SOUNDING OFF: Ripped off? Stunned by good value? Write, text or blog your experience to us
At the end of September last year Bernadette Banahan ordered and paid for a left-hand classic chaise longue sofa in Marks & Spencer in Dublin. Five weeks later the piece of furniture was delivered, but instead of being a left-hand piece it was a right-hand one. She rejected the delivery, and she was assured it would be rectified and was given a new order number.
Just before Christmas the the M&S delivery people called around again, but yet again it was a right-hand chaise. She was given yet another replacement order number and was assured the chaise would be with her in the New Year.
"The staff in Mary Street, Dublin, promised me that I would receive a phonecall to reschedule delivery and also a letter to apologise and offer me an explanation and some form of compensation," she writes.
It is now the middle of March and she still has an empty space in her living room where the piece of furniture is supposed to be. She repeatedly called the Mary Street branch and was repeatedly told that a letter was on its way to her from customer services in the UK.
On St Valentine's Day, a letter from the UK arrived in which a company representative apologised for the delay in responding. However, the letter did not explain why the furniture order mishap occurred.
Our reader was told the UK would monitor her new order and told her that it was with the planners awaiting scheduling for delivery. She contacted us last week while she was still waiting for the home delivery team to make contact with her.
"Quite frankly, I feel I am never going to receive the correct left-hand chaise that I ordered as per their furniture brochure," she says. She cannot understand why she now has to wait for planners to schedule a delivery and feels she should be getting special one-off delivery - "after all, I have done nothing wrong. I paid M&S in full last September and it is now March! I'm so fed up with this situation and I just don't seem to be getting anywhere with M&S by myself."
We contacted the store and a spokesperson "unreservedly apologised" for the mix-up which had led to the lengthy delay. She said that Marks & Spencer had now been in touch with our reader directly to arrange delivery of the item and that the manager of the store would also be contacting her to apologise.
Unfair Play
An angry reader in Rathfarnham was prompted to get in touch with us after noticing a currency discrepancy, which works against Irish shoppers, on the Play.com website. While the website quotes prices in sterling and euro, they will only deliver to Ireland if you order using the euro rate. He cites The Last Splashby The Breeders, which has a price tag of £4.99 and €7.99. According to the exchange rates in the middle of last week, £4.99 equals €6.51, so our reader wants to know why the site is "really fleecing the euro-based customer by 23 per cent on foreign exchange".
Vendor spender
Richard Joyce contacted us in relation to the price of crisps in a vending machine in Pearse Street Dart Station. While waiting for his train he's often partial to a bag of Hunky Dory crisps. At least he used to be.
"I've stopped buying them recently as there has been an exorbitant price increase. They previously cost 70 cent, but last month the price was increased to 90 cent - a 29 per cent increase," he writes. "To demonstrate the haphazard way that they put the price up, they didn't even have new price labels for the machine, but instead wrote the new price on a piece of masking tape and stuck it on over the original vending machine label."
He points out that, as the main cost in Ireland these days seems to be labour, how can a 29 per cent price increase on vending machine-distributed foods be justified?
