Appalling customer service I was trying to order a John Lewis guest bed in white, initially through the High Wycombe store. They said that it was out of stock but they would contact me when it came back into stock. I then proceeded to order one online in a different colour which had a three week lead time. Two weeks later, I got a call from the store that they now had the bed in white and would I still like to order it? I explained that I had placed an order online but they said it would be no problem to cancel that order if I wanted the white bed. However, I would have to cancel it myself, as John Lewis online was a separate part of their business. In the meantime they gave me an order number for the white bed in store and promised to hold on to it for me. This is where the nightmare started. I called the online team and they said that even though there was still a week to go before the delivery, it was too late to cancel it and I would have to refuse the delivery when it arrived. I would then need to call them to process a refund. Of course this meant that I needed to take the morning of the delivery off work to do that. After I had refused their delivery I called them but they said that they would call me back later that day. They needed to confirm that I had indeed refused the delivery once their delivery van reached their warehouse. After three days they still had not called back and also not refunded any money so I called again and they were very unapologetic but did confirm that they would refund the money. I then called the store (as of course the online part and the offline John Lewis don't talk to each other) and arranged for the white bed to be delivered the following week. Again, I had to take time off work to receive the delivery. The evening before the delivery I received a call from the store saying that the bed was now out of stock and they would not deliver the following day. They were extremely unapologetic, again pointing out that it was really my fault for getting involved with two 'different' companies (John Lewis online and the local store) and said they would contact me when it would be back in stock. Too late to cancel my leave, I had lost more time, and as I had paid the store already, was £399 out of pocket. At that point I decided it was time to send an e-mail to the Head of Customer service at John Lewis as I thought that this artificial separation between online and offline made it impossible to ever achieve a good outcome for a customer. I got a call back a few days later from a very friendly customer service agent. She promised to investigate and get back to me within three days. She called back after four and said she could now confirm that the bed was definitely out of stock but as I had had a bad experience she could offer me £100 off a more expensive bed. As the more expensive bed was over £600 I declined and asked her to refund the £399 I had paid the store for a delivery that was never made. She said that she had no record of that transaction but she would contact the store and then contact me again to process the refund. After another three days she called me and said that she had good news, the white guest bed was back in stock and would I want to order one. I made it clear that after this appalling experience it would be very unlikely that I would order ever again at John Lewis and could she please just refund the money which eventually came back onto the card a few days later. I leave it up to other customers to judge whether they want to order at John Lewis but having been a loyal customer for many years with a partnership card and having bought most Christmas presents for the kids and furniture for the house from them, I found the treatment I received shocking. They were still clearly trying to make money out of a situation that had cost me lots of time, nerves and money by trying to up-sell me to a considerably more expensive bed. Escalating the situation to their Head of Customer Service did not really help either. I have to conclude that the company has decided to abandon their customers. The question is, will their customers eventually abandon them?