Fancy a Curry?

Sadly I’m not talking chicken jalfrezi. Currys, the pushy high street retailer has finally pushed me too far.

Rewind to July 2011 and after seeking advice from my Twitter buddies I went shopping for a netbook. I ended up in the Currys/PC World on the outskirts of Croydon. They had the item I wanted in stock at an acceptable price. I bought it. I left, not before asking the cashier to ensure that I wasn’t added to any email marketing lists…please.

Since the date of purchase I’ve been receiving regular sales emails from Currys and PC World. Each time one arrives I click unsubscribe and their web site tells me:

Currys unsubscribe messageThen a day or two later another email arrives trying to flog me a TV, DVD player, microwave, washing machine…I click unsubscribe, they acknowledge, they ignore. You get the picture.

I put up with this for months, man how lame is that? Anyhoo – before Christmas I had a go at contacting Sebastian James, one of the company directors who has a twitter account. I expressed my frustration and asked for help. I got no reply. Maybe in the run up to Christmas wasn’t a great time to contact him so I tried again in the New Year. Nowt, nada, not a sausage. Sebastian clearly uses his Twitter account, though seemingly not to direct and help resolve customer complaints.

A few days ago I hopped onto the Stop Doing Dumb Things to Customers Facebook page and asked for help. Julia suggested that Currys might appreciate a rocket up the backside (my interpretation of what she actually said), courtesy of the Advertising Standards Authority. So today – I’ve registered a complaint with the ASA. How tedious, and if it gets Currys off my back well it will have been worth it.

I’ll keep you posted – and if anyone can suggest a suitably mischievous way I might repay Currys for persistently ignoring my requests, I’m open to suggestions.

Update: Thanks to Julia for suggesting the ICO as another place to get help with removing unwanted email

Author: Doug Shaw

Artist and Consultant. Embracing uncertainty, sketching myself into existence. Helping people do things differently, through an artistic lens.

10 thoughts on “Fancy a Curry?”

  1. When I worked at DSG all complaints flooded in to the same office at Edgware (later Ealing, now Hemel), where a hard-pressed team tried to undo whever evils had been perpetrated on the customer.

    Aggrieved customers would receive a reply and whatever resolution could be offered. If they were still unhappy and escalated up the DSG management tree, the complaints ended up with the same team who would again reply offering a resolution. On more than one occasion a reply from Joe Bloggs, Complaints Department, was followed by an escalated complaint and then a reply from the same Joe Bloggs, now styling himself Assistant to the CEO (or whoever). From time to time Joe would receive another mail from the aggrieved punter congratulating him on his promotion! I suspect even now in Hemel (or Bratislava or wherever), the Joe Bloggses of this world are still trying to right all the wrongs done to all of DSG’s customers, irrespective of where in the DSG Twitterverse the complaint went!

    There is, however an email marketing preference service which should be able to sort this out. At the cost of you never ever receiving a mail again. Or blacklist the sender at your end?

    1. Oh dear! I used to work there too you know *blush*

      Thanks for sharing the real life experience Rob, I appreciate it. And I’ll try your suggestions out too. Cheers – Doug

  2. I haven’t bought anything from Currys since I tried to take a (fairly pricey) fridge freezer off their hands. All was fine until delivery day when the van turned up, the delivery crew looked at the flight of a dozen wide and straight steps up to the front door and claimed they couldn’t deliver. For comic effect – because there can be no other reason – they cited ‘health and safety’. The store was unconcerned and offered no alternative, so had to give me my money back. It’s annoying, baffling and no way to do business. On the plus side though, I did find out as a result that you can buy household appliances on-line from Boots.

    1. Oh dear. I’ve ascended the Ingram staircase and if someone as inelegant as me can climb them harmlessly I’d hope that two qualified barrow/delivery boys could manage just as well. Yet another tale of why this lot don’t deserve our money.

      Thanks Mike

  3. Hi Doug,

    Loved your protest song at Currys policy of bombarding you with unwanted emails. It’s amazing how they want to communicate with you in this way but their silence in response to you trying to stopped being bombarded is all the more telling I think of not having any idea of how to treat customers properly. They are reinforcing a bad reputation for themselves through not managing this very visible interaction of their brand.

    1. Thanks Mark – amazingly a Currys tweet account has now been in touch and said the reason I had silence from them on Twitter before is ‘@dixonsops is not a customer service profile’. Frankly I don’t care – it would have taken @dixonsops thirty seconds to point me in the right direction, instead – silence until I feel forced to kick up a stink.

      Like you say – telling stuff. Cheers for popping by 🙂

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