Not good enough, Coles!

Every camel has a straw that breaks its back, and I’ve just had mine! It’s a small straw, but as with the camel, it’s the last in a long line. In fact, the line stretches all the way back to the beginning of the pandemic when the Offspring and I first started to self-isolate.

But first, for non-Australians, who or what is Coles?

Coles is one of the two major supermarket chains in Australia. The other one is Woolworths. When the pandemic struck, Woolworths was the first to provide online shopping. Coles scrambled to follow, but their service has never been quite as good. What Coles do offer is $2 home delivery at certain times of the day. As I’m on a fixed income [pension], cheap delivery is a huge selling point. But no more.

I am not going to be using Coles’ online shopping any more because I have NEVER had a delivery that was exactly what I ordered. Most of the time I shrug it off because the substitute item[s] is ‘close enough’. The substitution for this last order though, makes no sense.

This is what I ordered:

Click on the image to make it bigger.

Essentially, I ordered two different kinds of chilled cat food. Chilled cat food is fresh meat. One sort wasn’t supplied at all. For the second one – circled in red – the ‘Picker’ substituted ‘wet cat food’ – i.e. tinned cat food.

The wet cat food looks like this:

I never order that stuff because Golli won’t eat it, which makes the substitution doubly annoying because Golli isn’t eating much of anything at the moment, but he does seem to like the ones that weren’t ‘available’.

Knowing how many types of chilled cat food [fresh meat] there are to choose from, I logged in to the Coles website and went to the chilled cat food section, to see if everything was ‘out of stock’. This is what I found [about half an hour ago]:

As you can see, there are TEN kinds of chilled cat meat and only one of them is out of stock [the purple one bottom right]. Curiously, the cat food I ordered is still showing as available.

So this is my question: even if my chosen cat food were out of stock, why not substitute it with some other chilled cat meat? Why select something completely different?

I rang Coles and asked that very question but did not get any kind of an answer. The only thing the customer service person could offer was a refund. But to get the refund I have to send the unwanted cat food back with the driver. And that means:

• sitting by the front door between 11 and 12 so I can catch the driver when he arrives, [contactless delivery]
• masking up
• putting on gloves
• going through each bag
• finding the cat food and explaining that he’s to take it back

And no, I’m not exaggerating. Being in protective self-isolation means we wash or ‘air’ [leave outside for 3 days] everything we buy before we bring it inside the house. So for me to go out and return the offending cat food is a big deal, but I can’t afford to waste $5 on something I’ll just throw away.

A $2 delivery fee is simply not worth this much angst. Just not good enough Coles. Not. Good. Enough.

Meeks

Derila Refund!

A short while ago I wrote a post about a terrible experience I had while trying to buy one, single pillow online. You can read that post here.

Today I’m overjoyed to be able to say that the full refund hit my bank account:

A screenshot of the refund

I’m still waiting on my new card, but at least I have my money back. I credit this blog for at least some of that. My thanks to all of you for having my back. 🙂

love,
Meeks

Derila Pillows – faulty merchant interface? or a deliberate scam?

I haven’t been sleeping well for a while now – neck problems – so this morning I bit the bullet and went looking for a better pillow. I found glowing testimonials for a new kind of pillow – the Derila. When I checked the price it seemed reasonable, so I started the process of buying one…ONE.

By the time I reached the bit at the end where you have to confirm your order, I noticed that I’d been charged for 4 pillows, not one. I tried to fix the quantity but the website wouldn’t let me. So I regretfully decided I’d live without and did NOT press that last, all important button.

Imagine my horror when I checked my online banking and discovered that the website had taken my money anyway. I am now $152.00 poorer. On an age pension that is a lot.

This is the email I sent to Derila:

I did not CONFIRM payment on any ‘order’ so charging my bank for $152.00 is a fraudulent transaction.

Either the whole Derila website is a scam or there is something very wrong with your merchant interface.

Why?

1. Because I only ordered 1 pillow and was charged for 4.

2. There was no way to change the quantity so I decided not to go ahead. That should have stopped the transaction but…

3. When I checked my online banking a few minutes later, I was horrified to see that I had been charged $152.00, for Derila Pillows I had not ordered.

Next, I rang my bank and asked for a stop payment, but apparently the payment had already gone through at my end. I was told that I had to wait for the payment to go through at the merchant end before the bank could begin the process of claiming a refund on my behalf.

To add insult to injury, the bank also said I would need a new card to be sure I wasn’t scammed again. Now I have to wait 5 – 10 business days to get a new card. I am furious.

I intend to post the contents of this email onto my blog. It should be live by 2:00 pm. In that blog post I will tell my readers that I will update them on the result.

If I do not get a refund, I will do two things:

1. I will post a second article updating my readers about what happened to me and asking them to reblog the info. so that no one else ends up getting scammed.

2. Next, I will contact SCAM Watch and report the website for fraudulent activity. With any luck, Derila.com.au will be forced to shut down.

This is what I will do. What will Derila do?

As per that email, 2pm has come and gone so I’m posting this. Also as per the email, I will update you all on what happens next. I hope it’s a refund, but I’m not holding my breath.

Apologies for the angry post, but to be conned like this, when I’m so damn careful, is beyond infuriating.

Meeks

Pet Circle – Buyer Beware!

This warning applies to https://www.petcircle.com.au/

As the name implies, Pet Circle provides all sorts of products for your pet. I made one purchase, ages ago, via the Pet Circle online store. As far as I was concerned, this was a one time purchase. Imagine my surprise when I checked my emails this morning and found this:

I knew I had not set up any kind of recurring purchase so at first I thought the email was one of those awful scams we all have to live with. I would have deleted the email out of hand if not for all the personal information that a scammer would not have known:

When I logged into the Pet Circle website and had a look at my account, I found an option about Auto Delivery that I’m sure I didn’t see when I made my one and only purchase:

I cancelled the auto delivery and rang the company. I was told that there was different pricing for one off sales and auto delivery sales. I’m damn careful with my money so you can believe me when I say I was not aware of this AT ALL.

The person I spoke to at Pet Circle said something along the lines of ‘it can be confusing’. Yes, it can.

You can see from the bit I circled at the top of the previous screenshot that it is not at all clear that the discounted prices are contingent on signing up for the auto delivery.

In fact, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that there was no ‘signing’ up involved at all.

I am no lawyer so there may well be some kind of legal ‘thing’ whereby if you accept a certain price, you are accepting certain terms and conditions that go with it. I assume this is the legal grounds on which the Pet Circle auto delivery function operates.

But…if a customer effectively agrees to an ongoing ‘direct debit’ on their account, that should be made very clear, multiple times before the customer makes that purchase. There should never be any confusion about a direct debit. Direct debits give the company access to your bank account. This is dangerous stuff and should never be entered into lightly.

What bothers me the most is that I’m soooo careful with my money and with everything to do with online security, yet if I had followed my first instinct and deleted the Pet Circle email as a scam, I would not have known about the transaction until a) an unwanted purchase landed on my doorstep, and b) my account was debited with an amount I could ill afford to lose.

This is the first time I’ve personally come across this kind of ‘confusion’, but I can’t help wondering how many other online companies are doing much the same thing? When you buy online, please read all the fine print and do NOT leave your credit cards details with any merchant unless you are absolutely sure that you want to give them access to your bank account.

I’m okay. Make sure that you’re okay too, now and into the future.

Not even a little bit happy,
Meeks