If she was banned from both Waitrose and Amazon that makes me suspicious. I have no love for either of these companies but I suspect these companies wouldn’t generally deny business unless they felt they had to. Especially since Amazon do typically provide a good service.
That being said, Amazon delivers a colossal amount of orders, by the law of large numbers this may happen quite often. I’d like to know the figures.
The customer in question does sound particularly vexatious having been banned by “a number” of shops not just the 2 named.
She’s definitely a pain in the arse, I return several items a month and always have done…..I don’t complain…ever really. That’s the point of a refund, if I’m not happy I’ll get my money back. If you are getting banned from Waitrose and Amazon your most likely an entitled prick doing 10 returns a week and complaining to everyone.
They don’t ban you if you return things on a reasonable basis. I return maybe one item in 10. I’ve not been banned. She must have been complaining and returning excessively.
When you stop using Prime, it’s amazing how you realise a large portion of what you shop for isn’t really necessary. I did it in my progress towards minimalism. I’d always considered myself “anti-consumerism”, so I was pretty shocked by my reaction to not being able to have “that thing whot I need NOW” next day. It was like withdrawals: temper tantrums a bit, missing it… however, after about 3 weeks I practically forgot about Amazon. This had a knock on effect on ALL my online shopping as well. I highly recommend life without Prime.
Having worked CS for a mail order company, I can guarantee you this person was a complete nightmare. Amazon especially are very lenient when it comes to returns and refunds.
Having worked in customer care in the fashion industry, we’re always on the lookout for serial returners. People who treat our products like a clothing library – buy a dress, wear it for a night out, then return it.
Having worked at Waitrose , I can tell you they wouldn’t make that call lightly. But there are a breed of people who are just impossible to deal with. It does happen from time to time that you have to close them down.
“It is clear we are unable to provide you with the level of service you are expecting and have therefore had to take the regretful step to close down your account.”
As the Guardian says, implicitly, at the end of the article: if you get fired as a customer by a lot of supplier then the problem is not the supplier, it’s you.
Supermarkets are manic about best-before and use-by dates. They have staff scanning the shelves to find stuff like that before customers find it. They have detailed stock tracking systems. I am extremely sceptical that Waitrose even contained enough out of date items to deliver them regularly to this person, even if the picking staff didn’t check (and they do!). I just do not believe that a supermarket repeatedly delivered out of date items to her.
Oh, this shit is what destroys any credibility the Guardian puts claim to. They’re private, profit making companies so must be in the wrong. And it suggests they do it all the time, and it’s a disgrace.
Anyone with half a brain can judge what an utter pain the woman must be, and there’s always plenty like her. The businesses are perfectly entitled to tell her to piss off elsewhere. If there’s anywhere else that would put up with her.
If it was just the one store, fair enough. But for two competing stores to take this action shows a pattern of behavior by this customer.
All of these transactions are logged so it’s a bit difficult to claim innocence without a firm idea of numbers of return – something the article omits to fit a narrative.
She is not an innocent party and I don’t understand the point of the article. Especially since it’s no different to what ASOS started doing to repeat offenders a year or so ago.
We get asda deliveries and without fail there will be at least 1 or 2 items out of date or damaged on each order and we just get the money back each time we tell them. I’ve also returned a fair few things to Amazon and never had an issue. Even had to call them on 2 occasions to rearrange the same return because we missed the date the first time then caught covid the second and they were very accommodating so I doubt this is anything to do with the companies and everything to do with her
This can also apply to your bank.
If you are seen to be raising a lot of charge backs or raising a lot of frivolous, unjustified complaints you can have your account closed and a refusal to do business with you.
She must have been returning a lot. Like a lot, a lot. Because I return a lot, have done for years and they have contacted me about it. But no ban. But in my defence, fuck amazon.
Imagine complaining so much that *Waitrose* don’t even want your custom
There’s too many people with an entitled view that businesses are obliged to serve you, when in fact they can refuse service and it’s definitely the case that they should refuse service a lot more as theres too many people who are unpleasant to deal with and abuse return polices amongst others.
I have worked CS for a high street retailer. This woman is most certainly a nightmare. The behaviours that are tolerated are extraordinary and you really have to be totally obnoxious on several occasions, returning things under false pretences bordering on fraud, outside of the t&cs etc etc before they even consider banning customers.
I’m not buying this. She sounds like an absolute nightmare.
Everyone seems to be concerned about this lady returning too many items whilst ignoring the major part of the story. She wrote a book called “The Secret Diary of a Time Travelling Cat”
To get banned….
You have to have really Been a Grade A asshole and or suspicious.
I used to work in banking complaints and if someone had 10 declined complaints in a year they would be sent a letter saying their account would be closed in 60 days as they have proved we were not able to provide them a satisfactory service. They would have a marker put on their file and if they called in you would just tell them to move their money as the account was being closed and then you could hang up on them. There wasn’t many of these but I dealt with a few in my time.
I’ve been reading about this for a few years, one too many complaints and they shut certain accounts- I’ve read about some having high levels of gift vouchers on their accounts too and they lose those vouchers.
Although in the mention of Amazon in the article I think it would have been more clear to state how many parcels and such she’d returned for clarity to see if there was actually any truth to their comments.
I wonder why you’d stick with Waitrose if had so many issues too to be honest & not choose someone else. Sounds like perhaps she’s an arse and the companies have just decided they don’t need her as a customer anymore
My mother has definitely been temporarily banned from making returns on Waitrose before lol. Like sometimes you just have an unlucky period of time where you’re not happy with the quality of what you’re getting. And if too much happens in a given period you get banned.
However being banned from multiple stores, including amazon?!? Seems like the user is more to blame lol. Like amazon is usually really good with returns. I once got my account hacked and someone kept shipping me random shit and I must have returned so much with zero problems. This person must be buying so much stuff on amazon and returning like the majority of it or something… treating it like buying clothes online lol.
Amazon UK warned me many times that I was complaining and sending back faulty items too much, over the years!
I got in touch with them, explained each and every return – with photographic proof.
One return was an Xbox One game, that came new, wrapped, sealed – HAD NO GAME DISC INSIDE !! (I had to sign an affidavit to reassure them this really happened).
A gaming monitor advertised as 144 hz, but was actually only 60 hz … even LG confirmed this. It’s a huge deal for a gamer or techie… I told Amazon so many times, and year later the sane item with same incorrect details are on their marketplace.
So I wonder how many people have purchased this monitor believing it’s 144 hz, but it’s only 60 hz !?
Eventually the only way Amazon found to silence me was to ban me from the ‘community’ ..meaning I can still do everything, buy, return etc. BUT I cannot leave reviews, comment, or ask questions, give any feedback on the entire marketplace.
I don’t use them anymore.
Are some of us just very unlucky or are Amazon UK just allowing criminals to sell defected junk on the UK marketplace…. them if you notice, and keep returning, they threaten you with an email explaining “your account has been flagged as returning too much, complaining etc”.
Oh I’m fully aware of this Amazon behaviour.
If something is faulty, not as advertised or of poor quality – send it back !
Is she a mega Karen?
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Yes, of course companies are going to have a threshhold. Something you bought is defective? No problem, here’s your refund. Everything you bought in the 6 months is defective? Yeah, I’m starting to suspect something is up.
Imagine getting banned by Amazon…..and then telling the world about it (assuming that’s her real name). She’s basically broadcast that she’s not someone to do business with.
I think that if someone has a long history of costing a company more money to allow them to continue shopping from them than they get from that person in revenue, then it’s perfectly reasonable for a company to refuse to sell to that person. It’s also bad for everyone else, as returning items is a costly business and the price has to be paid by someone.
The concerning thing here is at what point do customers not have the right to return fakes, falsely claimed products, because there are a ton. A shit ton. It’s a two way street.
29 comments
If she was banned from both Waitrose and Amazon that makes me suspicious. I have no love for either of these companies but I suspect these companies wouldn’t generally deny business unless they felt they had to. Especially since Amazon do typically provide a good service.
That being said, Amazon delivers a colossal amount of orders, by the law of large numbers this may happen quite often. I’d like to know the figures.
The customer in question does sound particularly vexatious having been banned by “a number” of shops not just the 2 named.
She’s definitely a pain in the arse, I return several items a month and always have done…..I don’t complain…ever really. That’s the point of a refund, if I’m not happy I’ll get my money back. If you are getting banned from Waitrose and Amazon your most likely an entitled prick doing 10 returns a week and complaining to everyone.
They don’t ban you if you return things on a reasonable basis. I return maybe one item in 10. I’ve not been banned. She must have been complaining and returning excessively.
When you stop using Prime, it’s amazing how you realise a large portion of what you shop for isn’t really necessary. I did it in my progress towards minimalism. I’d always considered myself “anti-consumerism”, so I was pretty shocked by my reaction to not being able to have “that thing whot I need NOW” next day. It was like withdrawals: temper tantrums a bit, missing it… however, after about 3 weeks I practically forgot about Amazon. This had a knock on effect on ALL my online shopping as well. I highly recommend life without Prime.
Having worked CS for a mail order company, I can guarantee you this person was a complete nightmare. Amazon especially are very lenient when it comes to returns and refunds.
Having worked in customer care in the fashion industry, we’re always on the lookout for serial returners. People who treat our products like a clothing library – buy a dress, wear it for a night out, then return it.
Having worked at Waitrose , I can tell you they wouldn’t make that call lightly. But there are a breed of people who are just impossible to deal with. It does happen from time to time that you have to close them down.
“It is clear we are unable to provide you with the level of service you are expecting and have therefore had to take the regretful step to close down your account.”
As the Guardian says, implicitly, at the end of the article: if you get fired as a customer by a lot of supplier then the problem is not the supplier, it’s you.
Supermarkets are manic about best-before and use-by dates. They have staff scanning the shelves to find stuff like that before customers find it. They have detailed stock tracking systems. I am extremely sceptical that Waitrose even contained enough out of date items to deliver them regularly to this person, even if the picking staff didn’t check (and they do!). I just do not believe that a supermarket repeatedly delivered out of date items to her.
Oh, this shit is what destroys any credibility the Guardian puts claim to. They’re private, profit making companies so must be in the wrong. And it suggests they do it all the time, and it’s a disgrace.
Anyone with half a brain can judge what an utter pain the woman must be, and there’s always plenty like her. The businesses are perfectly entitled to tell her to piss off elsewhere. If there’s anywhere else that would put up with her.
If it was just the one store, fair enough. But for two competing stores to take this action shows a pattern of behavior by this customer.
All of these transactions are logged so it’s a bit difficult to claim innocence without a firm idea of numbers of return – something the article omits to fit a narrative.
She is not an innocent party and I don’t understand the point of the article. Especially since it’s no different to what ASOS started doing to repeat offenders a year or so ago.
We get asda deliveries and without fail there will be at least 1 or 2 items out of date or damaged on each order and we just get the money back each time we tell them. I’ve also returned a fair few things to Amazon and never had an issue. Even had to call them on 2 occasions to rearrange the same return because we missed the date the first time then caught covid the second and they were very accommodating so I doubt this is anything to do with the companies and everything to do with her
This can also apply to your bank.
If you are seen to be raising a lot of charge backs or raising a lot of frivolous, unjustified complaints you can have your account closed and a refusal to do business with you.
She must have been returning a lot. Like a lot, a lot. Because I return a lot, have done for years and they have contacted me about it. But no ban. But in my defence, fuck amazon.
Imagine complaining so much that *Waitrose* don’t even want your custom
There’s too many people with an entitled view that businesses are obliged to serve you, when in fact they can refuse service and it’s definitely the case that they should refuse service a lot more as theres too many people who are unpleasant to deal with and abuse return polices amongst others.
I have worked CS for a high street retailer. This woman is most certainly a nightmare. The behaviours that are tolerated are extraordinary and you really have to be totally obnoxious on several occasions, returning things under false pretences bordering on fraud, outside of the t&cs etc etc before they even consider banning customers.
I’m not buying this. She sounds like an absolute nightmare.
Everyone seems to be concerned about this lady returning too many items whilst ignoring the major part of the story. She wrote a book called “The Secret Diary of a Time Travelling Cat”
To get banned….
You have to have really Been a Grade A asshole and or suspicious.
I used to work in banking complaints and if someone had 10 declined complaints in a year they would be sent a letter saying their account would be closed in 60 days as they have proved we were not able to provide them a satisfactory service. They would have a marker put on their file and if they called in you would just tell them to move their money as the account was being closed and then you could hang up on them. There wasn’t many of these but I dealt with a few in my time.
I’ve been reading about this for a few years, one too many complaints and they shut certain accounts- I’ve read about some having high levels of gift vouchers on their accounts too and they lose those vouchers.
Although in the mention of Amazon in the article I think it would have been more clear to state how many parcels and such she’d returned for clarity to see if there was actually any truth to their comments.
I wonder why you’d stick with Waitrose if had so many issues too to be honest & not choose someone else. Sounds like perhaps she’s an arse and the companies have just decided they don’t need her as a customer anymore
My mother has definitely been temporarily banned from making returns on Waitrose before lol. Like sometimes you just have an unlucky period of time where you’re not happy with the quality of what you’re getting. And if too much happens in a given period you get banned.
However being banned from multiple stores, including amazon?!? Seems like the user is more to blame lol. Like amazon is usually really good with returns. I once got my account hacked and someone kept shipping me random shit and I must have returned so much with zero problems. This person must be buying so much stuff on amazon and returning like the majority of it or something… treating it like buying clothes online lol.
Amazon UK warned me many times that I was complaining and sending back faulty items too much, over the years!
I got in touch with them, explained each and every return – with photographic proof.
One return was an Xbox One game, that came new, wrapped, sealed – HAD NO GAME DISC INSIDE !! (I had to sign an affidavit to reassure them this really happened).
A gaming monitor advertised as 144 hz, but was actually only 60 hz … even LG confirmed this. It’s a huge deal for a gamer or techie… I told Amazon so many times, and year later the sane item with same incorrect details are on their marketplace.
So I wonder how many people have purchased this monitor believing it’s 144 hz, but it’s only 60 hz !?
Eventually the only way Amazon found to silence me was to ban me from the ‘community’ ..meaning I can still do everything, buy, return etc. BUT I cannot leave reviews, comment, or ask questions, give any feedback on the entire marketplace.
I don’t use them anymore.
Are some of us just very unlucky or are Amazon UK just allowing criminals to sell defected junk on the UK marketplace…. them if you notice, and keep returning, they threaten you with an email explaining “your account has been flagged as returning too much, complaining etc”.
Oh I’m fully aware of this Amazon behaviour.
If something is faulty, not as advertised or of poor quality – send it back !
Is she a mega Karen?
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Yes, of course companies are going to have a threshhold. Something you bought is defective? No problem, here’s your refund. Everything you bought in the 6 months is defective? Yeah, I’m starting to suspect something is up.
Imagine getting banned by Amazon…..and then telling the world about it (assuming that’s her real name). She’s basically broadcast that she’s not someone to do business with.
I think that if someone has a long history of costing a company more money to allow them to continue shopping from them than they get from that person in revenue, then it’s perfectly reasonable for a company to refuse to sell to that person. It’s also bad for everyone else, as returning items is a costly business and the price has to be paid by someone.
The concerning thing here is at what point do customers not have the right to return fakes, falsely claimed products, because there are a ton. A shit ton. It’s a two way street.