House of Fraser - Offer not honoured and appalling CS

shapeshifter42

[sorry for the lengthy post]

I bought a PS5 around Black Friday time. HOF had an offer for £40 off if buying with a Frasers Plus store card (3 payments, 0% interest). I never wanted any kind of store card, but I had the cash to pay up front anyway, so it seemed like a no-brainer. 

Naturally, the payment went through and hit my new Frasers Plus account with the FULL amount.

I got onto HOF customer services after a few days, explaining the situation. Of course, they were "very sorry" etc, and would "accelerate my issue" etc. That same conversation was had at least 4 or 5 times by new year, sometimes with (repeated) requests for screenshots of the promo (my spidey-senses had tingled even before buying, so I'd created those). There was no follow-up from HOF, except 1 or 2 emails back saying "we have forwarded your query..." etc.

I also tried to contact Frasers Pay, but someone came back to me saying it was solely a problem between me and HOF.

Then, on the 12th Jan, after even more pleading, they finally replied that they had made an error and would be refunding/crediting my £40 within 10 working days!

Of course, no such refund/credit happened, and I replied to the email chain to this effect. Despite pointing to the "we made an error" email in the same chain, I was yet again prompted for screenshots like I was only just starting the process, and no acknowledgement of the "we made an error" bit either.

This went in circles and petered out, but as the 3rd of my 3 Frasers Pay payments was nearly due, I decided to contact Frasers Pay again, giving the whole back story and stating that I had no intention of paying the 3rd payment in full. This seemed to get attention and I was told my account would be put on hold while they investigated.

So yesterday I got an email from Frasers Pay. Apparently they've managed to speak to someone at HOF who said:

"The frasers plus price would of [sic] been applied if this was purchased as a single transaction, not with multiple orders.". 

I did add some games and sundries to my order, but how could this negate the promo? Are you only allowed to get a Frasers Pay discount if you buy ONE item in an order?!

To try and prove this as nonsense, I found the T&Cs for Frasers Pay offers on this page.

https://www.houseoffraser.co.uk/terms-and-conditions under the title 'Discount on your Order (Frasers Plus)'

The only clause I can see that remotely relates is:

"The Promotion does not apply to:... b) the purchase of any other items from the Promoter that are not the Qualifying Products (as listed above)"

Call me dumb, but all this says to me is that no discount will apply to any other ordered items, which was never my complaint, of course.

But Frasers Pay seem to have accepted what HOF said. Before I even saw the email, they applied a £10 charge to the £40 I deliberately left on my account, and sent an email saying that it could go on my (spotless) credit rating.

So, 3 months later, where do I go from here?

p.s. just to rub salt in the wound, the situation had put me off even trying the PS5 for some weeks. On eventually trying, I found it was faulty (overheating error messages and shutdowns). Rather than deal with the clowns/crooks at HOF, I just sent it for repair at Sony. But they have now had it twice, and it keeps coming back with the same issue. Feels like this PS5 is cursed!

Aylesbury_Duck

Sounds a mess, and I'm afraid you've made a couple of errors that haven't helped.  Withholding the final payment is one, because you entered into a payment agreement that is entirely separate from the £40 offer, hence the £10 charge.

Pursuing the fix with Sony directly is another, because this early on in ownership, you will probably have been better dealing with HoF.  They will probably have referred you to Sony in any case, but it would have been through your consumer rights rather than the warranty which is the process I suspect you're going through.

As to the £40 promotion, without the exact wording for the promotion in place at the time, I would be guessing, but it's perfectly possible that is does apply to a single item purchase.  Did buying the extra items attract any other discount, or even free postage, for example?  Many offers cannot be combined, so it's possible you had some other "bundle" discount or similar which then negated the £40 offer.

born_again

Typical of sports direct group. Now known as Frazer Group

Largs

Hello.  I can't offer much, but I have Frasers Plus.  When you go into the app, along the bottom there is a parcel symbol (the 4th icon) when you click that, the £40 would not be in that section at all?  When I opened mines, the offer was £20 off @ Sports Direct, the sister brand of House of Fraser.  They awarded me 2000 points (£20) that I can use when at any of their brands.  Maybe you could try that and see if they have actually given you 4000 points as a reward.  

shapeshifter42

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Sounds a mess, and I'm afraid you've made a couple of errors that haven't helped.  Withholding the final payment is one, because you entered into a payment agreement that is entirely separate from the £40 offer, hence the £10 charge.

Pursuing the fix with Sony directly is another, because this early on in ownership, you will probably have been better dealing with HoF.  They will probably have referred you to Sony in any case, but it would have been through your consumer rights rather than the warranty which is the process I suspect you're going through.

As to the £40 promotion, without the exact wording for the promotion in place at the time, I would be guessing, but it's perfectly possible that is does apply to a single item purchase.  Did buying the extra items attract any other discount, or even free postage, for example?  Many offers cannot be combined, so it's possible you had some other "bundle" discount or similar which then negated the £40 offer.

re: the broken PS5: I did mention it to HOF in one of my many chat/email convos. They asked for a screenshot/photo of that too, which I sent, but then they went silent on that too.

re: promo: I think one of the games was half price, but that was independent of any purchase i.e. that would have been the price of the game whether I had bought it by itself or with 100 other items. It couldn't affect the price of the PS5, nor vice-versa. And the combined cost of the total order did not affect the price of the PS5 or any other item either.

I could only understand this "can't combine" thing if it would involve stacking vouchers or something like that.
Also, there was no "wording" as such. I am gonna post the screenshot separately.

shapeshifter42

Largs said:

Hello.  I can't offer much, but I have Frasers Plus.  When you go into the app, along the bottom there is a parcel symbol (the 4th icon) when you click that, the £40 would not be in that section at all?  When I opened mines, the offer was £20 off @ Sports Direct, the sister brand of House of Fraser.  They awarded me 2000 points (£20) that I can use when at any of their brands.  Maybe you could try that and see if they have actually given you 4000 points as a reward.  

Thanks for the suggestion, but nothing doing here. After about 35 days I got some 535 points (about £5), but I think that is just the way the rewards on the card work i.e. giving you 1 pt per £1 spent.

shapeshifter42

Here is a cropped screenshot of the original page. I've cropped it extra large to show 2 extra items I bought: the extra controller/FIFA package, and the God of War game alluded to earlier.
This grab is taken from an .mhtml save of the entire page, allowing me to scroll from top to bottom, where I can see precisely no warnings or disclaimers.
Sadly, I don't have a shot of the page that opens when click the first PS5 item, but they have an almost identical offer on now which you can see here. What I can't see is any kind of warning of disclaimer, just as I couldn't 3 months ago.

jon81uk

If I add one of those items with a Frasers Plus price into my basket it statees
"FRASERS PLUS TOTAL Select Frasers Plus on the payment page and Frasers Plus pricing will be applied"

What did it say on the payment page? What is on the order confirmation email?

The exclusion "the purchase of any other items from the Promoter that are not the Qualifying Products (as listed above);" in the terms is just referring to the fact other items not on the offer won't get discounted.

shapeshifter42

jon81uk said:

If I add one of those items with a Frasers Plus price into my basket it statees
"FRASERS PLUS TOTAL Select Frasers Plus on the payment page and Frasers Plus pricing will be applied"

What did it say on the payment page? What is on the order confirmation email?

The exclusion "the purchase of any other items from the Promoter that are not the Qualifying Products (as listed above);" in the terms is just referring to the fact other items not on the offer won't get discounted.

I remember the same prompt on the payment page, and obviously the balance was then applied to my Frasers Plus account that I have (mostly) paid off now. It wasn't the Frasers Plus pricing though

Weirdly the email has nothing but icons on when I view it now - no text at all bar a 'view order' link.On clicking that it shows me all the prices (including full price for the PS5), but doesn't mention what the payment method was.

Glad you agree about the T&Cs.

EnPointe

Frasers = Sports Direct  renamed ...  need any more be said