The Halfords Debacle

I traded in my old car for another one about a month or so back. It's essentially the same car but without the problems that the old one had. It's all nice and lovely and drives fine, but it only has an old radio in it with a knackered cassette player. Well I'm feeling in a good mood so I think, I'll splash out and buy myself a fancy pants MP3, iPod docking, CD playing stereo for the car so I toddled off to the interwebs and Halfords website, where I saw a nice deal on a stereo that I'd like so I fill in the form and I'm about to click submit when I see I can get it for next day delivery for £3. Well why not? Thinks I, lets be Mr Money bags for once, see how the other half lives and I tick the option. I read the fine print and see that as I placed the order in the early evening on Wednesday I won't receive the
stereo until the Friday as the order once officially be received until Thursday, oh well c’est le vie. I will leave the rest of the tale to be told in this letter of complaint I sent to them:

RE: Order # ****** - *************** CD Player

Hello,

I placed an order with yourselves on the 7/07/2010, a Wednesday, for the above CD Player and paid extra for next day delivery. While I realise that as I placed it late afternoon on the Wednesday the order wouldn’t be processed until the Thursday. So I could expect it to arrive on the Friday.

When on Monday the 12th the CD player still hadn’t materialised I thought I had best ring up the customer service line. I spoke to a chap who apologised profusely and explained that there was a bit of a delay as you were reorganising your warehouses. He refunded me the money I paid for next day delivery and told me that he couldn’t tell me when the CD player would arrive and it would just arrive when it arrived. This is about as useful to me as a bucket of water to a drowning man.

When Monday the 19th rolled round I was wondering if the warehouse was being built from scratch by a bunch of incompetent digit less monkeys and thought I had best ring the customer service line to check what was happening. I spoke to a lass on the phone who could only reiterate what the chap had said to me last time. I was more then a little agitated at this stage but I decided I could be patient a little while longer and waited.

Today, Wednesday the 21st, a mere two weeks after I placed my next day delivery order, I received an email from yourselves telling me that, and I quote, “Now that you've had chance to try your item(s) out, we'd really like to know what you think.”.
Now I would love to review the CD player for your website however to do this in good conscience I must first be in possession of said CD Player. As I am not in possession of it I cannot write that review.

I am fairly sure that there is yet to be a successful business built on the delivering of nonexistent goods to people. However if you have found one please let me know and I will start selling magical fairy farts to people, a product that at this stage seems as real and existent as the CD player I placed on next day delivery from yourselves 14 days ago.

I’m not asking for much here I’m just asking for the CD Player I ordered to be delivered to me because at this stage it feels like it would be quicker to of done a degree in electrical engineering and made the thing myself.

Regards

I waited several more days after sending this email before I received a reply. It gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling inside when I know people have read my letters and taken on bored what I've said and then formulated a coherent and relevant answer. This however doesn't seem to be Halfords policy as I received a stock letter about their warehouse reorganisation and how it had delayed some orders. You know the same thing the first guy told me on the phone which I had said was no use to me as it didn't tell me when my stereo would arrive. So I've done the only thing that I can do and rang up to cancel my order, something which they were initially reluctant to do, my business will now be going elsewhere.
So yeah in short, Halfords are a shower of bastards.