A couple of weeks back I ordered a laptop from Dell, for which I had to pay an extra £57.58 for delivery - undertaken by Target. "Oh well," I thought, "for that much money they must provide a really good service." It seemed reasonably quick, too - according to Dell's website, "Orders generally reach their destination within 2-5 working days of the actual ship date."
Things started quite well. I was pleased to find that Target offered an online tracking service, and that - again, according to Dell - they would contact me to arrange delivery. Dell duly dispatched the laptop on 22 March, and Target's tracking system quoted a delivery date of 27 March. Reasonable, considering that there was a weekend in between.
After that it was all downhill. On 26 March my wife phoned me to say she'd found a card on the doormat - they'd been round already but got no answer from the doorbell. This was without anyone having made contact with us.
I phoned their call centre. (Which took an age - I was on hold for roughly twenty minutes before anyone answered.) They expressed surprise that we'd had a problem, since their local depot had left a message (on our answering machine, the previous afternoon - why not an e-mail, or a call to my working number?)
- but undertook to ask the depot to phone on my work number. Fair enough, I thought.
No phone-call by the end of the day. I collected the depot number off the answering machine and decided I'd call the following day. By the time I did, my wife had already e-mailed me to say that they'd left another card (this time without any details at all filled in).
The depot agreed to deliver on Saturday 31st between 12 and 1 - very specific. (They don't deliver beyond 1pm on Saturdays, apparently.) I spent the whole of Saturday morning within earshot of the doorbell, just in case they came early; and the whole of Saturday afternoon, too, just in case they'd been unavoidably delayed. Nothing. (In the meantime, though, they'd delivered a big box on the 27th. This turned out to contain nothing more exciting than the surge protector we'd ordered at the same time and which could have fitted comfortably into a box a quarter of the size or smaller.)
I wasn't able to call them on 2 April. After trying several more times to call their depot on the 3rd (getting either engaged tones, or a ringing tone which cut out after several minutes without anyone replying) I called their call centre again. A further ten-minute wait. This time when I finally got through I was told (by a bubbly young woman who seemed to think the whole thing was a great laugh that the package had been delivered and signed for on 2 April. I told her we hadn't received it. A supervisor confirmed that it had been delivered and that they would send a fax of the signed receipt to prove it. The fax never arrived at my end (although the supervisor phoned back within two minutes of ringing off to confirm he had sent it - it would have been more useful to ask me to confirm I had received it). However, when I got home, I did discover yet another card...
I can only assume that the supervisor was looking at the tracking service (which records only a few of these events, incompletely, and apparently gives the times of the updates rather than the events they refer to) and that the package delivery he was referring to was the surge protector. Apparently the Park Royal depot in London is their busiest. Hardly surprising if they have so many failed attempts to deliver all their consignments (a reason why their service is so expensive, perhaps?).
The latest (after another angry call today) is that they're going to deliver tomorrow (5 April). Allegedly. I'll let you know if they don't.
***Update - 7 April***
They didn't. I phoned again yesterday morning, complained again and said I wanted delivery later on the 6th. The receptionist apologised, agreed there was no excuse for the poor service and undertook to get in touch with the Park Royal depot. She called back two-and-a-half hours later and said Park Royal would be in touch soon to arrange delivery either later that day or today.
No phone call by 1630. Got the Park Royal number from the call centre and called them direct. They said they were sorry but their server was down so they couldn't track where my parcel was. (Scary in the extreme - have they no manual backup?) I told them to phone me at work before 1800, or e-mail me at any other time.
0905 this morning - still no e-mail (and no phone call yesterday) so back onto the call centre. They answered after 45 minutes, told me that delivery was booked in for this morning (again, with no confirmation) and suggested I call them again if I'd received nothing by 1330. Sure enough, by 1335 nothing had arrived. We thought it not worth hanging around just in case they'd been delayed, so went out shopping for the afternoon. Good decision - there was no card waiting for us when we got back.
I've now written to Dell with this story, asking them to refund the delivery fee and strongly recommending they find a better despatch service. Look forward to an op on Dell customer services in the coming days...
(Sorry, I know this is turning into a rant. But it's good therapy!)
***Update - 9 April***
Stunner on today's phone-call...
They told me that according to their system the package had been delivered and signed for on the 4th. I told them, as politely as I could, that we'd have noticed if anyone had delivered a 9kg box. We had, however, taken delivery of a surge protector a week earlier than that. After a short break on hold while the operator checked with the depot, he came back to tell me that they'd need to book a collect-and-delivery call, ie collect the surge protector and then deliver the laptop. This seemed a touch Kafkaesque to say the least - why would I want to hand back the one part of the delivery they'd managed to complete? "Oh," he answered, "did you want the surge protector, then?" I confirmed that we had ordered one, and that Dell had sent it under a different order number (which I quoted). He promised to ring the depot and sort out the confusion.
Latest is that we're getting it tomorrow afternoon. IBIWISI...
***Update - 10 April***
It finally arrived today (I'm writing this update on it). Guess what? They delivered it this morning - after I'd asked them for an afternoon or evening delivery. Fortunately my wife was on hand to receive it - three minutes more and they'd have missed her...
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
as an employee of target i have to agree with you that our service is not what could really be described as a service. i know it is of little consilation to you now but you will be pleased to know that we no longer deliver for dell computers, which is bad news for lynx i am afraid as they now have the contract.
i have to say that as a consequence of losing the dell contract we should return to the levels of service that we were are capable of, the days of me reccomending target may return!
i could apologise for the obviously poor service which you recieved, but i feel that as the contract was gained on the back of greediness and contempt for the company by the directors it would be more appropriate for them to do so.
i live in hope of working for a decent company again.
big_t 27.12.2001 11:04
Thanks so much for that opinion, I am in the process of looking for a new courier service, and it won't be Target !
regards
Connoisseur_Haggler 11.06.2001 18:37
sorry to hear of the poor inefficient service Target WE provided, thanks for bringing it to our attention, hopefully will watch out for this one with due care!! many thanks for sharing your experiences.
very helpful by (100%):
