I placed at an order at www.comet.co.uk for a Sony TV priced at £178.76.
This money was taken from my account at the same time. I received
both email and royal mail confirmation that the delivery of this
item would be on Tuesday 25th March between 07:00- 18:00. My husband
who runs an IT business arranged to be at home to accept the delivery.
At 5pm on the 25th I rang the company to confirm that delivery
would be taking place and got through to one the tele-centre people
with relative ease I was assured that the delivery was due for
within the hour. At 6pm the delivery had still not taken place.
Between 6.15pm and 7pm I tried repeatedly to speak with your agents
- I was placed repeatedly on hold and eventually gave up.
At 8.20am on the 26th I rang once again, after 15 minutes on
hold to an advisor I was put through to the internet department
and told that the problem would be sorted. I was then told by
the internet department that comet.co.uk have a "glitch"
in their system - that the system on occasion places orders and
then cancels them and that the first comet.co.uk finds out about
this is when a customer calls querying why a delivery has not
taken place.
You can imagine my frustration at being told this. Whilst computer
problems do occur it is surely not acceptable to allow this to
continue - and furthermore to accept that customers will be put
out by such events. I was then told that the earliest delivery
would be available on Friday 28th of March. Unsatisfied with this
I asked to be put through to a supervisor in the department.
I then had an extremely tense conversation with the internet
division supervisor. He told me after some time that infact he
could not even find my address details on the system, I explained
to him that our home is in a new build and therefore I had chosen
the "over-write" option on your internet page, that
this had been accepted and hence that the order had been accepted
and therefore the monies taken out of my account. He told me that
you were unable to deliver to addresses not on your system despite
the order being accepted and the monies debited and that I had
been repeatedly assured of delivery of the item and that the only
option was to cancel the order and refund the monies.
At this juncture let me point out that without exception from Domino’s
Pizza to other mail order firms every other company I have dealt
with has been able to over-write this issue and deliver - surely
it is unacceptable that a company offering on-line ordering be unable
to match this service.
Despite being assured that the monies would be back in my account
"within 5 minutes" at this stage the money does not
appear to have been refunded.
Finally in exasperation I have this morning (27 March) spoken
to the customer service department and explained the situation
to them as per the above details – they were apologetic,
telling me that “5 minutes” which is the time I was
assured it would take to put the monies back into my account was
totally unrealistic that infact it would take 5 days and that
the monies were always taken from peoples accounts before an order
was placed – that this was common practise.
I queried therefore why I was not written to when it became apparent
that the delivery would not be fulfilled again your agent could
“only apologise”. I then asked to speak to her supervisor
I was told that she was unavailable, when I pushed your agent
she hung up on me. At no point during this conversation did I
do anything to warrant this – I did not raise my voice or
was abusive in any way – I have never been treated in this
way by any other company and certainly did not expect to have
this happen when I was ringing to m ake a complaint.
I am absolutely appalled at the service I have received Comet,
this debacle has cost my husband a day's worth of business, myself
the £178.76 which has not been refunded and a total of one
and a half hours on the phone.
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