River Island Problem

Nessa

My parents offered to buy me clothes for Christmas, I ordered some jeans from River Island online.

They arrived and I loved one pair so much I ordered another. I placed the order on 5th Dec. They didn't ship til 10th December despite the items all being in stock (alledgedly). I e-mailed them to complain on 24th December - they turned up the same day. All in all it took 19 days from ordering to receive my items.

My parents gave them to me on Christmas day. I could no longer tell the difference between the two, knowing full well they fitted I took the tags off. I tried one pair on and couldn't do them up. One pair fits perfectly, the other won't do up at all. Their identical in every way.

I e-mailed Customer services for advice. They suggested I take the items back to store and it was at the managers discretion that I would receive a refund once he/she had investigated.
I responded explaining this wasn't acceptable as its a 90 mile round trip and would cost me atleast £15 in fuel (probably to be told no anyway!).

In each of my e-mails to them I included all the previous e-mails. The response I received stated I should return my item (with the tags on) and then the usual speil followed (it was clearly copied and pasted from their website stipulating what to do should you need to return an item).

It seems to be their refusing to deal with this properly. Their just wasting my time. I've explained the tags are off the item. They've sold me an item thats actually a size smaller than labelled.

I've drafted a letter to their head office, does anyone have any other advice on how I should proceed?

andrewmoorcroft

Just send them back with a note saying that the incorrect size has been sent because the item was incorrectly labelled. Please send a correctly sized replacement (as ordered) and refund my postage cost due to the error.
Also dont say that they are identical in every way, because they are clearly not.
Also don't confuse them with the whole story - it's 90% irrelevant to this issue.
You simply want a replacement for the incorrectly sent item (at their expense).
Also you say you have taken the lables off but if you haven't thrown them away why cant u DIY re-attach them?
Just follow the returns proceedure where i'm sure they refund postage when it's their error

Butlers1982

Why not ring your local store and ask to speak to the manager then?

Or you could bend the truth and arrange for a courier to pick them up and put a note in explaining the problem and that you "spoke" to someone who advised you to return them for a new pair

Nessa

Both good plans, I think I'll return them with a note. I'll just be more annoyed if I try and talk to the manager and they turn out to be useless and/or unwilling to help.

SharkyGeorge

I have a sneaking suspicion that the only complaints that customer services ever take seriously are those sent by post as opposed to email or phone calls, presumably because it takes more time and so looks more serious. Certainly this has been the case for me.

I would proceed by letter next. I'm not sure about sending the jeans back just like that because they may not refund you the postage. If you send them a letter explain the problem and tell them you require postage sticker thingy (don't know what they're called!) in order to send the jeans back and take it from there.