Sunday, 11 July 2010

Asos fail

I am really rather angry.
Asos.com has been, up til now, my favourite online shop. I just finished making a very sizeable order and, after i had put in my payment details was told that there had been a problem and my order had not gone through. So i went and made a duplicate order which went through with no problems. Then i checked my email and found i had 2 order confimations and that the first order i had made had gone through after all. So i emailed their care place and asked for my second order to be cancelled.
I have just been told that they cannot cancel orders once they have been submitted because: 'our warehouse picks, packs and processes your order fully within 30 minutes of you clicking the final confirmation. Your order then gets put with thousands of others and it is impossible for us to locate a single parcel amongst the rest'
However i reported the problem and asked for them to cancel my second order within less than 5 minutes of making it!
It is absolutely rediculous that they cannot cancel an order, especially as the reason i made the second order was due to a fault on their website!
So now i will be delivered 2 parcels and have to return the contents of one. My disability means that going to the post office is highly traumatic for me and so i avoid it at all costs. So having to return a parcel is stressful anyway, without the added frustration that it's not my fault. 
Also, like i said, this was a large and pricey order. I checked before i made it that i could afford it, but not twice! And it will take a while after i've returned the duplicate parcel for my refund to get processed. So basically they have put me in a financial mess.

Asos are a great site, and their sale (which is what i bought from) is amazing. But being unable to cancel an order made less than 5 minutes before i reported the need to cancel it is just terrible. I've had annoyances with their customer service before. Namely that twice i bought a specific type of ring and twice these rings arrived broken, in the same way. On their refund slip that comes with your order it says something along the lines that if anything arrives faulty and you report it they will ship you out a replacement immediately and give you 10% off your next order. So the second time this happened i decided to report it. I also tried to help out, suggesting that the reason the two rings had been broken was due to them being wrapped only in a plastic film and that the replacement i got for the first ring had come in a box, which seemed better protection. My reply basically just said 'just return it as usual'. So not only did i not get the 10% off that it mentions, but they completely disregarded my attempts to be helpful to them, which i really did not need to do after their merchandise kept breaking before i even recieved them.

LILLIAN SMASH!!


Edit:
After i complained about this on twitter Asos care got in touch with me and have offered that, as soon as i have a dispatch number and tell them they will get the... deliverer to return it to them, and then refund me as soon as it returns to them, which obviously would be a lot sooner than i i had to wait for it to be delivered and then return it myself. This is good. However i still think it's silly that they couldn't just cancel my order so soon after i had made it. Also if i hadn't been on twitter i wouldn't have got this option, which doesn't seem fair.

19 comments:

  1. I am so sorry to hear that :/ I've heard before of their bad costumer service :/

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  2. I'm not loving their costumer service either :/ I've had problems with them too, but I keep placing new orders anyway. Mostely because their sales are great.

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  3. I think that it is ridiculous that they would not have straight away cancelled the second order after such a short space of time, to go ahead and take two lots of money out even though you have said you wanted one cancelled is really off, I'm glad that have a offered a better solution now but it shouldn't have happened in the first place, there is so much more option online these days and word of month is so important I don't understand why companies still offer bad service, puts me off using them for sure x

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  4. Helena:
    It's really frustrating :/ I've actually heard really great stuff about their service, just not experienced it myself.

    PlasticMuffin:
    What's gone wrong for you? I can't help but love them, the sales are amazing and they just have so much good stuff!

    Replica:
    Yeah i think so. If it had been my fault i wouldn't be angry at all, just annoyed at myself, but it was a glitch on the website that i tried to fix as soon as i could :/
    And yeah, it's great that they came up with a compromise but i'm a little saddened thinking that if someone hadn't seen my bitching on twitter i nbever would have got the option. it's great that they noticed and tried to help but the same service should apply to everyone.

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  5. They have to let you cancel an order. With all internet purchases you have to be given 24 hours to change your mind and cancel your order afaik.

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  6. Sorcha:
    I thought that too, but apparently not :/

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  7. That's plain silly that they don't have a process to halt orders before they leave the warehouse.
    It's easily doable but they just haven't bothered to implement a process.
    I use them a lot but got 5 polishes on Saturday just wallowing about in a box. Unbroken but only through sheer luck.
    Hm.

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  8. I had a problem like this with Boots.com. It was actually their fault that they doubled every item in my basket. Even though I rang them up 2 seconds after seeing the problem they said I would have to send everything back! It is complete bollocks they can't cancel the order. I know I work in a mail order company!!

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  9. How frustrating! You shouldn't have to shout about it from the rafters for their customer care to step in and say they'll stop the order. I'm pretty positive a bunch of website allow you to cancel your order whilst it's still processing, makes sense to me considering every order would have a unique order number. Hopefully your items will arrive in one piece and that will be the end of it all!

    Kelly x

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  10. This exact same thing happened to my friend last week!! Hers went through 3 times!!!! Luckily the stuff she ordered was stuff like shampoo/moisturiser etc that she orders regularly so she wasn't that bothered! It's still ridiculous though...they must know a lot of people have had this problem yet it takes a Twitter rant to sort it out! PAH!!

    Glad you've got it sorted...what would we do without Twitter!
    xxx

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  11. seems silly how they cannot cancel it straight away, they dont process it straight away it takes several hours anyway!

    saying that though i have always been impressed with asos and their delivery- next day delivery is fantastic!

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  12. I haven't really had anything real bad happen, bud it annoys me that they can't cancel orders!
    Once I ordered one pricier item and then just thrown in a couple of cheper ones in my cart. In the end the more pricy item I wanted turned out to be out of stock (but I wasn't informed until my order had already gone through, and of course I couldn't cancel it)and ended up paying more for shipping than the items I actually got.

    But overall I'm actually quite happy with them. The shipping time is really fast, even to Sweden. (exept for one time, but I think there was a postal strike or something in the UK then. Or maybe an ariplane strike. Not asos fault, anyway!)

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  13. Hi Lillian, thank you so much for your support through these hard times. Your comment means a lot to me!

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  14. That's really annoying but I'm glad they're now doing something. The power of Twitter is amazing! x

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  15. Hehe, I've had help from other companies in the past after ranting about them on Twitter. It's kind of neat, but I see your point...not everybody is on Twitter!

    Sorry about all the hassle you've had. I've only ordered from ASOS once or twice and luckily I haven't encountered any problems yet.

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  16. I really don't understand why they couldn't just cancel the order to avoid unnecessary extra work for both sides. But at least things are working out.

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  17. Hehe. Everything these days is something fail

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