Reply from Waterstones
[REPLY]
- Reviews (47)
- Chad Corsten
- 1 Review
Unprofessional
The order was placed for a book and after one week the online status still said "processing." The order was then cancelled via "My Accounts," but because a charge to my card was made on the day of the original order, the cancellation was disregarded and the item shipped over a week later without any regard for the cancellation. The customer service people then required me to return the item before a refund would be made, even though the item had been shipped to one of their stores. I will never shop with them again, in store or online!
- Reverend John Keysell
- 1 Review
Bad customer service and delivery so bad its a joke.
I ordered a book on the 4th of December 2009 paid extra to have delivery next day as was offered online.
Paid £2.49extra, It is now the 8th of December NO BOOK. phoned Waterstones did not want to know. Lady was quite cheeky.
Ordered another item from Amazom on Monday 7th was delivered AS PROMISED on the 8th of December. Will never buy from Waterstones on line or in store I ordered a book 6 months ago in store I was told it would be in 7 days waited 28 days and never turned up. But had refund.
- p.thompson
- 1 Review
Stocking Problems
As I was given a gift token from work, I ordered four books from Waterstones at the start of August. By October two were still not in stock so I cancelled the order. As I had credit I just ordered three more books including rareties such as QI and Stephen Dawkins. Guess what. All three are out of stock. This company have serious stocking issues.
- Anthony Dolphin
- 1 Review
Slow, incompetent, misleading, awful customer service, and possibly insecure.
Ordered a book on the 23rd August as a present. Still hasn't arrived (today being the 3rd October). 3 other books ordered online were said to be in stock and available but none of them were and took over 4 weeks to arrive rather than the '7 - 10 days' advertised. For the second order I placed, the crack team at Waterstones HQ somehow managed to lose a voucher number (the only reason I was using the service) and a month later tried to charge my credit card with the full amount. I had serious doubts about the sysyems in place as cross referencing of orders took a long time and they had lots of contrary information.
Avoid at all costs. Amazon is quicker, cheaper, more secure, it doesn't lie about stock on its website, and it has a vastly superior collection.
- Chrismax
- 4 Reviews
Don't use unless you are sure the book is in stock
Don't bother with Waterstones unless you are sure the book is in stock. I ordered a book on the 20th May hoping to receive it in time for my wife's birthday on the 8th June. Admittedly, the entry did say "Usually despatched within 7-10 days" but that should still have been fine. Needless to say nothing arrive. I was patient but eventually contacted them two months later. I got a feeble response saying that they were contacting the publishers, who would let me know via e-mail when it was due to arrive (incidentally the despatch time on the website still said 7-10 days). Needless to say I still heard nothing. A further 3 weeks went by (27th July now) before I contacted them again at which point they said that they automatically cancelled any orders over 60 days old and promptly did so (the website still says delivery within 7-10 days!). In fact this is was a blessing in disguise, as I then went through Abebooks, using Brown Books of Hull. Ordered on 31st July, book arrived on the 5th August – very prompt and efficient. I won't be using Waterstones again because it is basically a big store that does not care. It presumably lives off its name and does not worry about losing custom, enticing more people in by putting books on its lists that it has no hope of delivering.
- Greg Matthews
- 1 Review
Not fit for purpose
An item advertised on the website as 'usually despatched with 24 hours' was out of stock, I received an email telling me this AFTER receiving an order confirmation email. But at no point was I informed that the 2 other items in my order would be delayed.
After 5 days I called to ask why my order was still outstanding, only be given an extended diatribe about how I hadn't selected the right delivery option that would allow partial shipping and some nonsense about their Terms and Conditions by a customer service assistant who was in no way interested in assisting me.
Needless to say I canceled the order and went to Amazon instead.
What was annoying is that I was using Waterstones Giftcard ...I guess as far as they were concerned, they'd already got the money so they didn't need to bother with actually fulfilling the order at all.
- batmanstu
- 1 Review
Bad customer service and never delivered the items
On the 9th Feb 09 I ordered 6 books from here. They have been sitting with the status 'on order' since then despite not saying that they were not in stock when I ordered.
I ordered on a giftcard and the books were being delivered to the store.
Today I phoned (for the second time) and was told that several books were sitting in the warehouse but they could not give a delivery date. I asked to cancel and was told I could but that I could not get the money back on my giftcard but into a Watersone's e-account. This left me with the unacceptable option of HAVING no choice but to order from them online in the future and risk this issue all over again.
Incidentally, an employee of a Watersone's 'bricks and mortar' store had no idea as to why the giftcard could not be credited and seems concerned that they had since lost customers through this.
I would not recommend Waterstones as a bookstore to buy online. Go to Amazon instead (they could have delivered just a few days later as everything was in stock.)
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