La Redout customer disservice.

La Redoute, good company or bad, I’m going to say bad for the following reasons.

My wife has an account with them; none of my manly mates has an account with them so maybe it’s a women thing, or manly mates aren’t ‘fessin up to what may be a none manly thing to ‘fess up to?

Recently one of their agents delivered a catalogue to our house; well actually he delivered two, maybe he’s on commission? I saw him walk from the front garden gate, the view of which is obscured from the house, remember this, it becomes important later on the tale,

He passed by my study window, where I was working to the front door, I heard the catalogue/s pushed through the letter box, as did our three Springer spaniels and two rescue Springer spaniel puppies, remember this too, it’s also relevant.

Some time later, not to long though as 14 week old puppies need the loo pretty frequently, I let them out in to the garden to attend to their needs, a garden which is pretty secure and safe for inquisitive puppies, and a garden which in the previous few short weeks of their new lives, they had not left once.

Now remember the gate, good you’re keeping up, and I have a feeling you know what’s coming next, now unbeknown to me, the gate had been thoughtfully left open, or thoughtlessly not closed by the person who had opened it, depending on whether you’re cup is half full or half empty, that’s the one employed by La Redoute for those of you whose attention has slipped.

Moments later I realised that we now had a garden that was devoid of Springer spaniel puppies, remember that the gate isn’t visible from the house, and although I knew that shortly before it was closed, I now come to realise it was now open, an invitation to inquisitive young minds to explore the beckoning wide world beyond the security of the garden.

This is the moment that owners of dogs that do runners are familiar with, it’s the moment when, your heart makes it way smartly to the pit of your stomach or heaven ward, to your mouth, I do know that one of the factors causing this is a quite rational fear of the harm your dog may come to while blissfully enjoying, a hopefully brief but incident free spell of total freedom, free from the rigours of risk assessment duties normally carried out by its caring and, hopefully health and safety conscious owner.

What followed was four hours of stress, much shouting out of names, copious hair pulling, (not a lot left to pull any way) and an awful lot of land covered from cliff tops to fields to village; we live 500m from cliff tops and unfortunately every year brings new incidents of holiday makers dogs arriving from a long journey to a much needed run, only to disappear, sadly those that go over the cliff turn up around 7 days later, that may go some way to explain my concern.

At this point thanks should be given to the coastguard and local rescue team, who despite the risk, and probably because they themselves are all dog owners, volunteer to recover dogs from the cliffs or sea.

I digress, back to the tale, after four hours with no sighting I headed back home thoroughly dejected and fearing the worst, as I reached the gate a neighbour came out, deep joy, a walker had found one of the puppies and using their trusty OS map and big brass tag on pups collar, worked out where she’d come from, unfortunately I was unable to thank them as they dropped the pup off with a neighbour and resumed their mission to cover as much of the coastline as possible in the short time allotted, they do that walkers, plot routes and times and stick rigidly to the plan, pup was very muddy and very tired, so straight indoors for a cleanup, indoors the phone was flashing away merrily indicating a message, great news, another walker had found pup number two and had taken her back to their B&B which wasn’t too far away, quick trip to B&B and pup number 2 was fast asleep after been bathed and cuddled.

So that’s that, all’s well that ends well you may say, except that I had four hours of unnecessary worry, and two puppies had four hours of free running where anything could have happened to them, it should be said at this point that accepted wisdom is that puppies should have five minutes of free running per month of age to protect soft, growing bones, that’s fifteen minutes, not two hundred and forty minutes.

Being quite miffed over this adventure, I composed a polite email setting out my reasons for my ire towards La Redoute, this was duly sent to La Redoute, which triggered an email in response informing me that a customer services representative would be in touch to discuss the matter with in five days, needless to say since then I’ve heard nothing, for the record, a couple of months later, no reply.

Do I care they haven’t replied, not really, as good as a product is, at the end of the day, a companies worth has to be gauged by its customer services and they’re commitment to sorting problems out before said customer becomes disgruntled ex customer.

La Redoute, massive fail, don’t worry about the halfwit delivering catalogues, it’s a small village, we’ll meet, and I will have my say to his sorry face.