MSE News: After a John Lewis loyalty card? Free tea & cake is no longer guaranteed

Sncjw

Any one had email about the bag. Said we would and it starts on Tuesday

poggle

Latest voucher received today is valid from 06 February to 27 May 2015.

DCurrer

Over the last six months, I've bought a 48-inch smart TV, a TV stand/cabinet, a sound bar, a Samsung tablet and a men's shaver from John Lewis. Yesterday I received my latest 'My John Lewis' reward - a voucher for one free coffee and a cake to be 'enjoyed' anytime between 6 February and 27 May; ie one free drink and a cake over four months. To say I'm underwhelmed by the reward aspect of the current scheme is to put it kindly. John Lewis might do better to abandon the scheme altogether, rather than turn it into something so mean-spirited.

Doc_N

DCurrer wrote: »

Over the last six months, I've bought a 48-inch smart TV, a TV stand/cabinet, a sound bar, a Samsung tablet and a men's shaver from John Lewis. Yesterday I received my latest 'My John Lewis' reward - a voucher for one free coffee and a cake to be 'enjoyed' anytime between 6 February and 27 May; ie one free drink and a cake over four months. To say I'm underwhelmed by the reward aspect of the current scheme is to put it kindly. John Lewis might do better to abandon the scheme altogether, rather than turn it into something so mean-spirited.

And yet, as you'll see above, if you'd spent nothing at all you'd probably have received two vouchers (including one with a bag as an alternative to the coffee/cake).

JL seem not to have worked out that people in forums like this do discuss these things - either that or they don't care. They're very clearly providing more vouchers to non-spenders than to spenders. Which would be fine - it makes sense to get non-spenders into the stores - if they weren't lying about the way the scheme operates.

They do sometimes have a tendency to be economical with the truth - as evidenced by the almost daily failure to match lower prices in other stores under Never Knowingly Undersold, unless it happens to be a well publicised special event.

no1catman

DCurrer wrote: »

Over the last six months, I've bought a 48-inch smart TV, a TV stand/cabinet, a sound bar, a Samsung tablet and a men's shaver from John Lewis. Yesterday I received my latest 'My John Lewis' reward - a voucher for one free coffee and a cake to be 'enjoyed' anytime between 6 February and 27 May; ie one free drink and a cake over four months. To say I'm underwhelmed by the reward aspect of the current scheme is to put it kindly. John Lewis might do better to abandon the scheme altogether, rather than turn it into something so mean-spirited.

Yes, if you bought those in Tesco - you'd have had a lot more in cash vouchers - with two years to spend them on.


Personally, I wandered around John Lewis once, not long after their new store opened - needed a tea to recover from the prices!
Have, been to Waitrose in the past at a couple of locations - again couldn't afford their prices - like M & S reductions were more than I normally pay!

chewynut

I think I'm the staff member mentioned in post #16. I was temping in one of the restaurants during the height of the voucher scheme and had an insight into what was happening behind the scenes. I stopped answering posters' questions after I mentioned that I'd heard they were going to stop promoting the cards (this was June/July time) and got some uncalled for snotty responses.

If people are still interested, some of JL's biggest problems are that their IT systems were dreadful at the time the voucher scheme was created. There were several systems and none could talk to each other. That's why the restaurants didn't take the cards, etc. They were completely unequipped for the vouchers' popularity. I can't remember the exact figures but they surpassed 1 million cards within a year which was something like 109% over target. There were other figures about what percentage of people used their cards.

Over all, demand was WAY WAY higher than they ever anticipated and it caught them unprepared. The thing about JL is that because the employees own it, everybody has a say in major decisions which means it takes a heck of a long time to implement changes that are basic common sense in other businesses. This causes problems when they get caught unprepared but staff can't make changes quickly. I've seen posts where people have said "why don't they just do this?" and the staff really can't because of the way JL is set up.

Then because the hierarchy is different and JL has the thing about going out of its way to resolve complaints, it led to a memorable week where one day we were told to charge for extras. The next day there'd been a complaint and the complaints department had been forced to send out vouchers that would cost more than catering saved. So we were to give the extras away for free. Then we were told to only allow customers to have regular sized drinks. Cue a customer complaint and the next day it's gone back to any sized drink. Then different managers had different rules and it boiled down to how sympathetic the employee making your drink was. And since I encountered rudeness and entitlement of the likes I've never seen before or since, it was pretty hard to be sympathetic to people demanding a large drink, the largest bit of cake, a pot of tea filled right to the top, a second pot of water, an extra plate and cup and big handfuls of milk & butter.

Over all, most customers were nice but a lot of people took the mick and ruined it for everybody else. The catering department doesn't get a say in the policies. If people have complaints they need to take it to the customer services people because believe me, the staff in the restaurants can't change anything unless customers fill in official feedback forms. Taking your frustration out on the person on the till achieves absolutely nothing.

Also, I forgot to mention that JL monitors itself on the internet. The head office is aware of threads like these and complaints do register. However like I've already said, it takes a long time for anything to get done about these complaints unless it's a really bad one that could affect their reputation or something.

DCurrer

Doc_N wrote: »

And yet, as you'll see above, if you'd spent nothing at all you'd probably have received two vouchers (including one with a bag as an alternative to the coffee/cake.

You're right. My partner, who has spent nothing at John Lewis over the last six months, has now received his 'reward' - a voucher identical to my own! As a reward scheme, My John Lewis seems to be badly thought out and seriously mismanaged. The Waitrose scheme is SO much better; I can get a free newspaper and a takeaway coffee on every visit to the store (subject to a reasonable minimum spend), which has resulted in me doing virtually all my grocery shopping there - and feeling valued in the process.

Doc_N

DCurrer wrote: »

You're right. My partner, who has spent nothing at John Lewis over the last six months, has now received his 'reward' - a voucher identical to my own! As a reward scheme, My John Lewis seems to be badly thought out and seriously mismanaged. The Waitrose scheme is SO much better; I can get a free newspaper and a takeaway coffee on every visit to the store (subject to a reasonable minimum spend), which has resulted in me doing virtually all my grocery shopping there - and feeling valued in the process.

Good point. The Waitrose scheme does succeed in making its customers feel valued, but the John Lewis scheme is being so mismanaged that it's having precisely the opposite effect.

The JL scheme is rewarding 'customers' who don't spend anything, and penalising the genuine customers who do! JL will assume that this isn't being noticed, because cardholders aren't aware - but they've missed the fact that online forums like this are making it very obvious, and it won't be long before the press pick up on it and run a damaging story.

Chewynut, yours was a very interesting post. Haven't they picked up on this yet?

tanya2014

I was told by a staff member the other day that they are finally considering bringing in a beauty points card along similar lines of Boots Advantage Card,Debenhams Beauty card etc.
So fingers crossed for the future

chewynut

Doc_N wrote: »

Chewynut, yours was a very interesting post. Haven't they picked up on this yet?

Thanks. I hope it's been helpful. Obviously my info is dated since I left at the end of last summer. My info comes from line managers of two departments and the internal JL newsletters which were fantastic for getting the real picture of what was going on. The newsletters publish unedited opinions and the majority were overworked, miserable and frustrated. Something at the heart of the company isn't working. The returns policy and the vouchers were crippling it.

From what I could gather, there simply was not a system in place to handle the My JL cards. There was no system to determine who would recieve vouchers. There was no system that monitored what customers were buying. You'd expect there to be something like 'this customer has spent X, they automatically receive Y reward'. There was nothing whilst I was there to the extent that even the partners in the main shop (the ones I worked with anyway) had no idea what impact the vouchers had had on the restaurants. The partners on the tills were being told X by their line managers whilst the catering department was being told Y by theirs. That makes for disaster when customers just want to know what their card entitles them to.