Habitat delivery company nightmares - this is a major issue now?

Fulham_Mark

Apols if known by moneysavingexpert staff but please look at the reviews on Facebook for Habitat. 100s of recent 1-star rants. The company simply cannot deliver goods as promised. All 1-star angry customers for the last 2 months since they changed delivery system. the problem may be with the new delivery company Panther

Customers (including me) are being given delivery slots which are then cancelled on the day for no reason. This happens multiple times, for many months deliver

Evaluating what happened to me and others it seems that the following problem exists in their new delivery system:

- every item that habitat sells appears to be in-stock. Even when the product hasn't even been manufactured or shipped into the UK
- staff are able to schedule a delivery of this item to customers
- On the day of delivery, some poor chap tries to find the item in the warehouse and of course it isn't there.
- system sends out a "delivery cancellation" SMS to customer
- no update is made to the stock system and the item still appears to be in stock again
- the "ghost" product continues to be promised to customers again and again
- Habitat call centre staff say they have no information on the product because their system tells them that the item is being delivered by Panther and so Habitat cannot track it or reschedule it.

This is clearly a not-fit-for-purpose system and should never have been launched.

It creates the ridiculous scenario where a habitat CSR tells you that the product will take 8 weeks to be manufactured and shipped to the UK - hours later another CSR calls to tell you that the product is already in the warehouse and can be delivered within a few days

It's not often I get annoyed but for the second time I've arranged for a re-housing charity to come and collect my current sofa, taken it down 4 flights of stairs to the drive and then the new sofa gets cancelled and I get told I'll need to wait another 8 weeks. So I end up letting down the charity and taking the sofa back up 4 flights of stairs again!

agrinnall

Cancel and buy somewhere more reliable would seem to be the answer.

DoaM

Failed Delivery? Fight Back!
'If I waste a day, you'll pay'

hollydays

Thanks for the warning .

Fulham_Mark

More detail;

the delivery company (hold no stock) cancel at 8am, early enough for it not to be a wasted day at home.

So to be fair to the delivery company it is not their fault. they arrive at Habitat and Habitat don't have the stock that they have promised me and the delivery company.

molerat

Habitat = posh Argos and have obviously taken on the same delivery standards.

charoniv

Not just habitat. I had a similar problem with Argos so only use collect in store now.
I seem to have the same problem with Staples (see my recent post).

Seems that companies are being set up as just order systems and have no connection to the warehouse or delivery companies. Means they only take the order and process the payment.
Beyond that they have no means of finding out about the stock levels or how/when the delivery is expected or making any changes. Customer service of course is run by the order company so is pretty useless.