Responding to a damning article on econsultancy.com headed: ‘Made.com: a case study of customer service hell?’ Made’s then CEO ‘pledge[d] to greatly improve service levels’. The article was published in 2012. Seven years later, every review site, with the mysterious exception of Trustpilot, indicates how far short he fell of that ambition. The experiences recounted on these sites closely match my own, with reports of delays, empty promises, lame excuses (warehouse issues being a favourite) and non-existent customer support, (though you can be assured of bringing them crawling out from under their stone with their mealy-mouthed platitudes by posting a critical review on Trustpilot). After a four-week wait for the item I’d ordered to reach their distribution centre, it spent the next three weeks supposedly ‘being prepared for dispatch’. When I chased this, I was fobbed off with an obviously copied-and-pasted reply offering a new dispatch schedule. Three subsequent emails were simply ignored, and the estimated date for my order’s dispatch remains unchanged 12 days after its expiry. I’m now in the process of securing the return of my money for services not rendered. Hilariously, in a 2017 interview with ‘The Guardian’, Made’s founder stated his ambition for the company to be ‘the new Ikea’. Well, we can all dream. Meanwhile they must content themselves with being the dotcom Acorn Antiques.