As if 2020 hasn’t been brutal enough for us all, my poor mother’s year has ended with someone having a very unnecessary joke at her expense. She ordered quite a lot of wine from Laithwaite’s on our behalf for Christmas, so imagine her dismay when her confirmation email was addressed to a “lush drunk” from “Nowhereland.”
When she called Laithwaite’s to complain, they sent her their usual £30.00 discount voucher with a note saying; “We are sorry you didn’t like your wine,” which was clearly an inappropriate response and with that she saw red and asked us to get involved. After a fairly strident email from us, they sent her a magnum of Prosecco, which I told them wasn’t particularly commensurate with the hurt they’d caused her, especially given that she’d chosen expensive wine (it was on offer) and had spent a lot of money.
A week later we heard back from the Customer Service Team Manager to let us know that their technical team “did not find any system based explanation for this error, but they were able to rule out any advisor error whether deliberate or not.” They concluded therefore that it was “a one-off glitch.” In conclusion, he wrote “I am prepared to cancel the £30 voucher and replace it with a bottle of champagne” and then advised me on the phone that the case was now closed (no pun intended). I’m not entirely sure why they cancelled the voucher – she could have ordered the champagne with that if she’d wanted it, so basically there was no improvement on their initial, somewhat paltry offer. Their customer care, on this occasion was appalling and if my mother’s experience is anything to go by, they’ve clearly lost touch with their customers.
Now that London is in Tier 4 Lockdown, like millions of us around the country, we’ve had to dramatically rearrange our Christmas plans and so very sadly, not only can my widowed mother who lives on her own no longer come and stay with us, neither can the wine!
I know everyone has gone a little bit mad in lockdown, but has anyone else experienced anything like this?
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