Please help me get an explanation for the non-delivery of a Christmas bouquet from Debenhams Flowers. I am on a mailing list and there was a half-price offer (£25 rather than £50), so I bought a festive centrepiece. On 25 November I placed the order, which was to be delivered two days before Christmas. I received an email saying it had been despatched, including a link to delivery company DX, but the flowers did not arrive.
I contacted DX, which eventually said it had had an electronic notification, but no flowers. Debenhams Flowers does not operate at weekends so there was no reply to my phone calls or emails. On Christmas Eve I had to buy a last-minute £10 bunch to have flowers on my Christmas dinner table, which was a huge disappointment.
I’ve contacted Debenhams online three times but have not even had an acknowledgement. I have also posted my complaint on Facebook and used Facebook messaging. Debenhams says it will contact me but so far hasn’t.
As I used PayPal for the transaction, I raised an action with it for non-delivery and received a refund within 24 hours. On my Debenhams account the order is marked “closed”, but I have still had no explanation or contact from Debenhams, which I consider appalling. SN, Whitley Bay, Northumberland
Though not entirely clear from its website, Debenhams Flowers is part of the Debenhams retail group, so it was surprising and disappointing that you were on the receiving end of such poor service. We also rang the customer service number and nobody phoned us back. We then contacted the company via Debenhams itself, and its version of events is slightly different from yours.
A spokeswoman said its customer services team did respond to you to apologise and offer a goodwill gesture at the same time that it authorised the refund on your PayPal transaction. She said: “I am sorry SN did not receive this response, but we do have records of the message that was sent. We have now spoken to SN and she has accepted a goodwill gesture.”
That was two bunches of flowers – one for you and one for your stepmother.
Looking at the volume of complaints on talkboards we think the firm needs to sharpen up its customer service – this was clearly not a one-off incident.
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