With summer coming it seems like an ideal time to talk barbeques. Or the appalling experience trying to redeem a $99 voucher (a Christmas gift from Jackie’s company in 2004) before December 1 to buy a Weber barbeque from wishlist.com.au.
I’ll start off by saying that this experience has left us both with a very bad taste. I recommend that nobody deals with Wishlist simply because of the “we’re right, you’re wrong” attitude of the customer service staff.
Let me say it again: avoid Wishlist.
I should say at this point that I have been an online shopper for at least five years. As well as buying my current Mac from the Apple store I regularly shop for hardware, software, photos and even cloths from online sites.
It seemed simple enough to me to redeem the voucher. Jackie and I sat down on her laptop on the wireless network. We found the barbeque and navigated through the menus.
It’s really quite simple. A screen confirms the shopping bag contents. We click pay now, enter the delivery address and navigate to the payment page. We simple select “Redeem your Gift Voucher / Gift Certificate” enter the voucher number and credit card number and wait to receive it.
There are two of us as witnesses as to this being what happened.
Jackie misses the receipt in her email and it is only today that I saw her online credit card statement that we had been charged $277.95 instead of $177.95.
I thought this is a simple mistake and should be easy to put right. But it’s not. Once the Weber has been dispatched Wishlist can’t or won’t do anything.
The customer service staff said that the webpage says to enter the voucher number before the credit card. I recall doing it that way, besides they are talking rubbish. I recreated a transaction online and nowhere does it say the order that information should be entered. They are either “grossly misinformed” or lying.
The only sure way to resolve the problem is to return the Barbeque to Wishlist. We are just down the road from the warehouse but they will not accept us dropping it off. We have to return it by Australia Post, which costs $8.95. Wishlist will then cancel the transaction. We can order another online (delivery mid-January) have it posted back to us (postage $8.95). Just to ensure we can still use the voucher we would have to extent it for three months for $10.
Let me see, to redeem the gift voucher it is now going to cost us $27.90. That’s for something which could just be a software glitch. I understand they do occur more than occasionally.
Wishlist claim they have no record of the voucher number. I do believe them.
When I asked the customer service supervisor whether the website supported the Safari browser she didn’t know what I was talking about.
I have another theory but perhaps some tech guru from Wishlist will put me right. The site doesn’t support Safari. I’ve had similar experiences of data not being entered on these types of sites. Most recently when attempting to apply for an ING online savings account where I was told that Microsoft Internet Explorer was more secure than Safari and Firefox (the other one I use)!
The trouble with Wishlist is that there are so few things we actually want on it and it is difficult to spend $99 and no more. We shall try and salvage something out of this and spent it. Or shall we?
I’d be interested to hear of any other negative Wishlist experiences.
I will republish any I can find on this page. Let’s call it a bad customer experience MeMe.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the tip!
What a bummer. I am an avid online consumer as well; for both products and using online banking etc.
I had a terrible problem with lastminute.com.au about a year ago, when i booked a trip to the goldcoast. it was my fault that i didnt do as much research as i would have in another circumstance; but the company had still used false and misleading information to sell a holiday package. it took up to 15 emails and 5 phone calls to have the problem recitified (false information on the quality and location of the hotel). In the end my package was upgraded at no additional cost to me; but the stress leading up to it was just horrid.
the thing with these online marketplaces like wishlist, lastminute and wotif is that they are the middle man and often they are in locked in contracts with their suppliers. usually these conditions dont really help the consumer when things go wrong; because no one wants to own up to it. i would suggest writing to the aca with a step by step explanation of what happened; and cc wishlist. they need to be accountable for something. the fact that they cant support a popular browser is not your problem.
good luck!
Thanks Saffron. I think the thing is that their business models mean they want to minimise any contact with consumers. They have these carte blanche policies that give the worst customer service. I’ve recently had some problems with Handango which sells software for my Palm Treo. I was a bit pissed off my they refunded me and really cared about good service. You know the point of the story I’m writing is grass roots journalism which is what we are all about. Power to the people!
Sorry to dissapoint you ed! I used wishlist (admitedly not too recently) and thought that they were great! I sent a present to St. Arnaud, and it arrived the next day, which is better that Australia post many times! I was very happy that the present arrived on time, and was exactly as I had seen online.
I hope that your experience doesn’t indicate the standard dropping, although you never know…..
We’ve used it a couple of times in the pat and it was fine. I think everything falls apart once customer service are contacted as they have rigid policies especially when redeeming vouchers. I think it’s the fact we were treated like idiots and they don’t believe we entered the voucher number. Jackie’s fairly senior where she works and when she told the person responsible for procuring the vouchers she was appalled, especially as the company had put quite a bit of business their way over the years.