Customers furious after online delivery fiasco

LONDON - One of Britain's most exclusive department stores left thousands of its customers without luxury Christmas food supplies over the festive season after it was overwhelmed by internet orders.

Fortnum & Mason, grocer to the Queen and purveyor of the most famous hamper in the world, only discovered a few days before Christmas that it would not meet all its orders and failed to notify many of its customers that they would not be receiving their deliveries.

Customers of Fortnum & Mason, a haven of high teas and cucumber sandwiches in Piccadilly, are used to an unrivalled level of service from the 300-year-old store, but many jammed the firm's switchboard to complain about their shoddy treatment.

Ken Lillie, a Fortnum & Mason account holder, had to cancel his Christmas Eve party because the store failed to warn him about the delays.

Mr Lillie, 57, who lives in Saltdean near Brighton, East Sussex, only found out that his £200 order of ham, salmon, jam, tea, tort chocolates cakes and champagne, had been delayed after he called the store.

Mr Lillie, who placed the order on December 9 via the Fortnum & Mason website, said: "When I did eventually get through to someone at the store they apologised but said there was nothing they could do ... they said they had a huge backlog because of the volume of orders and that I was one of many hundreds who wouldn't get their food delivered before Christmas.

"People who shop with Fortnum & Mason pay a bit more and expect a bit more in terms of service. It is unbelievable that they were not telling people [about the delays], I should have been notified, it was pure chance that I found out. If I had not phoned them I would have woken up on Christmas Day without my food ... in the end I had to leap in my car and drive to town to find supplies."

He has since cancelled his order and has been told he will receive vouchers in compensation.

A spokesman for Fortnum & Mason said: "We offer our deepest sympathies and utmost regret to customers. We have let some of our customers down ... once we realised we could not meet the demand we tried to call all our customers but we could not get hold of everybody.

"In the last two weeks we dispatched 250,000 orders and we believe that less that one per cent were not delivered. We are now dealing with it on a case-by-case basis and we will compensate customers."

In the two weeks before Christmas the store, which is currently undergoing a £24 million overhaul, took 50 per cent more mail orders and 75 per cent more online orders than last year.
Visitors to the store also increased by 25 per cent.

Some customers, who had not received their food by Christmas Eve, called the store and faced telephone delays of up to an hour before they were put through to staff in the customer services department.

Many were then told that their supplies would not be dispatched until after Christmas and that they would not get them until December 28 or 29.

Fortnum & Mason were not the only store to take a record number of online orders in the run-up to Christmas this year. Both Tesco and Sainsbury's were operating at full capacity and Ocado, the online arm of Waitrose, turned away 10,000 customers in one week.

- INDEPENDENT