Dear LPG, 

 
Not so long ago I decided to surprise my Mum with a present to help with her gardening.  Its technical name was a ‘2-in-1 Cordless Pruner with Telescopic Pole’.  She bought one using one of the many booklets that arrived with the post and try to sell all manner of things, but after two years, the charger broke. When we returned to the company that sold it to her, they told us they no longer sell them and could not tell us the manufacturer's name.

I did some research, and the company turned out to be Chinese.  I tried the phone number I found on their website, but it did not work, so I tried to email in the hope of getting a replacement part, but there was no response. 

So, plan two took me back to the internet, where I found one just like it, but with one distinctive difference: it was made in Britain.  I was not going to be fooled again.  I used their telephone number.  I found it on their website and telephoned to make sure their product was fixable and that it was possible to get replacement parts.  All seemed good, and their advisor even told me that buying directly from them would cost about £4o.00 more than if I went to one of those online shopping outlets we have all heard of because of their advertising campaigns.

I ordered, and we waited, but a month passed, and the goods still needed to arrive.

The only way I could find to contact these people was through an online virtual assistant where you had to talk via WhatsApp.   I could not find a telephone number, but luckily, I could access their virtual assistant on my laptop via their online chat service.  The principle here is that you have a conversation where you must type instead of talk.   I can type fast enough to keep up with an online chat, but though the typed replies came back at me thick and fast, the conversation just went around in circles.  I was asked to repeat the reference numbers; I answered and explained that I did not have my goods, but then their system would tell me that it did not understand me and ask me to repeat my request.  There are only so many ways that you can type ‘I would like my money back or the goods that I ordered please’.  In the end, I typed that I would like to speak to a real person, and the reply came back that it would be arranged and they would call, but days later, I heard nothing.  After trying to make myself understood during four different sessions of this finger-exercising method of conversation, I had another idea. 

I originally paid for the goods via an online bank called PayPal and worked out that if I contacted them and asked them to take my money back, I might make some headway.  There was more online form filling and online chat with the electronic assistant where I tried to get someone to talk to me, but in the end, I just got a message telling me that my money would be returned, and it was. Was it due to my threat to give them a negative online review?

I think that the moral of my story points out three things…

1.     Please ensure that before you order anything online, you check how to contact the sellers if you need to.

2. If you are not making any headway with the people you buy from, approaching the bank you paid through is worth it.

And 

3.     I don’t know if it helped my case, but I do know that most of these online sellers don’t need a progression of bad reviews, so if you remind them that you could take that course of action, it just might make them sit up and pay attention. 

TG, Sevenoaks