Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!

It took an hour, but Next have redeemed themselves. I had to become strongly assertive in order to achieve a call from their supervisor in a timely manner, and I had threatened them with £50 per day for storage based on their (then) breach of contract. But I have now had the supervisor call.

I explained that I was angry, not because the drivers had left without collecting; as I said, I would have done the same in their position, but because I had fulfilled my part of the contract in the full expectation that they would fulfill theirs.

She agreed with me.

A special van is coming today.

She is also feeding back the necessity to protect their drivers by supplying them with blankets to minimise the risk of transit damage.

So they have redeemed themselves. But they should not have needed to. They should not have taken the risk of customer dissatisfaction.

Bah Humbug. And Next Home Delivery

Ah, the spirit of Christmas! And the concept of call centre based customer service looms large in my thoughts right now.

You may remember that I had furniture problems. Loads of furniture came and was of such poor quality that I have eventually rejected all that I bought from Next plc. That was quite a lot of furniture. Problems included flaking veneer, mould growing under the veneer, splitting wood on a dining table, and so much more. We were on our fourth sideboard and fourth dining table, with a fifth dining table on order and on 14 week delivery.

We rejected it. All of it. And that should have been simple. Next agreed the rejection, and arranged the collection. That was to be today. But Next have a peculiarity. They insist that the furniture is wrapped. They suggest... Bin Liners.

Now the logic of this escapes me. Bin liners protect the furniture not at all. They protect the drivers not at all. In fact wrapping it in bin liners is dangerous because no grip can be obtained for lifting purposes and the danger to backs and feet is immense. When I pointed this out to the Next call centre the agreed that I should protect the corners of the items by taping packaging material over them, and that would be perfectly sufficient.

I did. I got their permission to use sticky tape and fix packaging over the corners, and I did that this morning.

When the drivers arrived I had a surprise. They both have no blankets or other materials in the lorry, and it looked very much as though they had insufficient ties to secure the load inside it. Worse than that they are personally liable for any damage. It comes out of their pay. Quite reasonably they refused to collect the goods, but phoned their supervisor for authorisation in case they were given a dispensation. I have no quarrel with the drivers, none at all. I would have acted precisely as they did under those circumstances.

My quarrel is with Next.

You see, I have fulfilled my part of the bargain. I did as I was instructed, and as we had agreed. But today's call centre agent decided that the call centre agent who had agreed the packaging with me was wrong to have agreed that.

In the intervening period the carrier's call centre called the Next call centre and the collection was cancelled irrevocably. The lorry left. They have their day to get on with, and work to do before the Christmas traffic makes their lives impossible.

But I am left with a garage full of furniture that I had a full, formal contract to be collected.

The thing I truly do not understand is the total insanity of this. No-one keeps furniture packaging. Most delivery companies remove it and take it away. Next, knowing that it is to collect large, heavy items, does not supply packaging or blankets to its drivers. And the person who suffers is the good old customer, even if there is a full agreement in place to use a particular style of packaging (which with almost any other company would not be necessary).

That just is not customer service

But there is a part 2! A good outcome

Remember that bunch flogging IVAs?

I blogged about it back in July. They are called "Investment Team" and appear to have annoyed a reasonable number of folk, form the fuss online about them

My new friend at I Team (remember, he is nothing to do with this bunch?) has been contacted by the TPS and several other folks. Everyone thinks it's his business, and it isn't.

There's a journalist on the track, now. I don't think anyone likes the idea of hard selling a "mild form of bankruptcy"