John Lewis & the Stolen Mobile Phone saga

Never. Ever. Order a mobile phone for direct delivery from John Lewis. Or any other small, high value electronic items.

If you must buy from them, do it in store OR for delivery to a JL/Waitrose store and most importantly OPEN your package before you leave the store and in front of an employee to act as a witness.

Why you ask? Read on for the fun (well, not so much for me) details of my experience with a John Lewis retail delivery and their customer support.

In the Beginning

On Thursday 4th of August I decided to order the new ‘Nothing Phone1’ from John Lewis. Why them instead of Amazon? Due to the additional extra year warranty John Lewis provide.

The order was dispatched the same day.

Fri 5th August 2022

It arrived promptly at 13:49 on Friday 5th August, the very next day! It took me a while to open the door as I was in a meeting and I simply took the package and put it on my desk to open later. You can see the package in the DHL delivery drivers hand in the screenshot below:

The Hiding to Nothing Begins

Excitedly (who wouldn’t be, new phone!) I opened the package in between meetings just after 3pm. The plastic packaging was sealed so I carefully cut it open so as not to damage the box inside:

Straight away I noticed the perforation on the box. To my disbelief, the phone itself was missing from the box. The outer edge of the cardboard box had already been removed (the perforated bit), and presumably discarded prior to packaging as it is nowhere to be found inside the packaging.

A better view below, you can see the accessory tray is still intact but the tray on the right with the phone in was completely gone:

I immediately called John Lewis on 0345 610 0338 and spoke to a customer service agent:

He told me 2 things, both of which later turned out to be false:

1. We will send you a replacement phone
2. We will investigate with Supplier and get a response within 48 hours, even on Sat/Sun as it was a weekend

Smoke and Mirrors

Mon 8th August 2022

I waited till Monday 7th August. I had no call back over the weekend as expected and no notification of a replacement phone being dispatched. So I called again:

First call I chose the wrong option. The 2nd call I got through and as you can see it lasted nearly 30mins. On this call I was told:

1. We have contacted the Supplier by email to look into & investigate this issue
2. We’re NOT sending you a new phone until the investigation is complete
3. We will contact you soon with an update, our CRM system will automatically notify us to contact you

I asked if the investigation by Supplier had even started and was told they do not know “the system will update us”. I asked if they had an SLAs with the Supplier in terms of response and was told “I do not know”.

The CS agent did not ask me for any photos, I offered to send them. The CS agent did not ask any questions about the DHL courier hand off. The CS agent did not ask if the packaging itself had evidence of being tampered with.

I emailed the photos I had:

I then waited. For Days. Did not hear back.

Thu 11th August 2022

On Thursday 11th August I decided to email CS:

No reply ever received. Not even an acknowledgement.

Fri 12th August 2022

So the next day, Friday 12 August and now a whole week since the phone went missing I called in again:

But then I noticed an alternative number to call, 01698 545027 – direct to the team handling my compaint:

I was told that the investigation was still ongoing and there was no update from the Supplier. Their CRM system had a note that I would get an update call on Wednesday 17th August. I said this was unacceptable only to be told there was nothing they could do.

Add Insult to Injury

Failure to communicate. This is how I can best sum up all of my contact with JL.

Wed 17th August 2022

Waited till afternoon, no call back. Decided to chase by Twitter:

and by Phone:

On the phone I was told the ‘next update’ is due on the system for Wednesday 24th August – another week later BUT an earlier response might happen if the case is updated. The Supplier is still ‘investigating’. I was told there have been no other issues reported by other customers from this Supplier – as if that was helpful.

Twitter response was generic:

Wed 24th August 2022

I waited an entire week. I then waited till the last part of the day, hoping in vain they would call, They didn’t so at 17:27 I decided to call in:

At this point the CS agent basically repeated what the last 2 CS conversations had been, almost to the letter “We have no update, Supplier is investigating. Our system says we will next update you on Thursday 1st September”

I got annoyed. This doesn’t happen often, I’m very patient normally but this was getting absurd. I decided at that point I wanted all future updates in writing by email, no more phone calls from me and getting the same nonsense thrown at me each time I chased. The CS agent said she would speak to her Manager and find out if my request could be met.

Hallelujah, they agreed!

Thu 1st September 2022

To be honest, after waiting more than a week I was expecting 0 response from JL.

I decided to tweet as a reminder:

@johnlewishelp on twitter replied at 17:13 but in the interim I received an email at 16:29:

Basically WAIT ANOTHER WEEK for NO UPDATE!!!

Wed 7th September 2022

Hurrah! This the day JL promised some kind of update, this time I had it in writing.

Nothing. Nada. Silence. A vacuum.

Fri 9th September 2022

I was generous. I gave them an extra 48 hours to provide me an update. Nothing. So I chased by email:

Mon 12th September 2022

Nothing. No response to my email.

No Phone. Not a thing.

It really has lived up to it’s name, the Nothing Phone 1.

TO BE CONTINUED