Irreverent Thinking

Before I cover why I think one of the UK’s largest mail order companies is in the dark ages, I thought I would reflect on watching (a dramatatised) documentary-style film on Mary Whitehouse.

Mary Whitehouse campaigned in the late 60’s and 70’s to reduce smut on the TV by writing thousands of letters of complaint to the then Director General. He was forced to deal with the letters personally and eventually quit over it. At the time (I was just a young lad), I remember she was universally hated and vilified for “stopping” free speech.

Bearing mind she started out as a teacher in a Wolverhampton School - some might call her a “nobody” at the time - she came to represent the voice of “decency” in the UK for 20 years, and acted as a conduit to many causes over the decades. Why is this relevant?

Today we don’t (really) need a Mary Whitehouse. We have the “user generated content world” that allows anyone - you, me, your grandma - to climb on their high horse and share their thoughts.

This is consumer empowerment and most organisations are scrabbling to listen to their customers and evolve how they deal with them.

So why is it that Littlewoods doesn’t want to listen?

Here’s a quick story; tell me what I did wrong and what Littlewoods did.

1. I tried to place an order on behalf of my daughter with Littlewoods a month or so ago. I had to abandon the shopping cart because they could only deliver to the cardholders address (home) and I couldn’t take a day off work to accept a delivery timed between 8am and 5pm.

2. I had an opportunity this week (half-term), as Sophie was at home during the day and could accept the package. So I went through the tedious process again. I still couldn’t pay by PayPal and, worse, it had forgotten about me and my shopping cart.

3. I went through the checkout process and paid for £90 worth of stuff. the site confirmed everything and told me the delivery date was 28th of May.

4. 28th of May came and went, but no delivery so I phoned them. 20 minutes on hold and being moving between departments before I was told that I had been “credit declined”. I didn’t ask for credit - I paid on a debit card. A fairly stroppy woman blamed my bank: “It’s not us” she told me.

Apparently if the transaction fails they don’t tell you. “Why should we phone you?” was the response. Surely they could have sent me an email?

I then spent 30 minutes with my bank establishing why it was declined and they assured me they had no record of an attempted transaction.

Result? I will never use Littlewoods again. I cannot be alone experiencing this level of frustration that “users” are forced to go through on many e-commerce platforms.

But we are not “users”. We are real people who try, in vain, to spend money with companies that don’t seem to care. Titling the post “xxxxxxx sucks” is also a neat, corporate terrorist, way of grouping all the complaints in an easy-to-find tag. If you really want to see the problems with companies just do a search for the company name and add “sucks” to the end of the search. It’s a little American but, heck, if it works then let’s all use it.