No delivery of Christmas hamper
An angry customer claims she has not received a Christmas hamper ordered online from a Cheltenham deli.
The Cotswold Deli advertises its festive hampers online for £100 and £80 and was also offering them on discount site livingsocial.com for £49 and £37. However, a number of people who paid for hampers say they have not been delivered.
The company's phone number has been disconnected and the shop they were operating from, at 34 Rodney Road, Cheltenham, is now vacant. But it is still possible to order hampers on the company's website and pay for them via Paypal and debit or credit card.
Siriol Pritchard, from the Vale of Glamorgan, said she had been unable to contact the deli to ask why her hamper has not arrived.
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She said: "I have been personally let down by this company after purchasing a Christmas Hamper via the Living Social group discount site.
"I am hoping that Living Social will provide a discount. But if not, I intend to pursue a refund via the Visa Chargeback scheme.
"I imagine there are hundreds more out of pocket too but unaware of their rights in this type of situation."
A spokesman for Cotswold Deli said: "We are still trading and we have dispatched hundreds of parcels to a lot of satisfied customers.
"We gave all customers a dispatch window of between December 5-20 and we sent our first hampers out on December 3. We began experiencing problems around 10 days later when hampers that were sent out in good faith were either arriving damaged in or the worse case not even arriving at all despite the fact that we had tracking information. We disputed this with our courier but it was not resolved satisfactorily on our behalf. We then sourced an alternative courier who could only take on a limited amount of extra parcels due to the time of year. We have also spent the last few days frantically trying to hand delivery to our customers with GL postcodes.
"For further clarity we would like to make you aware that we did an online promotion with the website 'livingsocial' which meant that we had hamper orders from all offer the UK. We contacted living social immediately to let them know that we had courier issues and they advised to find an alternative courier which we did. Some customers may still be receiving their hampers today or Monday.
"All customers who ordered through livingsocial and have not received a hamper have either already been given a refund or have had their name and voucher number forwarded to livingsocial to process the refund.
"We are a very small business and naturally we feel as let down by others as a small amount of our customers will feel they have been by us. We do have records of all our dispatches and have had lots of great feedback from our customers and we would prefer not to receive any bad press particularly not as we are assisting livingsocial customers in obtaining their refunds and we do feel that we have done all we could to resolve this matter."
Comments
by dodoleduck
Monday, December 24 2012, 10:50AM
“shapeshadow, what a prat.”
by AndyPrestbury
Sunday, December 23 2012, 10:56PM
“@Aif58 - it isn't just smaller companies you need to be wary of, pre-ordering from any company has a risk associated with it. There have been quite a few of the big companies going pop too.”
by Alf58
Sunday, December 23 2012, 10:38PM
“@TimMessanger - it would be of no use contacting the hosting company as the only people who have the authority to take a site offline are the same people who paid for the hosting.....
With the numbers of businesses still closing down, it is just as well with smaller concerns to make sure they are still in business before ordering and paying for any goods.”
by AndyPrestbury
Sunday, December 23 2012, 9:47PM
“The company will know exactly who has and hasn't received packages via their courier company. If they do not have the common decency to have contacted people directly, even it was to give a tracking number, then customers are almost certainly not going to have a hamper delivered.”
by FreeRadical1
Saturday, December 22 2012, 3:30PM
“Shapeshadow, this hamper was chosen and paid for over the internet. It's not much use suggesting that the customer should have shopped elsewhere, particularly somewhere that is nowhere near their home. For all you know, the customer may have mobility problems and chose this method of purchase because there was free delivery.”
by Shapeshadow
Saturday, December 22 2012, 3:19PM
“Should have gone to The Great Norwood ST. Delicatessen - I picked up my hamper within 2 hours!!”
by Shapeshadow
Saturday, December 22 2012, 3:12PM
“Should have gone to The Great Norwood St. Delicatessen in Cheltenham!”
by TimMessanger
Saturday, December 22 2012, 12:42PM
“So the deli has closed and they have not taken down the website, maybe someone aught to contact the hosting company and get the site taken down!”