Utterly outrageous and abusive treatment, I can not understand how they are still in business.
I have been doing my main grocery shopping on line for as long as on line shopping has been available. I am a wheelchair user and can't get around a supermarket to do a full shop, the most I can pick up in person in the supermarket is a few items I can place in my lap. Morrisons has always been my favoured supermarket, both for range and price of products, and for the staff who are unfailingly kind and helpful in person. It was with utter delight therefore that I noticed a poster recently on a train implying that Morrisons now delivered to my area, and I booked my first delivery - a full months groceries to come on my upcoming payday. I got a chirpy text reminder the morning before, and that evening, discovered that I was out of cooking oil, and went to see if it was too late to add to my order. What I saw on the web site was confusing. My order was showing as cancelled? No new texts since the chippity-chirpy reminder, but I checked my emails to be sure, and there was an email telling me that my order had been canceled as the payment had failed. Well, duh! I didn't get paid until the following day. I've shopped with several on line retailers, who all take payment the same day as they deliver, perhaps an hour or two before, so this surprised me slightly, but didn't overly concern me. So today I followed the instructions in the email, went on line, checked all my details were correct. They were. I'd updated them all the previous week when placing my first order on an old account I must have set up years ago . I reordered, and added the oil. And received a message 'Your order has been successfully placed' after the HSBC security password process went through as normal to confirm my card.
This evening, I thought I'd better check. To my surprise, I couldn't log on to the Morrison's web site *at all*. It gave me a message that my account was 'inactive'. I popped back over to my email ... turns out that within an hour of my placing the order this morning they had cancelled it again, and again without bothering to phone or text to inform me of doing so, again, saying it was because they couldn't "validate your payment method". I have no clue what their problem is. I saw the HSBC screen come up and confirm the card. In all my years internet shopping, of course I have had a couple of occasions where there were payment problems before. Once my dog ate my card and I ordered a new one, and didn't realise the dates were different because the card number remained the same. On another occasion I'd cancelled a stolen card after making the grocery order. Both times the supermarket rang me. And we got the problem solved straight away. And got my groceries maybe an hour or two late. Understandable. I'm not asking anyone to bring me groceries I haven't paid for, after all.
Morrisons however, don't take that approach, and don't seem to realise that phones are for anything other than spammy marketing texts. Sad, that.
So anyway, I rang their customer services number, and this is where it gets really, really bad. This is the point where the soap opera suddenly turns into a horror film.
I got through to what was clearly a call center far far away, in another galaxy, a different time zone, and an alternate reality. I was answered by a very rude and officious woman with a chip on her shoulder and a serious attitude problem, for whom pleasantries such as 'Hello' and 'how are you' do not exist. I didn't get to tell her the problem for quite a while as she snapped and demanded all my details from me before finally snapping 'whats the problem' at me in the kind of tone an exhausted and infuriated school principle uses on the 97th miscreant they have had to deal with that hour alone. I told her. I also explained that as a wheelchair user who was totally reliant on deliveries for food, this fiasco has left me without the means to have a dinner for today, tomorrow and possibly a few days after that while I try to get an alternative delivery sorted. It would have been a good opportunity for her to apologize on behalf of Morrisons for the inconvenience they had caused. Instead she just went on the attack implying that I was 57 kinds of stupid for not knowing by magic that they wanted to 'verify my identity' - and very confusingly, while the emails seemed to suggest it was my bank details they were concerned about, she seemed more fixated on my address.
(Dear Morrisons, there is a lovely document known as the 'register of electors'. Its one of hundreds of ways you could quickly and easily see that my name is indeed registered to my address)
Anyway, this story unfolds thus. If you want to be a customer of Morrisons on line grocery shopping, you need to apply by making a first order. Which is cancelled by default. But you won't be warned in any way that this is just a dummy run. If you complain, you will be derided as stupid for not magically knowing that this is how they do things. You then need to run the gauntlet of horrible customer service people far far way - if you are willing to take the initiative to phone them to find out why your order was cancelled. You will then once more be derided for being utterly stupid for not knowing that you were supposed to bring your passport, birth cert, 93 utility bills all from the last 5 days, a sample of your maternal grandmothers DNA, and hand it all in at head office, which exists at an undisclosed location, probably accessed through Diagon Alley.
Once you have done that, apparently, they might be willing to take your money and bring you some food. Until then, good luck, and if you experience serious medical problems due to being left without food due to their bizarre business practices, well, that's just your tough luck.
Of course, at any stage if they had just provided the relevant information, and communicated with me in a reasonable way none of this would have been a problem. The only text they sent was a confirmation that my delivery was coming. Their 2 emails claimed 2 things, neither of which made any sense, and their customer service person said something totally different again but which revolved around asking me to verify my identity. I don't have a problem with being asked that. I'd opened an account maybe 5 years ago or so to see if they delivered to my area, and at the time they didn't. 5 years later I go in, change all the details except my phone number as I've moved house and changed bank cards since then, and make a big, big order for a months food plus a shed load of drink and goodies for Christmas to take the pressure off next month. It would have been perfectly reasonable for them to ring me, and ask for reasonable confirmation. What is not reasonable is to just cancel my orders without explanation or apology, and refuse to take any responsibility when I explain that as a disabled person this is leaving me in a serious and dangerous situation. I always like Morrisons most because they seemed *more* human than any of the other big supermarkets. I will never buy so much as a loaf of bread in a Morrison's again.