Compensation For Everything!

BB3Lions

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*Mini Rant*

Why is it that everyone wants compensation for anything that goes wrong?? As an example at work this week a delivery to a customer was missing an item, the customer complained and wanted 30% off her total bill; equalling £290.00! And our company paid it because we made a mistake!

The item was delivered the day after with no cost to the client. If this was me i would of accepted an apology and not just gone out to save a few quid, as 1. i would be embarrassed to ask and 2. mistakes happen. It's no wonder companies are charging more nowadays to cover "compensation payouts".

Would an apology be good enough for you or would you "always" go for compensation?

BB
 
I don't go in for all that compo malarky myself. If it's offered, then thats a different story :)
 
*Mini Rant*

Why is it that everyone wants compensation for anything that goes wrong?? As an example at work this week a delivery to a customer was missing an item, the customer complained and wanted 30% off her total bill; equalling £290.00! And our company paid it because we made a mistake!

The item was delivered the day after with no cost to the client. If this was me i would of accepted an apology and not just gone out to save a few quid, as 1. i would be embarrassed to ask and 2. mistakes happen. It's no wonder companies are charging more nowadays to cover "compensation payouts".

Would an apology be good enough for you or would you "always" go for compensation?

BB
What if you were self employed and had to take a day off work for the delivery, hence lose a days pay only to find you'd have to take another day off because the delivery was incomplete?
 
*Mini Rant*

Why is it that everyone wants compensation for anything that goes wrong?? As an example at work this week a delivery to a customer was missing an item, the customer complained and wanted 30% off her total bill; equalling £290.00! And our company paid it because we made a mistake!

The item was delivered the day after with no cost to the client. If this was me i would of accepted an apology and not just gone out to save a few quid, as 1. i would be embarrassed to ask and 2. mistakes happen. It's no wonder companies are charging more nowadays to cover "compensation payouts".

Would an apology be good enough for you or would you "always" go for compensation?

BB

without knowing more details it's hard to say. if it's a good customer who spends a lot, then £300 over a year may be nothing to keep their custom. likewise if the goods were specially made and the customer could knock back the whole order, it's better giving a discount than losing a sale

but really, the company could have said they would supply the missing item at no charge, or offer a 10% discount etc. usually with bartering you ask for more than what you would settle for, usually asking for twice as much with a plan to settle in the middle somewhere. it's unusual someone would give the customer whatever they asked for

it sounds like the person giving the discount is at fault rather than the customer. they were obviously annoyed thus the call, but they company didn't have to bend over so much for them
 
I thought you was offering some out... :thumbsdow
 
I'm guessing you've missed a major bit of the story out here.

I'll guess that this was a guaranteed thing, because of the customer's loss incurred in case of non-delivery.

If that's the case, what's the problem :confused:

The other option is that it wasn't a guaranteed job, in which case, I'd probably have sacked the person who agreed it, unless the customer was one you couldn't afford to lose.

I'd always accept an apology before compo, but you need to clarify the above.
 
If it was a delivery to a consumer, I think there should be compensation if the whole order wasn't delivered when they said it would be. eg. if the consumer paid for (guaranteed) next day delivery and the whole order didn't arrive then, they should be compensated. Though £290 is probably too much.

If it was a delivery to a business they might have needed it by that date and it could have cost their business not to have it by then.
 
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As others have said, difficult to say without knowing the full agreement and the actual circumstances.

One alternative to paying the compensation would have been for you (or your company) to have couriered over the item and had it delivered on the promised day.

I'm guessing that as you can deliver it the next day, it would have been possible to get someone to bring the item personally on the delivery day. Or would that have cost you more than £290.

I must admit I do get a bit miffed when a company or organisation who have failed on a promise says "we are doing everything we can to resolve this what more could we do" and then proceed to offer a solution that is most convenient to them.

I usually feel like saying "NO you aren't doing everything possible. For example you could job in your car go and fetch it and bring it to me even if it means taking till 10pm. That IS possible, you just aren't prepared to go to that trouble - so don't tell me you are doing everything possible".

Sorry, rant not aimed at the OP but experiences I have had in the past where I have been offered worse than the OP is offering.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
It's not really a singled out story, as some know i work for B&Q and there order process/returns department/compensation layout is shocking; some of the things some people return back to store saying its broken when clearly they have used it and now just want there money back is a bare faced lie.

For example you could buy say a lawn mower use it for 364 days 23:59 minutes and return it for a full refund!

In the example i gave the woman in question placed an order, the order was placed within 3 weeks and the stock was delivered, the driver missed an item, which was delivered the day after - before the fitters were on site; and she had the audacity to claim compensation; because she knew she would save a substantial amount.

For me i thought it was sheer cheek and a barefaced scam.

BB
 
well she had little legal rights as far as i can think, so it's really just your companies internal ways of dealing with things. maybe she knew b&q were a pushover when it comes to these things. i have heard all sorts of stories of people returning stuff for refunds. i don't know if they have a high profit margin on goods, or use that policy to be competitive, or maybe competitors have similar policies, so if they don't do it too, they lose out

sometimes it's the staff that just don't care. i can't imagine it can be very exciting selling taps and ladders to builders or answering mind numbing questions about the right size of fittings to folks trying DIY that don't know what they are doing
 
Yep, so many people want money off for things that are just a minor inconvenience these days. Things that a few years ago people would have just accepted an apology and that was it. It's like we expect super exceptional service for everything and when we don't get it we want blood.

I bought a pizza from Domino's tonight and was told it would be about ten minutes. After about fifteen minutes I asked how much longer it would be only to be told they'd just given it out to somebody else and they were cooking another one for me. I said OK, not a problem and before I could say anything else the girl was giving me my money back. I didn't even complain or moan but it was just an instant thing she did, as if it was expected.
 
^ tesco used to have a policy where if you were overcharged you got twice the difference back if you complained. i'm not sure if it was policy, but once i spotted i was overcharged on something as they were ringing it up, and i got the item refunded, plus money back, plus kept the item (ie. they paid me money to keep it for free). as tesco, or at least my local tesco, regularly had prices wrong on many things i bought, i'm surprised they kept in business

i noticed earlier this week the barcode was missing on something so they called another guy to bring another item with a barcode to scan. afterwards i noticed it wasn't scanned at all and i saved £5. the next day i found an item that was reduced, but didn't go through at the reduced price, i noticed it had two stickers with different prices. so some you win, some you lose
 
The one that makes me laugh - a friend of mine worked at M&S - a man came in one day and came up to the counter to complain. He had come in to buy a pair of his 'usual' trousers, and they didn't have any in stock - he hadn't phoned ahead to check or anything - he just 'expected' them to have them. So he demanded a refund for his petrol, and they gave it to him!

Having said that, we got our wedding cake from M&S - it didn't come with the pillars you need to separate the layers, so they went to find some. When they found some, they couldn't tell us exactly how to use them, and gave us the number of a cake-maker to call to see - we didn't need it of course. We said this was all a bit stressful (it was the day before the wedding - okay, playing it a little :)) and they said 'yes it is - sorry - we will give you a full refund'. So we had our cake, and ate it :)
 
In the example i gave the woman in question placed an order, the order was placed within 3 weeks and the stock was delivered, the driver missed an item, which was delivered the day after - before the fitters were on site; and she had the audacity to claim compensation; because she knew she would save a substantial amount.

For me i thought it was sheer cheek and a barefaced scam.

BB
And what if she had to be in work the day after and there would be no one in the next day? She would need to book time off work where she could have been earning money for that day because the company didn't deliver when they were supposed to and she paid for the goods and the delivery.
 
It's not really a singled out story, as some know i work for B&Q and there order process/returns department/compensation layout is shocking; some of the things some people return back to store saying its broken when clearly they have used it and now just want there money back is a bare faced lie.

My Dad has experience of how lenient the returns at B&Q is but also how some of the staff dont seem to care. He purchased some bags of cement for a job and used them. Thing is that cement from one of the bags set unusually quick, rendering it unusable.

He shovelled what he could back into the bag and went back to the store and took it to the returns desk and explained what happened. Got asked if it was used or not. He explained again and the lady replied with 'OK, but has it been used?'

Just to save time and hassle my Dad said no and got a refund. :suicide:
 
Mind you last bad experience with B&Q went like this.

Was at my in-laws (Lancashire) and we noticed that B&Q had a 20% of bedroom furniture that weekend. Had been looking at this range for my daughter's bedroom but by the time we returned home (West Sussex) the 20% deal would be over.

So we explained to the salesman and asked whether the furniture could be delivered to our home even though we were buying at the Wigan store. No problem, took the order and full payment (about £1200). Part of the order was a bookcase that was from the home office range rather than the bedroom range.

A few weeks later the order was delivered - no bookcase.

We contacted B&Q central as instructed and was told that the bookcase was no longer stocked but don't worry there would be one for us and it would be a few weeks later. Weeks passed, then months. Regular phone calls and each time told it would be with us in the next few weeks.

Then out of the blue, we got a call from the Wigan store "when are you going to collect this bookcase, we've had it for two months now and we need the space".

Explained that it was meant to be delivered to my home in West Sussex and was told that the office range doesn't work like that - it is delivered to store. Well can you deliver it I ask - "No". Well can you move it to my local store (Crawley). "Well me might be able to but there is a good chance that it would get lost or damaged".

As this bookcase was no longer stocked and we had the exact space waiting in my daughter's bedroom I was effectively coerced into making a 600 mile round trip to collect it. No apology, no compensation, B&Q not interested at all.

I should add that my invoice (for all items) clearly stated the delivery address as my home. B&Q had clearly messed up and wern't interested in putting it right.

And yes I did get told "We're doing all that is possible".

I should have pushed for compensation because I was genuinely inconvenienced and out of pocket but like the OP that is not in my nature.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
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And what if she had to be in work the day after and there would be no one in the next day? She would need to book time off work where she could have been earning money for that day because the company didn't deliver when they were supposed to and she paid for the goods and the delivery.


Ok i didnt go that into detail, presumed it would be accepted that we made the call to re-arrange a convenient delivery slot; which was accepted..

The returns at my Co are crazy, but the general term is "the customer is always right".. I would love to know what the markup price is on all the items as the profit is high..

BB
 
i think compensation has its place. I had to constantly keep on at Virgin to get them to fix my phone line, and in the end the only way i could do it was through complaints, who also offered to refund me 3 months line rental. They never actually did it so i took it to the CEO and finally got my refund. I think i was well entitled to compensation after having to deal with their incompetence.

I think this is the one drawback to the internet though. Customer service is getting worse and worse because most companies know they have millions of potential customers rather than the few hundred who might visit a bricks and mortar store so they don't care about the customers they do have, one such example again with Virgin (yes i hate them) is that they offer new customers great price deals and refuse to offer existing customers deals anywhere near as good. Keep on piling in new business so it doesn't matter if a few customers you screw over decide to leave. I also noticed this with Play the other day. If you use their Playtrade service and get screwed over, you can claim back the money from play, however only 3 times, and then play will refuse to let you buy anything from playtrade ever again, and may even close your play account! That's customer service for you..
 
i think compensation has its place. I had to constantly keep on at Virgin to get them to fix my phone line, and in the end the only way i could do it was through complaints, who also offered to refund me 3 months line rental. They never actually did it so i took it to the CEO and finally got my refund. I think i was well entitled to compensation after having to deal with their incompetence.

We had exactly the same problem - they installed phone and broadband. Internet was fine but the phone line had a loud crackle. We had guy after guy come out - each would suck air in through their teeth and say 'what cowboys did this? this is how it should be done!' - that happend about four-five times. Got refunded several months plus the chunky 'installation' fee.

Maybe companies, including M&S have a JFDI policy with customer returns - I know of at least one that has that printed on the wall in the back room.
 
i once took a workmate back to b&q, i couldnt use it as i bought it for hot wiring and the design ment you couldnt use it to pull something apart like most workmates, only clamp.

the box was completely ripped to peices when i bought it, looked like it had been in someones garrage for 3 years so i expected to have to explain this to them when i took it back but they didnt say a thing.

noticed the bag with all the accesories had fallen out of the box in car when i got home so i just took it back and slipped it into the still unsold workmate box.

you would proberbly get away with buying tiles from b&q, using them for a year then taking them back covered in chips and cement :rolleyes:
 
^ i wish i could take one or two of my workmates back to b&q. i'm sure at least one of them has hot wiring
 

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