Unacceptable Time to Process Returns

Forgive me if I'm wrong because I can't find Sarah Bennett's recent post but didn't she say a few days ago that returns were now taking 5-6 days? Well, I've just phoned to chase mine (currently 9 days and 7 days) and have been told they're taking up to 3 weeks. That is totally unacceptable.

I have another order in my basket that I was waiting to check out but won't do so now I haven't had my money back for the returns. So, a lost sale. I can't be the only one who is doing this.

:down:

They seam to be taking a while to dispatch, I placed an order on Sunday, and its just been dispatched this afternoon.

My last return took 28 days

It took over 4 weeks before the money was back in my account when I returned an item recently. :angry:

Meeshoo said:

Forgive me if I'm wrong because I can't find Sarah Bennett's recent post but didn't she say a few days ago that returns were now taking 5-6 days? Well, I've just phoned to chase mine (currently 9 days and 7 days) and have been told they're taking up to 3 weeks. That is totally unacceptable.

I have another order in my basket that I was waiting to check out but won't do so now I haven't had my money back for the returns. So, a lost sale. I can't be the only one who is doing this.

:down:

Click to expand...

Here you go Meesh, it was in the RocksTV forum........post 6

http://forum.shoppingtelly.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24480

My last return took 26 days in all, not including the day they received it. Much much too slow!

Thank you for that Sacha.

So when Sarah posted, a week ago, it was standing at 16 days with the aim to reduce that over the next 3 weeks. Today I'm told it's 21 days! Looks like things are going in the wrong direction.

It's absolutely totally unacceptable to keep money for this amount of time. I don't care if the T&Cs state up to 30 days. GemsTV have NEVER taken that long before. It's very off putting and I won't be ordering again until it's been reduced to at least 1 week. I don't think that's unreasonable.

Excessive return period for gems/rocks

It has put me off too, had over £300 tied up for too long.
But also beware, found out today that if you have had a price pledge on anything you have returned then you dont get that as a refund it stays as a credit on your account!
I'm sorry but this is out of order as I not sure if I shall be ordering again as I am fed up of returning things.

My last item took 31 days,i was so annoyed as it was nearly £700 and i wanted the money back to buy something else i has spotted (as the rocks item was so disappointing), i didn't have the funds to buy the other one until my refund had cleared, by the time i had my money back the other item had sold!

I waited a month for one refund and three weeks for the last one, and as I've said in other threads, this is unacceptable, and is not something mentioned on air when the presenters are burbling, sorry shouting, about the peace of mind the customer is given due to the 30 day mbg. I'm fairly certain new customers would be put off from ordering if the time for refunds was mentioned. Add to this the poor Quality Control which is allowing defective items to be sent out to customers, and it is most definitely cause for concern. Again, as I've said elsewhere, get the existing branches of Coloured Rocks right before moving on to other ventures, otherwise you risk failure of everything.

Hi All,

Really sorry about your experience with refunds, we were indeed very behind and that was not acceptable. However we have had a big push and taken on extra staff to help clear the backlog. As i mentioned it is our aim to get the refund time down to 7-10 days.

We are currently processing returns now from the 8th October.

If i can be of any assistance or indeed you need to contact steve or John, please feel free to email us and we will always do our best to address any issues

Regards

Sarah

Sarah Bennett said:

Hi All,

Really sorry about your experience with refunds, we were indeed very behind and that was not acceptable. However we have had a big push and taken on extra staff to help clear the backlog. As i mentioned it is our aim to get the refund time down to 7-10 days.

We are currently processing returns now from the 8th October.

If i can be of any assistance or indeed you need to contact steve or John, please feel free to email us and we will always do our best to address any issues

Regards

Sarah

Click to expand...

Sarah - just to put this into perspective, the problem (for me) is that I've got just over £500 waiting to be refunded and did have over £300 in my basket. I'm not prepared to have £800 tied up in the GemsTV system (or anybody's system) as I'm sure you'll appreciate so I've reluctantly had to let items go out of my basket rather than at the last minute before they expired (yesterday) put them onto an order. I was waiting each day and checking my bank to see if I could have checked the items out sooner which is why I ended up calling the Customer Care team yesterday.

I won't be the only one who this has happened to and the result is a loss for GemsTV and disappointment for me as a customer. Hey ho! My bank manager will be happy anyway!

Thanks for your reply but as returns are still at 14 days could you throw a few more bodies at it please?!

While it might be taking 14 days for Rocks to process returns the absurdity of the returns process at Rocks/Gems hit me in the face today. I received an automated email from Rocks telling me that they had received my return on (order number) . Amazed as I had sent nothing back this week I checked my post office receipts.

I returned a package to Rocks on special delivery on 8 October, Royal Mail track and trace say that it was received by Rocks on 11 October. Today on 22 October Rocks tell me that the return will take 13 days to process. No doubt when they do process it I will receive another email telling me it will take 3/4 days for the funds to actually be received in my account.

With Christmas hurtling towards I am not remotely convinced the "refund situation" will get any better - one hugely unimpressed customer specially as I had to send something else back today - sapphire earrings which were simply not colour matched by any stretch of the imagination ...........

Anjo - so that's 24 days from the day they received your parcel to be processed and then add on another 3 or 4 for the money to get into your account - so 28 days in total? Seems to me that nothing has improved. This is totally unacceptable. I'm sorry you're in the same position as me. Let's have a good moan together.

*moan* *whinge* *moan*

I will look into both of your accounts and make sure that they are sorted quickly.

We are throwing bodies at refunds but it takes a while to catch up.

As always though please email us if you have problems that you are unhappy with, that way we can sort them out directly.

Regards

Sarah

Sarah, I do appreciate your offer of help but I did phone customer service and was told there was nothing that could be done - that surely is what you would want customers to do? You are busy enough without each Tom, Dick and Harry emailing trying to get preferrential treatment just because they've got your email address. It wouldn't occur to me to email. Perhaps I'm being naive but I will give credit where it's due (ie my recent gorgeous purchase from GemsTV) but if I'm peeved and feel others might be in the same position, then this forum is a good place for a good old whinge!

Hello everyone,

It might be helpful if I outline the process we have recently put in.

When the postman brings the returns in, we scan the returns label on the outside of each one. To do this, we use a batch processing scanner, which is a fairly simple device (in other words, it just captures the data without any visual confirmation of order number or checking the database). Once all the returns have been scanned, the data on this device is downloaded and the email is sent saying we have received the return. From this week we have started to include the average number of days that returns are taking to process based on the last seven days of data - to give an indication of when the return will be processed.

In some cases, we don't get a successful scan - either the label is not there, or during transit it has become unreadable. In those cases, the return is not 'received' at that point and will only be 'received' when the warehouse move on to the parcels that were received that day and start to open them and process them.

I know the team were working on returns received on the 11th October recently, so this was probably the case with your parcel, Anjo. If so I would expect it to be processed already or within the next couple of days.

We're still fine-tuning this process, and the way we do the emails has been completely re-written, so they will get more accurate over the next week or so.

At our slowest, we were taking around 22 days to process returns. We've pulled that back now to around 13 days. We want to get that down further so this week we have implemented an evening shift on returns in addition to the day shift, so we should significant further improvement in the next weeks.

Meeshoo, you are absolutely right - the process has to work for all customers, not just the ones who know our email addresses. We're working hard to get it better for everyone and to make sure that people have accurate information about their orders at all times.

Hopefully this information is helpful. As always, if you have any questions, please let me know.

Kind regards

John

As if by magic from my email yesterday saying that my return would take about 13 days another email today saying that the money will be back in my account within the next 3 days. While I appreciate that and John Bennett taking the time to reply I look forward to the endeavours of Rocks/Gems staff meaning that ALL customers get their money returned to them promptly.

Thanks for outlining the process John. Interestingly, I've never had an email confirming a return! So although I know they've been received (because of the Royal Mail website) I have nothing from GemsTV.

Just wanted to let you know because clearly the email system isn't working for everybody - I always seem to be the problem child!

just posted this on rocks... totally unacceptable

I'm aware that lots of customers are dismaying about the legnth of time it is taking to process returns, myself included and I must admit that this is one of several reasons why I don't log on and buy as much nowadays.

I have just received 3 emails telling me that the returns from 3 different orders have been received by coloured rocks ( the items were posted together in the same package) and that returns are currently taking approx 13 days to process. I thought fair enough thanks for letting me know ...until I checked my records ( I always keep a record of what I return and when) and discovered that those said items were posted by special delivery on September 13th and therefore coloured rocks will have had those returns since september 14th ... 6 WEEKS already. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get my refunds for christmas ......

I got so fed up with the length of time for refunds I stopped shopping with them a few months ago. Now if I feel tempted I remind myself of the hassle of getting a refund.
The self satisfied way I was reminded of their 30 day T&Cs didn't help.
QVC took 2 days last week and TJC usually within a week.
You can be as pleasant a family as you like but business usually comes down to money,efficiency and being that bit better than the competition,of whom there are many.