Well now we live in the age of the internet – and I’d like to tell you about the customer service we’ve received recently.  Possibly there are now more than seven of you reading this direct, via RSS, Facebook, bloggingportal, EUGirlGeeks or other blog aggregator, so, I hope the new rules of customer service and social media means speedy resolution for other customers of the sorts of issues I’m about to share with you…

I’m a repeat customer of Dwell.  Dwell is a shop of nice things, described by Mary Portas as being somewhere between Ikea and Habitat in terms of price and range.  I love Dwell furniture, and have set out to have as much of it as possible in our house.  Deliveries come at the weekend and on bank holidays, and when it’s good, it’s really good.

In March, we ordered a bedside cabinet (pictured above).  It was not hugely expensive in comparison with what we could have spent at Habitat or Bo Concept, say, but it was rather lovely.  When it arrived, in May, it was damaged – a split right along the side.  My dad, who knows a lot about wood, said that it must have been dropped with some force, or from some height to sustain that damage.
We rang Dwell, and were asked to send them some photos of the damage before they would agree to do anything further.  We did, and emailed them the photos.  We were told that we could have a 20% discount on the damaged cabinet, or a replacement.  We opted for the latter and were assured of a June pick up and delivery date.  In the meantime, the damaged cabinet sat in its cardboard box in our sitting room, taking up precious floor space.
A week before delivery, we checked our order status – to find it had been delayed.  A new date some weeks later was on the order, and it changed again to a later date still, with no one informing us.  We rang, and were told that the bedside table was being held up at “the port” somewhere, and they had no further information.  August became late August, and we rang when the latest date too passed.
“It’s only a couple of days late”, said the customer service representative, who appeared to be actually in a branch somewhere.  Possibly there was no information about the wait to date on the order?
We were then told that they had no idea where it was or when it would be delivered so we decided enough was enough.
We’d been waiting since March for a usable piece of furniture, and so instead we requested a refund.  We were told that once the damaged goods were back in the warehouse, the money would be returned to us.  So we arranged a pick-up for a Sunday, after 12.30pm.

Mid-sermon that Sunday, my husband received a call.  He was informed by the driver on his mobile that the pick-up would be at midday.  No, he said, we arranged 12.30pm – 1pm at the earliest.  The driver said they had not been informed of this, and did not want to wait around – something about returning to Milton Keynes.  My husband arranged to be home at 12.15pm, even though this would mean leaving the service early.  We got home at 12.14 on the car clock – no van.  12.20, 12.30, 12.35 – nothing.  As we were now into our original window my husband rang.  The mobile was switched to voicemail.  We tried several more times – including from the house phone in case it was my husband’s number they were ignoring.  An hour after the supposed pick up time, my husband rang the Dwell customer order line.  We were promised a call back to find out what was going on.

What followed just beggared belief. I was outside playing with our toddler when I heard my husband shouting.  He came and handed me the phone: “he wants to talk to you”.  The customer sales representative then basically told me that the driver said he’d been outside our house 12 noon until 12.15 and had left. I said, well we arrived back from church at 14 minutes past and there was no sign.  He said our watches must be slow!  This felt tantamount to an accusation of lying.  I told him I was appalled and listed the catalogue of delays and problems associated with this order – I said that this really was not putting Dwell in a good light at all.  I was assertive but didn’t shout or swear, but I did say that I was very upset and now needed to give the phone back to my husband.  We’ve still no idea why he asked to speak to me in the first place – the order was in my husband’s name – there shouldn’t be an expectation that you are married!

My husband took the phone and arranged that yet more of my time would be sacrificed – 12-6pm pick up on Tuesday.  They came shortly after noon – but the driver still asked to examine the damage to the cabinet that we had returned to its box back in May…
And then this week, we received an email asking us to arrange a delivery date for the replacement.  It just felt like they don’t listen.

The irony is that the MD of Dwell, Aamir Ahmad, appears on the Barclays Corporate website,  talking about how cash flow and customer service are his priorities.  He says the right things, he seems like the sort of person I’d get on with, it’s just a shame the company isn’t living up to his expectations (“we hold everything in stock… deliver within a few days”???).

We’ve had so many lovely things from Dwell, but this experience was just awful.  Of course you start researching these things on the internet: just search “Dwell” and “customer service” and you find this, this and this. So we’re not alone.  No company should be proud of only 22% of customers recommending them.
I felt offended, not just because I wanted my refund sorted (it now has been), but also I think that, in a capitalist economic set up, the happiness of your customers drives repeat business and should therefore be your goal alongside profit, of course.  So I think that it is bad business to treat your customers poorly.  There cannot be such an infinite number of potential customers in the UK that you can afford to alienate the ones you have.

So, Aamir, there are 10 things in your current catalogue that I was thinking about ordering and now won’t be.  
Given they were  this, this , this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this, it might not all have been immediately, but we are still setting up home, and this is our sort of style.   I lose out because they are lovely things that I wanted and can’t bear to think I might have and then lose because they arrive damaged.  But you lose out too, because reluctantly I’ll have take my business elsewhere.  
I need some pretty amazing customer service to regain confidence in Dwell.

By the way, a few weeks ago, Marks and Spencer screwed up an online order in two different ways.  
Despite receiving an email saying it had dispatched, it did not reach the shop for pick up.  
The staff took a mobile phone number, but then customer services emailed my husband asking him to call on an 0845 number – he emailed back to ask why, given they already had his number.  A phone call came, they cancelled and refunded the order, and gave us a £5 credit for the inconvenience caused.  
Who do you think we’ll shop with again?

Heavily modelled on an M&S magazine recipe, we adapted to what we had in the house.
If you want to make the same, you will need:

300g plain flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
a few grinds of pepper
3 beaten eggs
225ml milk
1 heaped tablespoon hummous
25g parmesan cheese
5 slices of ham, chopped
1 teaspoon olive oil
3 shallots, chopped
Handful of basil, chopped
125g cheddar, chopped
Extra parmesan to top

Heat the over to 190c, 170c for fan ovens.  Put some silicone bun cases into a muffin tin.  It’s amazing how precise toddler wanted to be about this.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Grind pepper in.  Add the eggs, hummous, parmesan and half the milk, and stir to make a kind of batter.  This is fun and messy.  Add the rest of the milk slowly so that it doesn’t get too sloppy.

Fry the ham and shallots in the olive oil (despite toddler’s protests, this was my job…). When shallots are golden, tip into the batter.

Add the cheese – we used some cheese slices so toddler could tear them up and chunks are best but you might want to grate or chop some up so that it melts through the muffins as they cook.
Rip the  basil and add to the mixture.

Now, spoon into the bun cases, filling to just below the top of each case, and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes until golden brown on the top.
Make sure you look in through the oven door as they cook to see them rising!
Once cooked, take them out and cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then put on a rack to cool further.

Eat while still warm.

If you want them to be a bit more sophisticated, you could serve with scrambled eggs. Or bechemel sauce.  Mmmm.

PS the photo is not our muffins – need to download my phone photos for that…