Now I wouldn’t normally use a blog post to criticise a company but I figured that as I had used one to praise EasyJet I was justified in using one to criticise Debenhams, and it is PR related in that they have damaged their reputation by the way that they behave.
Earlier this year we went to Debenhams to purchase wedding outfits for the boys. We got to the checkout and were offered a store card. I hate these tactics and I would normally have said no but they were giving an additional 20% discount, on top of the normal 10, so on purchases totalling over £100 it was worth having. Or so I thought.
I said yes which seemed to take them aback a little. I won’t go into details but it must have taken an hour to complete all the paperwork. Firstly they couldn’t find the forms, then they didn’t know how to fill them out. Fail #1.
All this form filling was going on at the checkout while a queue of people built up behind me, some put their goods down and walked out. Fail #2.
Next job was to register on line, pay the bill and then cancel the card. Now to register on line you need your account number. This would be the number on the front of the card right?… Wrong… this was the number that was printed in one place in faded purple writing on the agreement form. Fail #3.
Now this is a paperless account and all the communications is supposed to be via the web site, or via a premium rate phone line. There was no way I was going to use a premium rate phone line so when I was finally able to get into the account I sent a message through their system asking what I needed to do to cancel my account.
I received a response in my email inbox telling me to log into the account to see the answer to my message. I tried and got rejected “not able to log in at this time” I tried again later the same day, and the next. Still the same message. In the end I had to resort to the premium rate line. After what seemed like hundreds of security questions and having to change my password also I was told the reason I couldn’t get in was because the account had been closed.
So they sent me message telling me to go to the account to collect my response, knowing that they had closed the account and I couldn’t access that message. Is that just the stupidest thing you have ever heard? Fail #4.
If Debenhams want to compete in what is a very tough market at the moment they need to buck up their ideas I think.
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