Littlewoods, or how to create a bad e-commerce experience
I had a right bastard of a customer service experience tonight. It all started when I tried to order a (birthday gift for my mother in law), at a cost of £35, from Littlewoods, where I have a purchase account.
I have always had an odd problem where I could not log into Littlewoods’ site using the “My Account” link. The only way I have ever been able to log in is to click on a link in a “Forgotten Password” email and then log in using the same login and password which the “My Account” link rejects.
Tonight, as usual, my login was rejected so I pulled up that “Forgotten Password” email, clicked on the link and logged in, and then had to find the (birthday gift) again and put it in my shopping cart again. Unbelievably, in the 45 seconds it had taken me to do that, the price of the item had risen from £35 to £42. A 20% price hike just for logging in?
With a little plume of smoke starting to come out of my ears, I searched for a customer complaints contact form and wrote my little rant out. I clicked “submit”, and received a red-lettered error message in return stating that messages must be limited to 1000 characters or less. (You’ve already read over 1200.)
I then searched for a regular email address where I could send my complaint as a regular email. There was none to be found – only the little contact form.
I then searched for a postal address where I could send my complaint as a letter. There was none to be found.
With the plume of smoke now turning into a jet, I phoned their customer services line and explained the above situation. The girl looked up the item and said it was £42 in their internal system and it was £42 over the internet too. In other words, she couldn’t see the problem, therefore I was making it up. I stood my ground and she transferred me to their “internet department”.
And THAT lady, after listening to me explain the whole situation verbally for the second time after two attempts to write it, informed me that: I was looking on the wrong web site. Littlewoods and Littlewoods Direct are two completely separate companies and I must have linked from one to the other. If I want to buy from the other one I have to set up a new account with them.
Whowhowhoah. Let’s back up here.
This is Littlewoods’ site.
This is Littlewoods Direct’s site.
Same visuals, same web design, same branding, identical pages, identical e-commerce. One is called Littlewoods, one is called Littlewoods Direct. But according to their own staff, they’re two completely separate companies which charge different prices for identical items. It’s up to the customer to keep track of which one is the smoke and which one is the mirror.
How did I travel from one site to the other? Even I don’t know. The customer experience between the two is so smooth, down to identical login screens, that my ongoing trouble with logging in actually turned out to be me trying to log in to the “wrong site.” Littlewoods/Direct’s attitude was, first, we can’t see the problem on our screen therefore it doesn’t exist, and second, you’re supposed to know better, silly customer.
If I, as a marketing and web professional, got pulled in by Littlewoods’ smoke and mirrors, what hope does Joe Public have? We are prepared to check for phishing with banking sites, but does Littlewoods’ behavior suggest we need to start keeping an eye on our largest and most “reputable” retailers as well?
More importantly, what, at the end of the day, is the purpose of having two separate companies with identical web sites? After tonight, I’m prepared to say that one site exists to pull in between 10-20% more markup on each item.
This experience is an all too common one, so what are the lessons that you can take from Littlewoods’ masterclass in how not to do e-commerce?
- Don’t bamboozle the customer with your own micromanagment. A customer doesn’t care about your corporate structure, your divisions, or your business model. They don’t need to know, and they cannot be criticised for taking no interest in what are strictly internal matters.
- If you are a registered company, you must – MUST – include a direct email address and postal address on your contact forms. It’s good practice and it’s the law. I told the “internet department” tonight that they were in violation of the UK E-Commerce regulations by failing to have these contact mechanisms on their site, and she responded by saying “well, we’d advise you to put your complaint in writing.” I can’t decide if that’s funny or not. They want customers to advise them in writing when they’re breaking the law. I’ll remember that the next time there’s another e-coli outbreak at our supermarket.
- Branding is everything. If you set up two web sites which are identical down to the tiniest details, the public will consider those two web sites to be one and the same company. Calling one “Littlewoods” and one “Littlewoods Direct” does not inform the public that they are separate companies – just the opposite. And it makes you look pretty bad when you get caught out. A bad customer service experience with one is a bad customer experience with both, so please remember that defending the deception will ultimately result in losing the customer altogether.
- The customer is always right. Believe me, I had other things I could have been doing on a Friday night. I did not spontaneously decide to pick a fight with a random customer service operator over a problem that I made up. This has been my customer service experience, and whether or not Littlewoods is happy about it, they are obliged to respect that experience and deal with what actually happened, not what they would like to believe happened.
I got quite a few nice things out of Littlewoods – or was it Littlewoods Direct? – bugger if I know. But now I know that I can’t trust them to be honest with me and I can’t trust them to see a problem through with honesty and integrity. And we all know what happens to companies like that…the government usually bails them out.
And as a postscript to this already bad experience, I made my monthly payment on my account via their online system. Five days later I got a letter in the post advising me that my transaction had not gone through. Why, why, why could they not have informed me of that when I was logged in and actually trying to deal with it? Why respond with a snail mail letter several days after the fact?
> A customer doesn’t care about your corporate structure, your divisions, or your business model. They don’t need to know, and they cannot be criticised for taking no interest in what are strictly internal matters.
This is one of my major customer service pet hates. Not just as a customer, but as someone who used to work in and be good at customer service. It never ceases to amaze me that so many people genuinely think their customers will care about this stuff. They actually act surprised or even affronted when you don’t.
I always say that world-class customer service requires just two things: common sense and empathy. Neither of these things can be taught, so customer service training is essentially a waste of time: if you have to send your staff to a class to learn how to do customer service, it’s already too late: you’ve hired the wrong people. The sad fact is that most people are deficient in either common sense or empathy or both, and those of us who aren’t can earn more money outside customer service.
Squander Two
3 December 2008 at 1:16 am
The worst example I can think of was my public sector MD insisting that one of the selling points I was to use to promote the organisation was: “Our LDC is built on a different model than other LDCs.” Truly, that’s going to get the lifelong unemployed of Glasgow beating down the doors.
idea15
3 December 2008 at 9:46 am
My God. I’ve seen some bad examples, but that really might be the worst. Amazing that it comes from the public sector.
You might like this rant of mine, Heather.
Squander Two
3 December 2008 at 7:06 pm
Left a comment on your rant.
The thing about what the MD was saying is that these local development agencies are just that, local – someone from Drumchapel can’t use the agency in Castlemilk, for example – so it is absolutely pointless to try to sell an agency based on its comparison to another. Unless, of course, the long term unemployed are not actually the target audience, and the partners, stakeholders, and fellow BS talkers are…see this post for more on that.
idea15
3 December 2008 at 7:50 pm
I know this thread a few months old now, but I was wondering if you got any further with this issue?
Given that you keep having to reset your password, I was wondering if it was possible that you might have a keylogger, virus and/or spyware on your computer? If you do then whenever you typed your password into your computer, the keylogger would transmit this information to a hacker who would be able to log into your account and add items to your order.
Have you ever noticed any extra items in your Shopping Basket which you haven’t added yourself? Also, are there any extra addresses in your address book? Finally, have you ever received any emails from Littlewoods regarding your password having been changed when you haven’t changed it yourself?
If the answer to any of the above questions is “yes” then I strongly recommend that you ensure your anti-virus and anti-spyware programs are up-to-date and run full scans of your PC. You can also run online scans of your PC at www DOT antivirus DOT com and www DOT spywareguide DOT com/onlinescan.php (I don’t know if I’m supposed to post web links here, hence spelling the addresses rather than posting links).
Just so you know, I’m also a Littlewoods customer and only found out about the LittlewoodsDirect website by chance after doing a web search and spotting the same item on the Direct site about £100 cheaper than the Littlewoods site. Apparently they are two separate companies which are part of a group of companies, but the Direct site has different credit terms compared with the Littlewoods site.
I can’t see how you could have been logging into the wrong site by mistake as you have to type the full LittlewoodsDirect address into your browser to access that site, and I am not aware of a button linking one site to another. Also, it is impossible to log into one site using the user name and password of the other as the accounts are not shared between the sites. When I wanted to buy the £100 cheaper item from LittlewoodsDirect I had to spend 20 mins on the phone setting up a new account with a separate account number.
Unless you were typing your password incorrectly – which I’m sure you weren’t – the only reason I can see for your password not being accepted is if someone else (i.e. a hacker) changed it.
Sorry for the long post but I hope it helps you or someone else?
Mike
12 January 2009 at 4:28 pm
The answer to all of that is no – it was not accepting my password because I was trying to log into the wrong site. That’s it. There was no phishing, keylogging, or password changing. I was (for one reason or another) looking on the wrong site, which was identical to the right one.
But while we’re on the subject of Littlewoods’ despicable business practices, what’s up with the official looking sweepstakes-style “You’ve won a prize!” mail that they seem to target at the elderly? We occasionally get them through the mail slot for the previous resident and the design, tone, and “official” appearance of the mailings are absolutely contemptible.
It’s as if deception and smug duplicity are parts of the company’s core values.
idea15
12 January 2009 at 4:36 pm
I’ve had the same problems with the Littlewoods scam. Having ordered an item advertised at £69 from Littlewood’s direct I received an account statement from littlewoods for £93.95 dated 20/12/2008 (late to change xmas present)
I tried several times to resolve this by phone and was finally assured everything was sorted out.
new adjusted account did arrive, with a £12 charge for overdue payment!!! who is the ceo of Littlewoods direct ?
maria goggin
20 February 2009 at 11:44 pm
If they’ve actually sold you stuff at a price greater than advertised, they’re breaking the law. Don’t bother with the CEO; just go to Trading Standards.
Squander Two
27 February 2009 at 1:10 pm
I’ve since learned that the differing prices between Littlewoods and Littlewoods Direct are for the credit arrangements. Which stinks if you were putting it on your card anyway (not using the credit function) and finding you could have paid 20% less.
I got a particularly inane mailing from Littlewoods last summer, as the credit crunch was starting to break, offering me lots of discount vouchers to theme parks and visitor attractions (all of which were in England, and all of which were the same old vouchers you can get anywhere) in exchange for extending my credit agreement to three years, with higher interest. I just feel really sorry for any family which fell for it.
idea15
27 February 2009 at 1:43 pm