Myer false 'click and collect' time frames

My kettle died this morning so decided to order from Myer using click and collect to save time. The website states within 3 hours if ordered before 1pm . I ordered at 9:30am. Rang Head office at 1:30pm. While on hold she rang my local store who said it wouldn’t be ready until after 9am toorrow! I was told that some stores dont fill orders within the advertised time frame and it really shouldnt be on their website!
Anyone else fallen for this false advertising?
I cancelled the order and went elsewhere.

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If you rang Gerry Harvey or any of his preferred pollies they would have told you ‘retail in trouble’ is only about the off-shore GST issue, not misleading advertising, nor spotty service, nor non-competitive prices.

At least Myer was honest that they misrepresented.

Good decision.

I sometimes buy click-and-collect from Dan Murphy’s. Until recently it was usually quicker to go into the shop, find the products and pay, than it was to simply collect an order, excepting during Very Busy holiday times. Dan’s added what I’ll call a ‘heads up facility’ to the store to advise when you are on the way and they put your order up front if you do that, so picking up a click-and-collect is usually no slower than physically shopping.

Why do I click-and-collect then? It reduces my impulse buying :slight_smile:

Click-and-collect is a marketing thing for many, many businesses, not so much a true service that seems to cater to those seeking speed as well as convenience without delivering on the promise.

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Yes it is false or misleading claims as the Myer website states:

The Myer online T&Cs also don’t provide an avenue for Myer to decline this requirement.

If the product was available for 3 hour click and collect, then it should be made available in accordance with the information on their website. Not doing so, is definitely false of misleading claims under the Australian Consumer Law.

I would expect that there could be reasonable reasons why one should expect that the website 3 hour claims could not be fulfilled, such as the product is not available (which is already covered by the website) or for some reason the store was unable to provide the required service (a fire in the collection store or strike by employees resulting in temporary closure or loss of retail services).

Indicating that some stores “don’t fill orders within the advertised time frame” (or this could be read as chose) is not a reasonable excuse to why the order could not be available in the stated time.

In such cases I would have expected that as a minimum and to ensure customer satisfaction, Myer should have offered some sort of compensation to you such as free express posting/same day courier delivery of the item to you or offer discount on the product being provided/alternative better product at the same price if it was unavailable but the website indicated that it was.

I would lodge a complaint with Myer as this is unacceptable behaviour by one of Australian’s major retailers. The above ACCC website link has information on how to lodge a complaint and also escalation of the complaint process.

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Honestly I don’t know if that’s really called for. Mistakes happen, and as long as you got what you paid for and were only slightly inconvenienced I don’t think it’s worth chasing anyone over. I submitted an order to my chemist to pick up at 9am this morning, and they hadn’t prepared it so I had to wait while they did. So I waited and dealt with it because they were doing their best and complaining wasn’t going to help.

If the inconvenience was costly, highly disruptive or didn’t leave you with the right products, THEN I’d take it further. Otherwise @OldGal’s decision to cancel and go somewhere else is a practical response.

I received this from Myer via twitter…
“Hi Susan, I’m so sorry to see that there was a delay with your order – I can understand how frustrating this must be!
While we try to keep our stock levels as up to date as possible, occasionally we do encounter discrepancies. At the time that you placed your order we were showing stock, but when we went to source the item we found we were sold out in your nominated click & collect store. Due to the live shopping environment from which we pull our stock, this can occur from time to time. I hope this helps to clarify things, Susan, and I do apologise for this inconvenience. -Ajay”

Short of physically seeing the item in store at the time (which I did not) there is no way to prove them wrong.
I agree with @Peterchu it really is not serious enough to chase them. They refunded me promptly so I could go and purchase elsewhere.
This is the second time I had this issue and I will simply take my custom elsewhere in future. Maybe its Myer or maybe just this local store, I dont know.
While my preferance is always to shop locally where possible ,In this age of online shopping the bricks and mortar stores really do need to maintain good customer service if they are to compete.

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I shopped with Myer online, making a couple of purchases on Christmas Eve…early Boxing Day sales. Got in early I thought. Bought my item, got an itemised receipt. I was patient, but by the 3rd week of January I rang them and was then told the item wasn’t available and they would refund me, even though I had paid and made what I thought was a successful purchase. That was my one brave attempt at the Boxing Day sales and I missed out completely :frowning:
I have no faith in the Myer online purchasing system now and the phone operator said…“the system sometimes takes a while to update”. As quite a good online shopper, I haven’t encountered these issues elsewhere. I’m also wondering when they were going to let me know that my sale had been unsuccessful??

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A month to respond! Damn. The last company I worked for that did online delivery would ring on the next weekday to arrange a substitute, refund or pick up from a store. A month is crazy!

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It is worth lodging a complaint, which ti appears that @OldGal did through Twitter.

Yes, if it was a one off then one should give the benefit of the doubt, but Myer in the original post indicated that it was the behaviour some some of its stores not to meet the 3 hour availability commitment on their website. If this was the case, Myer should be upfront on their website this was the case.

One should be concerned about this because if these stores fail to meet such commitments, what else it it chosing not be also accept from their head office…health and safety procedures, company return/warrsnty claim policies etc.

This is why complaints need to be made as the service experienced by @OldGal gives Myer a bad name and will affect their customer satisfaction, ultimately affecting their bottom line.

There could also be scores of other customers who have also had similar experiences. Complaining may achieve a result where Myer changes its behaviour for the betterment of all future customers.

I also ordered a mug for click and collect last week although this did state no local stock but would be sent to my local store. I will be interested to see if this happens because as of this morning when I click on the order through my account there is a message saying " Product not found, we cant find the page you are looking for".
On a positive not…I did an online click and collect for my kettle with Bing Lee, who i have used in the past successfully. I ordered at 2:33pm and my ready to collect email arrived at 2:44pm. Now THAT is service!

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Which statement from Myer is correct though? In subsequent communication they indicated that the problem was that the item was out of stock at the nominated store which, as per the blurb, would mean that the 3 hour commitment does not apply.

“Out of stock” at the nominated store can occur for multiple reasons:

  • delay in stock level updates (may not even be possible, depends on system architecture)
  • incorrect stock levels (this is just the real world - stuff-ups happen)
  • changes to stock levels after accepting the order and before fulfilling it

The third scenario is the trickiest to deal with.

For most bricks and mortar stores, “click and collect” is a tacked on afterthought - designed to compete somewhat with online-only stores, and realistically it won’t work 100%.

Perhaps Myer does need to amend their website from a “commitment” to a “best effort” or “indicative”.

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To Myer’s credit, you will note that they are willing to transfer stock from another store in the same state at their expense.

I recently had a similar Click and Collect type experience with a different bricks and mortar retailer. In that case they charged me for transferring the stock. (The charge was not excessive but nor was it zero.) It was a niche non-urgent item so I was happy to get the item.

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Agree.

It appears that from @OldGal response to her twitter post that Myer claim that their inventory/stock software is not reliable…can’t reliably ascertain if the stock in store. I find this somewhat an excuse rather than fact, unless of course the product was incorrectly sold as something else (maybe not with barcode technologies) or stolen indicating that where is stock when in fact there wasn’t. The later is plausible, but for a kettle?

Other retailers don’t seem to have the same live inventory problems as Myer…maybe cist cutting has prevented them delivering on their website commitments.

I suspect that Myer use this as a fall back excuse when they don’t meet fheir own click and collect committment…as it would be hard for the customer to prove otherwise unless they were in store at the same time looking at the product on the shelves (and why would they be using click and collect in such circumstances).

There are also other customers which have left feedback, including very poor service, from Myer’s click and collect.

If Myer inventory software is that unreliable, maybe they should be abandoning their click and collect commitment…otherwise their actions/website fall into false and misleading claims.

This has been standard practice of the major department stores for decades. I recall as a youngster a salesperson callijg another st8re to see if they had the product in stick, when the other syptore advised they did, it was sent to the same local store for collection a few days later.

The onky difference now is they can see which stores have stock…well, in the case of Myer, they don’t really know and maybe wtill need to use the old fashioned land line to confirm with other stores. If this is the csse, it is highly inefficient in today’s day and age.

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This happens all the time.

A particular case of that is where the item is available in different colours (but otherwise no functional difference and no difference in price).

If it gets rung through as the wrong product with a lower price, some customers won’t complain :slight_smile: but it will stuff up stock levels. One product will be +N and the other product will be -N, to be reconciled and fixed up later.

Click and Collect itself can cause problems because in that case selecting the wrong product won’t get picked up as an error until later (i.e. until the customer complains - if the customer complains).

Or damaged in store but noone has had time yet to put that through the system.

In the days when they were high margin and not competing against low margin online-only stores.