A Letter To Asda
2012
Apologies for the break in normal programming but I’ve decided to use this platform to let you know about some really rather shoddy customer service I’ve experienced recently.
A year or so ago we decided to stop shopping in the supermarket and turn to online shopping instead, working on the basis that time is precious and also that we were spending too much money being tempted by things in the shop rather than just buying what we needed and sticking to the list. We opted to use Asda as they came in at a good £30 a week cheaper than the rest.
I’m currently sitting at home, waiting for a food order that was due to be delivered 48 hours ago. Here’s what happened:
Wednesday 30th May. Placed food order, booked delivery slot for 6-8pm the following day. Paid for it, received confirmation email.
Thursday 31st May: No food. No phonecall. I phone customer services, who tell me that my order is showing as incomplete, meaning that I hadn’t checked out properly, and that I need to go back online and complete it. I thought it was odd as I had had the confirmation email but waited til the morning when I could log onto a PC and checked.
Friday 1st June: 8am. First call of the day. I explain that as far as I am concerned, my order is complete as I do have a confirmation email and that I can see it as complete in my order history. I am told that someone will call me back in 10 mins.
10am. No call back. I call again,where I am told that yes, the order was complete so they wil call the store that was meant to deliver the order, and call me back. Which they do! Hurrah! To tell me that the driver attempted to deliver my order in the allotted slot, but that we were out. Boo! I can quite categorically say that this is a load of tripe, as we were in from 5pm (order window was 6-8pm) and didn’t go to bed til gone 11pm. Plus we had no missed call. We would have heard the door. I insist that this is a lie, and request action. I am told someone from the store will call me that morning to arrange a redelivery.
12.30pm. Nobody has called me. I call again, and am promised a call back immediately by the store.
4pm. Nothing. I call again. I am promised a call back from the store.
4.30pm. I receive a call from customer services not the store) to tell me that they are “too busy” to deliver my shopping that day. I request a refund, only to be told that they want to make the delivery, but that it can’t be that day (Friday, 24 hours after my original time slot that they missed). I ask when they might have time in their busy schedules to get around to bring me my food, which is probably defrosting in a warehouse somewhere) and guess what I am told? That’s right, someone from the store will call me back!
5pm. Someone from the store calls. But not me, they call my husband,despite me leaving two numbers for them to call me on. They call a totally different number to the two I have been leaving all day (work, and my mobile). He is told that the food will be delivered on Saturday, some time before 8pm. Great.
Saturday, 11am. I call again, to see if they can be more specific. Am told someone from the store will call me back. I state that I am not interested in this, and that I just want a refund. I am offered a £5 free delivery voucher to be used during my next order. I am then told that they will check with the store and call me back.
Saturday 12pm. I cancel my plans to meet my friend for lunch. Customer services then call to say I can expect my order between 6pm and 8pm today. I still don’t dare go out though, just in case. I also know that Asda have a track record of delivering fresh items with a use-by date of that day (I figure that’s just one of the hazards of online shopping) but I will be furious if they try to palm off stuff that should have been used on Thursday, when my original order was meant to arrive. Not to mention the frozen prawns that have probably thawed out and so I’ll have to cook them immediately. Argh.
So, we shall see what happens this evening. What irks me is that I have already forgiven Asda for some shocking lapses in customer service. The time I was sent some mayonnaise that expired 7 months previously? (receiving £1.67 in compensation). The time they forgot to tell us that our driver had called in sick and so our food wasn’t coming? The time the driver dropped a box on our steps, shattering one of the paving slabs? The time they forgot to get all our bags out of the van so we had to get a refund on half of our shopping? And most memorably, the time that they turned up three hours late on our wedding anniversary, meaning that we had to cancel our plans to go out for dinner (no compensation). Oh and the fact that one of the men at the Customer Service call centre insisted on calling me “Phyllis”, even though my name is Helen.
I’ve had enough. Asda might be cheaper than the rest, but their customer service is appalling. They were quick enough to respond on Twitter when I was having a moan on there yesterday, asking me to message them my contact details, which I duly did. And STILL nobody called me. So it’s ok to publically appear to be concerned but not to bother to follow it through? Shoddy.
Asda, it would appear that you are completely disinterested in customer satisfaction, nor the fact that I’ll be taking my £400+ per month to one of your competitors, who assure me they will be more than happy to have my business.
Have you had any negative experiences similar to mine? Let me know in the comments.
*edit* Good job I waited in. The delivery came at 4.30pm, an hour and a half early. Not that I’m really upset about that as I’m ravenous. Although I might be cross if I had gone out and missed it….. All the food was in date and the frozen was still frozen.
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God Phyllis, that truly is ridiculous. Awful way for a company to treat its paying customers. If I was ever tempted to go to online shopping your experience has put me off for life
I have retweeted this to my followers and will keep them informed of how you get on
Phyllis? PHYLLIS?! If that wasn’t the final straw I don’t know what would be.
I don’t do a lot of online grocery shopping because (unlike everyone else in the world) I always seem to end up spending more. But when I have done I’ve used Tesco or Sainsburys and never had any problems, although they are a bit pricier. Will certainly be steering clear of Asda though.
THIS is why we use Ocado. Always on time, polite and efficient. I like their meat better than Asda’s too.
I do not use Asda for online shopping, because a friend of mine was always complaining about their delivery service and how unreliable they are but she sticks with them because she saves money. I do my shopping with Tesco who so far I have found to be excellent, but that said when I tried to do my shopping this week their website kept going all cranky on me and I ended up going out to get my shopping in the car. It is a pain when your time is short, I am a carer for my elderly parents so I find it very handy for saving time. Hope you get your shopping today, luv reading your website.
Here via a retweet from @bigfashionista. I shop online with Adsa quite a lot and, whilst I have never had problems to the scale you have, I find I am constantly complaining about short-dated “fresh” food, delivery times not being upheld, customer services palming me off with excuses and promises of call backs.
I would love to shop somewhere else but find that, even with price comparison, I can’t afford the other two online shopping services that offer to deliver to my town.
Really shoddy service to which I feel like I am tied. Whatever happened to “The Customer is King”? and the fact that I’m actually spending my hard earned money in their stores during such frugal times?
Absolutely disgusting behaviour, how they have been able to get away with this is unbelievable and the fact they can’t see any problems.
i have to say i work in Waitrose and the deliver department is absolutely superb. So much training goes into the picking side of it – all fresh items have the longest delivery date possible and will be substituted for something similar if there is no long date. They also offer free delivery with orders over £50 and always deliver items when they are supposed to be, any issues and they will always phone you. I’d recommend giving them a try if you have one near you.
Sometimes its just not worth paying less money for such shoddy service. Hope you get your money back! x
They are shoddy. According to our Tesco driver they’ve had so many complaints they’ve laid off drivers in our area as a result.
The fresh stuff never lasts the week.
I go to Aldi now. It’s about £40 a week cheaper and doesnt take as long because it’s a smaller store.
Absolutely shocking…… although not unusual in these days of poor customer service! The last time I was in our local ASDA store, I was kept waiting at the till whilst they went to fetch the ‘mineral make-up’ I had paid for on their ‘take this ticket to the till’ system…. after 10 MINUTES, I complained…. but in all honesty they were not in the least bit concerned. I haven’t been back!
We’ve so far been lucky with Asda, only one incident but in no way as shockingly bad as this. When we placed our order, they obviously take the money for the complete order from the bank, but if something is unavailable or changed, they then refund this amount back. One weekend, we had our shopping and quite a number of items were missing, nothing major, so not a big headache. Anyway, I checked my bank account and the £20 for the non-available items hadn’t been deducted from the final amount. I waited until the Monday afternoon and checked again, to find that, rather than refunding the £20, they had charged us for the full shop again, including the original total with the missing items!
I emailed them, and heard nothing at all. So, I did as you did and mentioned it on Twitter. They straight away got in touch, and promised a phone call, which came later that evening.
I was told by a surly male customer service person that I was wrong, they hadn’t double charged me, nor had they not refunded on the unavailable items. I asked if he was calling me a liar. Yes he said, they had checked and they are never wrong! He then told me to go and look in my bank account to see he was right, promptly dropping the call before I could speak. In case, I checked the bank and it was the same, so I again took to Twitter and really let them have it. A manager then emailed me and apologised profusely, saying he would rectify the situation. From placing my order on the Saturday, to it arriving on Sunday, it took until the following Friday before the money was returned, and even then I had to ask again for the non-available items money to be refunded. No offer of compensation at all.
It would seem, from my bad experience of missing food, out of date stock or deliveries never arriving with Tesco that these stores need to up their game, I’ve not heard of any stores being blemish free, with surly drivers and appalling customer service when things go wrong. It speaks for itself- if things went wrong in store, it would be dealt with promptly. They know this isn’t possible when buying online, hence the rubbish service received by many.
I just had an order delivered this morning, where they failed to deliver 6 bottles of wine (alcohol-free, and quite hard to come by), although my receipt clearly said I’d paid for it. Phoned up their call centre in India, who said they’d call me back.
They rung back saying: “we can’t get hold of either the driver nor the supermarket itself (seriously?!), do you want a refund?”. I said, “No thanks. I can’t get to one of your stores to buy that wine for this weekend, so I’d like it re-delivered please”. Two hours later, it’s on another delivery van to be delivered this evening before 8pm. Let’s see if it does arrive.
Anyways, I’ll be claiming back at least my delivery charge. What a shocker! You’d think they’d want to make a good impression on a first-time customer!
*shakes head in disbelief*
Wow…. Unbelievable.
Hope they sort it out… Try taking payment card and confirmation email to the store in question and demanding a refund? Considering you’ve had no luck at a distance.
Id be bloody jumping!
Have never shopped online with asda … Never will be now!!
Good luck!xx
http://goo.gl/6gEhf
I feel your pain.. I used Asda once – more of the food went off before th week was over. I click and collect from tesco now after one Of their delivery men dropped a crate and fresh cream went all over my drive – no offer of cleaning it up, to their credit when i called and moaned I got a £5er… I’d move to Ocado but I think it’s too expensive. Good
Luck!
Online grocery shopping is such a headache, but Colin and I don’t have much of a choice because we’re both out of the house between about 8am and 8pm and neither of us drive. We use Tesco, we had some crap customer service with them on our second order. It was a while ago now, but from memory I think we ordered on a Saturday and the earliest delivery slot was 9-10pm the following Wednesday. On Wednesday, we waited until 10.40pm then called customer service. We were promised a call back in 5 minutes. We waited until 10.50 and called back again – promised a call back immediately. At 11.15, we called again only to be met with an automated ‘Thank you for calling Tesco dot com, we are currently closed’. GREAT!
The following morning we called the moment it opened, apparently the driver didn’t have time to make our order the night before. And they didn’t feel it was necessary to tell us this? They didn’t have any free slots that day, so we wait to wait until Friday evening to get our food but we were given £20 of online vouchers for our next shop.
Another time, we had an 8-9pm delivery slot (we usually go for 9-10 in case either of us are held up getting home from work) which arrived at 7.15pm, luckily Colin’s brother was in at the time and I know it’s silly to complain if it arrives early rather than late but if he wasn’t in, we’d have been stuffed. Other than that, we’ve not really had any issues other than getting food that’s only a day or two away from expiring.
We’d been thinking about trying Asda instead, but after reading this I think we’ll be steering well clear. Thanks for sharing your awful experience with us!
Phyllis? WTF I would be fuming. Insult you for days and they don’t even call you the right name! I wouldn’t bother with Asda they were always forgetting stuff of my order, delivering stuff that had to be eaten on the day, half defrosted ice cream that had leaked, substituting one cat food for another brand which the cat refused to eat substituting quorn burger for normal burgers!! I gave up, I use tesco or ocado it’s less irritating!
I’m really shocked by their attitude and not least by the fact that the driver told a blatant lie about trying to deliver. There’s no way you’d miss them knocking. Remember that time that take away guy came round trying to deliver to the wrong house complete with torch?!
I’m not surprised you want to take you custom elsewhere. Shame on you Asda! I’m sad they spoiled our shopping plans too.
I stopped using them after 2 years last year after numerous let downs! I now use Sainsburys, not that much more expensive really and the food is much MUCH fresher and now with a years online shopping under my belt I have never had any problem bar the odd time of being 5 minutes late for which you get a £10 voucher! The piddle over Asda!
Oh yes, and the snow trouble last year, ordered £100 of stuff, never came, no phonecall, when I finally got hold of them I got no apology just ‘its the snow’ I then had to wait 10 days for my refund! Luckily my mum leant me the money to get my weekly shop and my dad managed to drive me, otherwise we would have starved!
Thanks Kelly you are quite right. I appreciate you. Really i was looking forward to read about this type of opinion. Thanks and keep commenting.
I find it depends on the area you live in and the store your deliveries come from, as to the service you receive. Where I live in Buckinghamshire, the service from Asda is great- never a complaint from me. However, where my fiancé lives in Cardiff- I complain on his behalf on almost a weekly basis. Unfortunately, though we would love to change to another company. the only one that delivers to his area is Tesco and the range on offer is limited, so he couldn’t have half of what he wanted.
He is blind and hearing impaired and despite my leaving explanatory notes, they regularly deliver shopping without really speaking to him, don’t explain the substitutions, so he has no idea what he has been given! I have had to go through the farce of phoning customer services, having the substitutions explained to me on the phone, then look them up on the asda website and then type out the cooking instructions and email them to him. Not good, not good at all!
The food’s cheap and unfortunately so is the service. I’ve had several very similar experiences to you – their customer service is the pits. Especially that awful call centre you have to phone when your food hasn’t arrived – they consistently failed to call me back, got everything wrong etc etc when I dealt with them too. You get a more coherent response if you complain to their head office, but even then I’d expect more in terms of apology, compensation or incentives to use them again. Good customer service is sadly not top of their list. If I’m ordering food for an event or if there’s some time sensitive element, I would never use Asda as they’re far too unreliable
I’ve never shopped for groceries online simply because there are so many potential pitfalls. I prefer to select my own food from the shelf because that way I know I haven’t picked the half rotten veg or the meat that goes out of date tomorrow. I also know that I will have my food when I need it and don’t have to set aside two hours of my day waiting for someone to bring it to me. I suppose it works for some but I really don’t get the attraction myself. I am lucky enough to drive so it’s easy for me to get to and from the store with a lot of shopping which helps.
I have to confess though that I do love Asda and will still be going there for my shopping as I save so much compared to other stores. I do sympathise with your experience though. Almost all companies these days provide horrendous customer service, particularly large, faceless corporations – sign of the times or something?? xx