John Lewis incorrect product sent

S4vvyspender

Looking for help/advice

I ordered an iPhone 16 from John Lewis with next day delivery, when the parcel came the contents were not an iPhone 16 but a powerbank!!! Immediately I phoned customer services, escalated the situation to be told there’s nothing they could do. Obviously I couldn’t accept that outcome and have pursued further cc’ing the CEO and exec director into the discussions - whether they’ve seen it I don’t know but I have a call today with the director of director relations and case management. 

I’m not too hopeful of the outcome and want to start collating other experience of same or similar situation with John Lewis and what the outcome was.

Please get in touch if this has happened to you too. Googling and a similar thing happened with sky mobile a few years ago and after months and months of back and forth people got either a refund or replacement product.

what makes matters worse is I purchase the phone using gift card so it’s not an easy chargeback situation - at least I don’t think it is.

please help!!

DullGreyGuy

S4vvyspender said:
Obviously I couldn’t accept that outcome and have pursued further cc’ing the CEO and exec director into the discussions - whether they’ve seen it I don’t know but I have a call today with the director of director relations and case management. 

The executive complaints team at JL are far worse than the standard customer service team, you have the benefit of a case handler so you dont have to explain the whole story each time nor have to go through the same list of things they've already said etc but the chap that was assigned to my case was rude, obnoxious and clearly way out of his depth. 

In my case (faulty goods not wrong item delivered) I ended up litigating and once their external lawyer had been appointed they paid up in full within a few days. 

S4vvyspender said:

Please get in touch if this has happened to you too. Googling and a similar thing happened with sky mobile a few years ago and after months and months of back and forth people got either a refund or replacement product.

what makes matters worse is I purchase the phone using gift card so it’s not an easy chargeback situation - at least I don’t think it is.

You can search on here, there are hundreds of cases against various retailers of high value items being ordered and low value items being received instead. Oddly, almost without exception, each and every case was from a first time poster and yet many regulars here state they use Amazon, JL, Currys and all the other brands the allegations have been raised against. 

You cannot do a chargeback on a gift card itself. A chargeback on the transaction that bought the gift card would also fail because the gift card was received 

S4vvyspender

Yes that’s what I thought about the gift card…

still waiting for my call back from David Bebbington. Usefully to know litigation works - I really don’t want to be drawn into all that but the amount I paid will warrant that I fear. 

 

Will also highlight on social media…

MattMattMattUK

S4vvyspender said:

Looking for help/advice

I ordered an iPhone 16 from John Lewis with next day delivery, when the parcel came the contents were not an iPhone 16 but a powerbank!!! Immediately I phoned customer services, escalated the situation to be told there’s nothing they could do. Obviously I couldn’t accept that outcome and have pursued further cc’ing the CEO and exec director into the discussions - whether they’ve seen it I don’t know but I have a call today with the director of director relations and case management.

No one at board or C-Suit level will have seen your emails or will call you, it will be a "Director of" and they have hundreds of those. Did the box look like a sealed John Lewis box, was it sealed with tape which would indicate it had been reopened, was it in a non-John Lewis box?

S4vvyspender said:

I’m not too hopeful of the outcome and want to start collating other experience of same or similar situation with John Lewis and what the outcome was.

They will probably need to investigate, but worth pointing out to them (to show you understand the situation) that the phones require activation and John Lewis have the IMEI number, so they can have the phone blocked from activation and blocked on all networks anyway. 

S4vvyspender said:

Please get in touch if this has happened to you too. Googling and a similar thing happened with sky mobile a few years ago and after months and months of back and forth people got either a refund or replacement product.

Happening to other people is not really relevant. It has happened, it does happen, sometimes it is done before dispatch, other times in transit. 

S4vvyspender said:

what makes matters worse is I purchase the phone using gift card so it’s not an easy chargeback situation - at least I don’t think it is.

please help!!

That does unfortunately remove the option for Chargeback and Section 75, but you still have the option of small claims should John Lewis not refund/replace. 

Raise the formal complaint, if they reject ask them to reconsider, if they reject again send an LBA and then follow up with Small Claims.

suprememum

If you exhaust your internal complaint with JL you can go to the gift card company, but as they are not a bank I am not sure what legal grounds you have. 

financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers
gov.uk/consumer-protection-rights

S4vvyspender

Yes the box was a JL box not tampered with and came from their warehouse via DPD. Although there wasn’t a delivery note inside.

I have mentioned to them that the IMEI should be registered with apple so that the phone is trackable. I have also requested copies of photos they obtain during their investigation - which David Bebbington has confirmed under data request act and has 30 days to comply.

Ergates

DullGreyGuy said:

You can search on here, there are hundreds of cases against various retailers of high value items being ordered and low value items being received instead. Oddly, almost without exception, each and every case was from a first time poster and yet many regulars here state they use Amazon, JL, Currys and all the other brands the allegations have been raised against.  

That's not really odd.  Cases like this are rare - I wouldn't say there were even "hundreds" on here, and in the context of the millions and millions of on-line orders dispatched by the large retailers it's a tiny proportion.

Most of the posts on here are from first time posters, as most people only come here when they have an issue they want to ask about.

powerful_Rogue

suprememum said:

If you exhaust your internal complaint with JL you can go to the gift card company, but as they are not a bank I am not sure what legal grounds you have. 

financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers
gov.uk/consumer-protection-rights

There is no recourse against the gift card company.

robatwork

Weirdly I just commented on another thread on this very board about phones "going missing" somewhere from factory -> warehouse -> purchaser.

Don't have much to add beyond being prepared to go through with a court claim.

What I would like to add for future googlers is - always film yourself opening and unpackaging phones and anything else delivered of high value. 

Picture is worth 1000 words and a video is worth 1000 pictures. 

SiliconChip

robatwork said:

What I would like to add for future googlers is - always film yourself opening and unpackaging phones and anything else delivered of high value. 

Picture is worth 1000 words and a video is worth 1000 pictures. 

While I have done that my preferred option now for expensive items ordered from JL is to have the package delivered to a nearby Waitrose store and open it in the presence of their customer service staff when I collect it. So far I haven't had an issue but if there is one in the future I would simply hand it back, effectively refusing delivery, and either ask for a replacement to be sent or for a refund.

Cressida100

robatwork said:

Weirdly I just commented on another thread on this very board about phones "going missing" somewhere from factory -> warehouse -> purchaser.

Don't have much to add beyond being prepared to go through with a court claim.

What I would like to add for future googlers is - always film yourself opening and unpackaging phones and anything else delivered of high value. 

Picture is worth 1000 words and a video is worth 1000 pictures. 

I have read a few threads recently on the same subject so when I recently ordered a new phone direct from Samsung I unboxed it in my porch in front of the delivery driver! I felt a bit bad keeping him waiting but he didn't complain.