If I wanted to make it difficult, that's exactly how I'd do it.

[davidgillon]

I had an Asda order delivered last night.

Or rather I had part of an Asda order delivered. It was missing the entire frozen section of the order, about £30-worth*.

The van driver said he didn't load his van, so had no idea what had happened, but he'd see if he could locate it later.

*Tumbleweed* *Crickets*

So I just went back onto their website to claim a refund, and if I wanted to design the refund process to make it difficult for people, that's exactly how I'd do it.

To claim a refund, you have to log in, then select your order.

This brings up a list of all the items in your order and their quantities, along with a status of "Delivered"  (Yeah, right)

You then have to press the Refund button.

This takes you to a new form, which doesn't have that list of your items, it has a search box, and instructs you to search for them.

This assumes you can remember all the items. It probably works reasonably well if you're only missing one item, but if there's a huge chunk of your order missing?

I ended up having to open up a second window onto the order to get a list I could work from to be sure I wasn't missing anything, but if you were trying to do it from a phone it would be a nightmare. It's entirely possible to be trying to claim a refund on a list of items that can't be found with a single search term ("a" got all of mine - but a lot of people won't realise less is more in this case)

There's a refund option against each item, and you then have to enter the reason for the refund and the quantity and there's a comment box for each one you can fill in. I entered "All frozen items missing" against each one. 

It's just as well I put those comments there, because when you click to confirm you've selected everything  there's just a summary list and the option to send in the refund request, no option to put something like "Everything frozen was missing and the driver agreed with me".

Yeah, if I wanted to make getting a major refund difficult, that's exactly how I'd do it.

Apparently I'll get an answer in 48 hours, clearly I've gone over the automated process's limits and some poor sod is sitting there manually reviewing claims.

I have no idea how much worse this whole process would be if you have to rely on a screenreader. A hell of a lot, I suspect.

And of course I still need to order the stuff again, because the freezer is still half-empty. Which means paying for another delivery. *Headdesk*

* Second time this has happened, last time had a lot fewer items.

Comments

[hilarita]

The stoats, the terrible stoats. I've not experienced many problems like that with Ocado, but of course Ocado is more expensive.

[davidgillon]

My sister confirms that there used to be a refund button next to each item listed in your order.

Having to search for each one individually is the new, 'improved' version.

*headdesk*

[oursin]

That sounds dire, but not as bad as Sainsburys, which appears to have no means of website contact at all and expects one to communicate via Facebook Messenger. The last couple of times we had Issues the amnount involved was insufficent to compensate for the Hassle Quotient, we wonder if that is the point.

Ocado and Waitrose deal with this more competently, but Price Factors. (You pay for what you get, I guess.)

[nineveh_uk]

I'm sure that fhe Hassle Quotient is the case with sainbury's, though I have sometimes been annoyed enough to use the phoneline. That said, Sainsburys could be quicker in this case, because you could say "all frozen items" on the phone, or the driver could do it. It all feels deeply cynical, though.