Sadly, not all big names are like this.

HP are, without doubt, the most useless company to try to buy directly from.

My daughter needs a laptop for university so I’d narrowed the selection down and found a decent option at John Lewis (where she gets staff discount). I then looked at HP’s own website where they were offering the same unit with £150 off, so that was the cheaper option. I filled in my details online, billing address as my debit card and delivery address to my partner’s house where most other stuff gets delivered to. This was on the 9th May. They then did nothing with the order until the 12th, when they rejected it, helpfully telling me:

“Thank you for shopping at the HP Store.

Unfortunately, the order cannot be completed, as we are unable to verify some of the details on the order used for the purposes of our payment verification process.

Please note that there is nothing to worry about, and if you believe that your details were recorded incorrectly on the order, please re-submit, checking that the information given is complete and correct.

Some helpful hints:

-       Your credit/debit card must be registered to the billing address provided;
-       The billing address is to be entered in the same format as what appears on your credit/debit card statement;
-       The card holders name must be the same as the person stated in the order billing address details;
-       An alternative payment option may be available via HP Store, such as bank transfer (BACS).

If you have any further queries relating to this order, please contact our customer service team by emailing {removed} or calling our advisors on 084.560.429.21 (lines are open Monday – Friday 09:00 – 17:30).”

I was travelling that day, but rang from the hotel given that none of those “helpful hints” matched whatever issue they were having. I was offered the option of prepayment instead so I placed the order again and was told to expect an e-mail with payment details. This arrived a few minutes later:

“Thank you for shopping at the HP Store. We acknowledge the receipt of your order and we are currently checking all the data.

Your order number is: {removed}-002

The acceptance of the order is dependent on receipt of your payment. You will receive an order confirmation email as soon as the order has been approved.

We will send you a pro forma invoice along with payment instructions within the next days. However, if you would prefer to arrange for immediate payment, please find below the required information, allowing you to proceed with the fund transfer:

BACS Instructions:

Payment Ref: {removed}

Please ensure that you provide your HP Store Order Number as payment reference.

The order will be released when HP has visibility of the funds in our bank account. Please note this can take up to 6 days, due to the banking process…”

So, as instructed, I made immediate payment using online banking and was told that payment would be made instantly. This was on May 12th. No order confirmation e-mail. No pro-forma invoice either. Nothing.

I rang them this morning. No, they hadn’t done anything with the order as it usually takes them a few days to match the payment to the order – despite me putting that as the payment reference – and that they now needed me to send them proof of payment. This meant taking a screen capture, editing it to remove all the other details and then e-mailing it to them. Nothing at all about this in their e-mails, obviously. That would be way too easy, wouldn’t it?

We will see what transpires now. Just as well she doesn’t need it for a couple of months, eh?

In the meantime, a challenge for you: try to visit the HP website and work out how to track your order. The best I managed was to do it in six steps: Home | Support & Troubleshooting | HP Branded Products | Buy Direct Online | Buy HP products online direct from HP | Track My Order. Not exactly intuitive, is it?

I will never again buy any shoes from Fredericks of Hollywood. For non-US orders, they use iShopUSA to ship them and they are utter fecktards:

2 March, order paid by credit card:

“Credit Card Payments
Your credit card will not be charged until we have been able to verify the details of your credit card information”

2 March, e-mail from iShopUSA:

“Dear Richard,

Due to the high risk of credit card fraud associated with international transactions as well as discrepancies regarding your order information, we ask for your understanding and cooperation in verifying your identity with us, since we always strive to do our utmost to protect our clients from fraudulent and unauthorized transactions.

Before we can proceed with your order, we need you to provide us with the documentation outlined below:
1. The signed credit card authorization form (click here to download this PDF document)
2. A photocopy of the front and back of your credit card
3. A photocopy of your driver license or passport
Please send all required documents to Anti-Spam e-mail Link or fax them to +1 310 882 5447.
Please note that we need you to send us these documents only once. As long as you use the same credit card, it will not be necessary for future orders.

Please take the following security precautions before emailing or faxing the documents:
- Cover all digits of the credit card number except for the last 4 digits
(Please note: This does not apply to the credit card number field on the credit card authorization form; this field has to contain the full credit card number including all digits.)
- Cover the driver license/passport number
- Send the documents separately
In order to avoid delays with your order, we suggest that you scan the documents and send them via email or at least set the fax resolution to high, so that they are clearly legible.

Alternatively, you may also pay by PayPal.
In case you’d rather like to pay by PayPal, just let us know. We will then revise your order and send you a link with which you will be able to pay for your order.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
As always, if you have any questions or need help with your order, please contact our Customer Experience Specialists at Anti-Spam e-mail Link or give us a call at +1 (424) 903-4002. We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks in advance and have a good day.
Kind regards,

iShopUSA”

2 March, my reply:

“Sorry, but no chance!

PayPal will be fine: please send me a payment link.”

3 March, PayPal link received.

3 March, e-mail from iShopUSA:

“Dear Richard,

This is your revised order containing a change in payment method to PayPal.

As soon as you accept the revision, we will be able to process your order. Please reply to this e-mail and send it to revisions@…, so that we can proceed with your order. Please be advised that your response has to include a copy of this revision as well as your statement accepting or declining the revised order. If you do not include the statement or the copy of the revision, this may delay the ordering process. If you do not accept the revision, please let us know as well. Thank you.

If you would like to respond to this revision in order to accept or decline this revision now, please click the reply button in your e-mail program, add your statement that you accept or decline to the e-mail text and make sure that the e-mail address in the send-to field is revisions@…. You may need to replace the e-mail no-reply@… with revisions@…. Please note that if you try to reply to no-reply@…, we will not receive your e-mail.

You can check your order status any time you want by logging in to your iShopUSA customer account.

Thank you for your order!”

3 March, e-mail from me accepting the order.

3 March, e-mail from iShopUSA to my PayPal e-mail account:

“Dear Richard,

Due to the high risk of credit card fraud associated with international transactions as well as discrepancies regarding your order information, we ask for your understanding and cooperation in verifying your identity with us, since we always strive to do our utmost to protect our clients from fraudulent and unauthorized transactions.

Before we can proceed with your order, we kindly request that you to reply to this email to confirm that you placed this order.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused…”

3 March, e-mail from me to iShopUSA:

“There are no damn discrepancies with my order. You’ve been paid. Now stop pissing about and send the damn shoes!”

4 March, e-mail from iShopUSA to me:

“Your order has been successfully processed!

The amount of time it takes for items to arrive at our warehouse varies between 5-7 business days.  Once we receive your item and inspect them they will be shipped out to you.  At this time we will email you with a tracking number.”

Silence.

29 March, log in to their website:

“Status: In transit to warehouse”

Looking at the explanation of what this means reveals this little gem:

“In transit to warehouse:
Your items are on the way to our warehouse in California where they will be consolidated and eventually shipped out to you.”

“Eventually” being the operative word, it seems…

And guess what? Yes, they rang me at 9.20pm and cancelled tonight’s delivery leaving me without food and milk due to a problem with the van. Great! Tesco cannot afford more than a man with a van that’s a bit rickety, apparently.

The customer services operator was surly at best but after prompting from me, he promised me another £10 voucher against my next online shop and in the meantime rescheduled the delivery for Wednesday night.

We’ll see if they can be arsed this time!

It doesn’t really matter though because after I’ve used that voucher, I’ll be switching to Sainsbury’s…

I put through an order for a load of groceries from Tesco.com for delivery tonight between 8.00pm and 10.00pm.

At 9.30pm, I had a quick look online for my order to check the delivery slot and the website said I could not change it as they were currently filling the order.

No sign of the delivery by 10.00pm.

At 10.04pm, I get a text telling me that they have had to cancel my order due to bad weather. It’s not actually snowing and the road between my flat and the store is passable. Of course, if they’d have cancelled my order earlier and told me then, I could have gone out myself and got my groceries earlier this evening!

I am not a happy bunny and I’m waiting in a long telephone queue now…

[later] Well they’ve apologised and are sending me a £10 e-voucher to use for my next shop. Off I now have to trot to get my essentials…

When we actually came to use it properly, it started but within a few seconds stopped and all the lights flashed. Nothing in the manual helped and it was the same whether we were using the sensor drying programmes or timed drying. So we rang the 24 hour service number which is only working from 9 to 5…

Eventually we spoke to them today: apparently when it’s cold, the sensor gets too cold and refuses to allow the dryer to run. It’s a known fault. And the remedy?

“Try using the dryer when it’s warmer.”

Like? When it’s not winter or when we’d be pegging things out on the line? Ah…

A few weeks ago, I decided to buy a new dishwasher. After looking on the John Lewis web site, I found a suitable model but it was out of stock. Currys’ website indicated they would price match as they were overpriced in comparison. Ringing them elicited the response that yes they would price match and take a further 10% off but no, we couldn’t order one until Friday as it was out of stock, but maybe we could find one in store.

Off to Grimsby Currys on the Saturday afternoon. After looking around at what they had in store, I eventually had to go and break up a cosy chat between four of their staff to get one of them, Jenny Noble, to actually sell us one as they were apparently uninterested in serving us. She graciously allowed us to make a purchase of an integrated dishwasher but as it was now 3.01pm, they wouldn’t deliver it on Sunday, as we’d missed the 3.00pm deadline…

We were told that delivery was free but that we could pay extra to have it delivered, installed and the old one disposed of. We were charged £20 extra for this.

So today it was delivered but we were told that the delivery man was only dropping the new one off as he had 5 minutes only and 30 deliveries to do.

We rang Currys who eventually said they would get Rob, the manager, to check with Jenny and ring me. They didn’t. I rang back and was told that no, she wouldn’t have made a mistake and the additional money we were charged was for … something else. After much to-ing and fro-ing, I was told that installation would cost another £100 but Rob would allow us 20% off that. I argued that we’d already paid for installation and after Curry’s Customer Services hung up on me after refusing to put me through to a supervisor, we were told that Rob had withdrawn his generous offer and if I wanted installation it would cost another £100.

I told them to come and collect it: it would be on the driveway.

In the meantime, my partner was telephoned and it was agreed that they would refund the £20 … but I’d have to go to Grimsby from London to get the refund! Eventually a few days later we actually got the refund.

So thanks to Rob at Curry’s Grimsby, we’re never, ever buying anything from Currys again, anywhere in the country. I already don’t buy from them online as Currys’ online prices are much more expensive than Amazon’s anyway. Oh and that will also extend to PC World who are part of the same group of companies.