Do you know your consumer rights?

I placed an order through a magazine on 12^th July.  I’d seem some items I thought would make lovely gifts.  I placed the on line order and paid via PayPal.  I got confirmation of my order and checked that the details were correct, which they were.  The next day I received an email from the third party supplier confirming that my items would be delivered the following day.  Wow, good turnaround.  I had confirmation the next day that Marc would be delivering my items that day.

I was excited to see the box when I got home from work. I opened it up only to find that the contents were not what I had ordered.  I had ordered four items, there were only three.  The items I had ordered were all different, the three incorrect items, were all the same item just different colours.  There was no paperwork with the items, so no instructions about returns or refunds.

I emailed them immediate to explain what the problem was and received a standard automatic reply saying that they had received my message but were dealing with a high volume of contacts and would get back to me as soon as possible. This was 14^th July.   I then received a second email with my ticket number saying that they respond in order of receipt and would get back to me in due course.  I still haven’t had a response to that email two weeks later.

I am not unreasonable, so I left it a few days.  Given my email was entitled “Incorrect goods delivered” I would have thought they would be interested to try to resolve the problem pretty quickly.

OK then, if they weren’t going to respond to an email, I would phone them.  My first call was made on 20^th July.  I explained everything to the customer service rep on the other end of the phone, trying to remember it’s not their fault.  She said she would get in touch with the third party provider and call me back later that day.  Nothing.

A second call on 22^nd July, referring to the first and that I’d had no return call as promised.  A different customer service assistant said the first one had contacted the third party supplier but had not heard back from them yet.  He would chase it and call me back to let me know what’s going on.  Nothing.

A third call on 27^th July and I’m getting angry now.  I explained to another different customer service assistant that I keep being told they were waiting for the third party supplier to respond.  I explained that as this has now gone on for over two weeks my consumer rights are about to be infringed and they had taken my money, but I had not been given so much as a call back to explain what’s going on.  When I asked who the third party supplier was, he feigned ignorance.  I have a fair idea so will now try to contact them directly.  I told this particular customer service assistant that if I have to make a fourth call to them later this week, I will be taking this further. 

I appreciate that companies may be struggling with the pingdemic but it doesn’t take over two weeks to respond to an incorrect delivery. 

If I haven’t heard back by the end of this week, I will be looking at my consumer rights and will be making it public with all the companies’ names, the magazine where the goods were advertised, the customer service provider who represents the magazine and the third party supplier. 

The annoying bit is I actually enjoyed the magazine, but this experience has put me off buying it again and its not entirely their fault.