6 weeks ago youngest daughter made a very simple order for some ready-to-hang curtains from John Lewis. 10 days later they sent an email saying that they were going to deliver that Friday and we still have no curtains a month later!! The lack of curtains is the least of the problems, it is the music they play whilst they put you on hold on the telephone so that they can sort out the problem. Is it meant to calm you because it has the opposite effect on me and I want to throw the phone across the room and then kill myself which would then solve the problem for JL. It is the same ‘musak’ as the sound that filters through every room in a dental surgery just before they inflict huge pain on you and so I associate it with times when someone is trying to bluff me. In this instance I know they are since the original curtains, which my daughter waited in all day for the delivery, had never been made as all the fabric was faulty. So the van had no curtains to deliver which explains why I was mildly irritated when I called following the original delivery day (I have made over 10 calls since). A new pair were ordered in a new fabric which was a little more expensive and as JL realised I was a deranged woman on a mission they waived the difference. All very acceptable except these curtains were also meant to be delivered, on 8th December, but after 12 hours of sitting waiting they too did not arrive and whilst the JL website says they have been delivered they are, after a particularly vociferous call from a now irate customer (yes that’s me), are thinking that they may still be at the factory and this morning are starting to mention that they may never have been made! This is after 3 calls when they promised they would call me back within the hour…….I think they now give me false names so that I can never trace them. Clearly my reputation goes before me or at least once I give the first line of my address together with my postcode their computer flashes up “Mad Woman – fob her off as quick as you can and then take sick leave”. I get irritated when they constantly ask me my address for security reasons when surely there would not be another person in the world who would want to fraudulently pretend to be me to argue over a pair of curtains that have never been made. The only saving grace is that since these curtains are for a student house there is always someone there since half the tenants only have 6 hours a week tuition……….now don’t get me started on the rise in student fees!!
P.S. I have written this whole blog whilst hanging on the phone for Shandra of Customer Services at JL to sort me out, listening to ghastly music – I think they are sending a man with a sledge hammer around to my house, in an attempt to sort me out, hence the endless questions to check my address and postcode!!