Wrong address - delivered and now won't refund me

jaydeycakes

Hi, first time poster here
I put an order in with a company on the 23rd December who I had ordered with before. For some reason it auto populated an old address for both billing and shipping. I immediately sent the company an email to rectify this and ensured the address on my account was the correct one, which it was. I had a reply to my email to say they were looking into my query and would get back to me.
Fast forward to the 26th December and I have an email to say my order is going to be shipped, 24hr tracked as it has to be kept cold. I then had a reply to my query email on the 27th December to say the item had been shipped so there was nothing they could do. I should try an arrange collecting it from my old address or go through royal mail. As I do not live near this property, it had already been delivered by royal mail and the fact it needed to be kept in cold storage meant that the item would not have been suitable to use even if I could have collected it.
They have said due to annual leave and the holiday period they cannot be held responsible for not changing the address, despite the company having employees working during this period, as the order went through.
I am still in a back and forth with them via email but I wondered if anyone knew of anything I could say or do to either get a refund or the item resent out to me? I probably wouldn't have minded if it wasn't a lot of money but it is £200 I will lose out on  

Mark_d

You placed the order with the incorrect address populated.  Emails rarely get actioned in real time, so I don't think the company was at fault in any way.

If I was you I would try to agree on a £100 refund/goodwill gesture - recognising the distress that was caused, how easily the mistake was made, and that you did make an attempt to contact the company at your earliest opportunity.

Good luck

maisie_cat

They are not responsible, you need to be hypervigilant when you've recently moved.
I did the same thing with Ebay when I last moved and it was my problem but luckily I'd forwarded mail and it wasn't perishable.

RefluentBeans

As said above - emails aren’t normally able to be actioned at the point they are received - they get put into a list and worked through chronologically. On top of this - this is Christmas period where the customer service enquiries sky rocket so there’s a lot more tickets. 

What was the package containing? I assume food as the stuff had to be kept cold? If that’s the case there is no regulation under the Consumer Contract Regs (as the food would be considered perishable). 

You can try and ask for goodwill from the company, but there isn’t much in terms of the law that can force them to give you a refund. But you could ask for a voucher or something so you can reorder the item to the correct address. 

If the auto population came from the browser rather than the website saving your address for you, then you should also clean out the browser k stop it happening again in the future. 

jaydeycakes

The population for the address was from the website, not the browser. I moved 8 months ago and had ordered from the website since with the correct address, which is why I found it strange that the billing and shipping address had reverted to an old address I had not used on the website for quite some time.
The item was medication that needed to be kept cold.
As I had received a reply from my email query saying they were looking into it on the same day I had sent it in I was surprised that the item had been sent out anyway.

Aylesbury_Duck

I suspect that email was either auto-generated or someone simply sent it as a holding email while they worked through the probably many emails they had in the same period.

I suspect it was the browser.  If your account with them has your new address then why would their own form populate with old information?  I would think it would be cookies on your browser that recognised the site and populated it.  Presumably there was at least one confirmation you would have gone through before finally ordering, so they will have taken all reasonable efforts to help you spot the mistake.

As others have said, you don't have any rights here, so an appeal to goodwill is your best bet.

sheramber

jaydeycakes said:

The population for the address was from the website, not the browser. I moved 8 months ago and had ordered from the website since with the correct address, which is why I found it strange that the billing and shipping address had reverted to an old address I had not used on the website for quite some time.
The item was medication that needed to be kept cold.
As I had received a reply from my email query saying they were looking into it on the same day I had sent it in I was surprised that the item had been sent out anyway.

You are assuming that two separate departments are joined up. Communication between the two will not be instant.

I have found that when I have changed address it takes a few orders to the new address for some company websites to update.

I always check the billing and shipping address before 'clicking'.

jaydeycakes

I didn't have to put any information in the address section when I put the order in, I know it must have been on the final confirmation page but the address was taken from previous orders, which is why I was confused they had used an address I hadn't used for 8 months. I know it is my own fault that I assumed they would have populated the most recently used address, but I also (clearly wrongly) assumed going through all the procedures to correct the mistake may have given my grievance more weight 🙁🙁😕

sheramber

I didn't have to either as the new address was shown on my account page.

The billing and delivery details were only shown on the delivery page.  There was an option to change them there.

Desmond_Hume

Is there/was there not an option to cancel the order within your account? I’ve just humoured myself and checked two accounts with two separate companies I have orders with, both yet to be shipped. Both offer a “Cancel Order” option. If this company has this, you’re probably humped for getting a refund, as that would be the proper procedure. Not sending an email to an unmonitored - at the time - email address. 

TELLIT01

The supplier hasn't done anything wrong and the OP isn't entitled to a refund or for the item to be sent again.  If they are a long standing customer they may be willing to offer a good will gesture.  One site my wife uses regularly states it may take up to 48 hours to respond to emails, that comes in the form of an auto-generated acknowledgement of receipt of the email.