maybe if your a little bit more careful when ordering things online you won't make the mistakes and need to cancel.

You can hardly blame Debenhams for your mistakes.

unholyangel

Just refuse to accept the delivery?