Tesco photo shop 1 WH Smith 0 – Naming and Shaming – Oh yes!

So, I ordered a photo book from the Tesco photoshop and it duly arrived. I was delighted with the inside, but the cover? Well, it was like Hotblack Desiato’s Disaster Areas’s ship^*1, – all black buttons on a black background when it came to the title. OK, so maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it was black printing on a dark surface and hard to read so I e-mailed to complain. I received an e-mail from a very nice lady who asked me to return it (freepost) and she said she’d look into it. After a week or so she mailed to say that they would replace it with another cover of my choice and gave me simple and clear instructions on how to upload my new choice without paying for it. So...well done Tesco!

By contrast, I ordered 2 books for Christmas from WH Smith – both hardback copies. When they arrived they had sent me one hardback and one paperback. I emailed and got an automated response that said they would reply personally in 48 hours...but they didn’t. I emailed again and got exactly the same response (i.e. none). I phoned and after 20 minutes of ‘you are in a queue’ they cut me off. I emailed again and yet again I have had no response.

So I was wondering - what is the use of a company who is completely unreachable in the event of you having a query?

Eventually I phoned again and spoke to an 'oik' who told me that the catalogue was wrong and that the book was in fact only available in paperback so that’s what they had sent me. He said that if I wished I could return it (at my own expense of course). I got no apology and it probably cost me £5.00 in phone calls to get this information.

I will never ever order anything else from WH Smith online again and no, I don’t care that I am telling the whole world how dreadful they are....

^*1 If you don’t know who this is, you really should...!