Is your despatch note real?

Whatever you do, if you talk to my Dad this week, don't mention Marks and Spencers.

His church has recently had a lovely new extension, including a cafe and bar facilities. They were looking to furnish it with some good value but contemporary chairs and discovered that M&S were offering a £16 discount on a set of four dining chairs, an online offer of the month. Bargain - they ordered 6 sets (24 chairs). An email confirming the order was received immediately. Two days later, notification of despatch and an estimated delivery period was given. Brilliant - they'd all be there in time for the first hall booking, a 70th birthday party three days after the end of the delivery period - or would they...

Not having received any communication from a carrier by mid-day on the last day of the delivery period my Dad rang customer services to ascertain progress. That was apparently the wrong number to ring, he was given another number that dealt with furniture deliveries. On calling this number the agent couldn't trace his order and Dad was given the name of the transport company. They did their best to help but could find no record of his order. This agent talked to her supervisor who informed her that they didn't actually deliver furniture for M&S.

I could sense just a tiny bit of frustration in Dad's voice as he called the furniture section of M&S again, only to be redirected to the first number he had called. On talking to a different agent on the customer services orderline number she again tried to redirect him to furniture. When he pointed out that he was now embarking on the same cycle of five phone calls that he'd just completed she promised to look into the problem and call back. To be fair she came back quite quickly but only to say that the items were out of stock and not expected to be in until the 4th November. No-one had any idea why he had an email telling him they'd already been despatched. Dad wasn't exactly pleased but didn't have much option but to accept it. Who needs chairs at a birthday party anyway?

Imagine his surprise at 7.00 the same evening when he had a call from HDN (Home Delivery Network - if you google that the results are also very revealing) informing him that they had his chairs and would deliver them three days later. Dad asked them why they couldn't be delivered in the original time period and they said "Well, that's only an estimate."

Three days later the carrier turned up... with four out of the six packs of chairs!

The whole cycle of phone calls was repeated yet again. One agent was so insistent that he should speak to someone in furniture and not the customer services orderline that she transferred him mid-protestation. Dad's had enough - 3 hours in total on the telephone and a letter to Customer Correspondence which hasn't been replied to 14 days later. In actual fact it's probably the carrier that let M&S down but at no point could an agent find out what had happened to the order or take control of the query.

Today someone at church just asked Dad to order two more packs.......