Beauty Without Fuss

Monday 12 November 2012

Dear Evans Clothing & Hermes ...

 (Warning, not really a beauty-related post, it contains intense self-deprecation, a bit of a rant, and some stupid acronyms.  If you want something a bit fluffy, might be best to look elsewhere today.  Also, it's very long.  Might be best to read something else.  No, seriously, nothing to see here. Not really.)

Dear Evans and Hermes,

Your two companies are a match made in hell, and you need a divorce.  I'll explain why later, but for now, let me tell you a tale of woe ...

Let's get one thing out of the way, I am fat.  There's no two ways around it, I'm a fat person.  I'm not particularly bothered by it (and I'm less fat than I used to be these days, anyway), I'm fairly pleasant looking from the neck up, I've got a cracking rack - we shall not discuss my mid-section, lest it get bogged down in complaints about my recent kidney problems - my thighs don't bother me in the slightest, but from the knees down it's nothing but grief.  I've written about my feet, and the constant pain I'm in, before, and about how shoe shopping is possibly my least favourite thing to do in the entire world.  

However, there is only one thing on the planet that ever reduces me to hot, salty, snot-bubbling tears of inchoate rage and sheer impotent frustration in seconds flat, faster than shoe-shopping, and that is boot-shopping.

For, underneath the blubber that a lifetime of worship at the temple of the goddess of lard has created on my frame, I have tiny bones.  My feet are a size four and a half, five at the most, and I have the handspan of the average pre-teen.  I'm not very tall, either.  Boots, even Duo of Bath (who I once travelled across the country to visit when they had only one store, only to find that the only pair that I could fit into made me look like a midget pirate.  Not a good look for an accountant, frankly) find the concept of small feet/big calves hard to deal with.  As do I, frankly.  I often see women larger than myself  (I'm a size 18 at the moment, down from a 22 recently, and soon to be a 16, thank you, Slimming World) wearing boots quite happily, and I am reduced to frothing with searing jealousy that THEY can wear boots, and I, thanks to the Enormo-Calves of Doom (E-CoD for short), cannot.

I used to have a pair of boots.  All-elastic, they were, with a block heel, and I loved them.  I loved them, even though they had a tendency to roll down throughout the day, and I'd end up wearing elasticated ankle-warmers.  I need elastic in my boots (something Duo boots tend not to contain much of), to cope with the sudden change in size between my relatively slim ankles and the aforementioned E-CoD.  I've tried on boots in bigger sizes - say, size eight - and managed to fasten them with no problems whatsoever, but I can't cope with padding boots up to four sizes too big, I wouldn't be able to walk!

Writing this, I'm aware, suddenly, that my ideal pair of boots is essentially a thick-soled pair of flat shoes, with a squareish toe-box, and a leather shin-pad, finished off at the back with what is, essentially, a black compression bandage.  Hmn ... sexy ...

Actually, maybe not that bad:


Anyway, "how does this involve Evans and Hermes?" I hear you cry.  Don't worry, I'm getting there. Simply put, the thing is that I want to wear boots.  I'm tired of only being able to wear trousers and shoes.  It's dull, and I'm frumpy as a result.  I want to add skirts to my wardrobe, and not freeze to death (even thermal tights only do so much).  I was invited to be a guest speaker at a blogging conference this weekend, alongside some fashion bloggers - more about this later on in the week - and I wanted to wear something ... snazzy.  I discovered a dress I'd bought some time ago in the dim and distant recesses of my wardrobe, found myself a little sequinned jacket, and knew what would finish it off nicely ...

... Boots.

I am an IDIOT.  Having recently lost a bit of weight, I thought this year would be the year of boots.  Correspondingly, I ordered myself a pair from Evans, at 12:49 on Wednesday 7th as their next day delivery costs only £5.  Never have I been made more aware that you get what you pay for - or, as in my case, you don't, actually, get anything that you've paid for.  Naively, I thought ordering something to arrive via next day delivery would allow me to get the boots to finish my outfit in good  enough time to try them, and decide whether or not I wanted to keep them.

I am an IDIOT (and I'm bored of writing this now). So anyway, the upshot is that the boots never arrived.  In fact, at the time of writing, they still haven't arrived.  Apparently, (according to their website) Hermes tried to deliver at 1524 on Thursday 8th, at 1949 on Friday 9th, and 1800 on Saturday 10th (long after I'd asked Evans to cancel the delivery, by this point).

Yeah, right
Hermes are lying. Or their courier is, rather.

How do I know?  MrLippie was home at all those times, (I was only home for the Friday "visit") and no one knocked on our door, rang our bell, or even ... left a card to say they'd called. UPS left a card to say they'd tried to deliver to someone else in the building, and, all the rest of our post arrived, so clearly, other companies know how doorbells work.

I spoke to Evans on Twitter last Thursday who put their customer service team onto what happened (who thanked me for my comments on Facebook - at least *read* your complaints, please), as, according to the Hermes website, all my complaints, requests and queries have to go through the company I made the order through. And, I have to say that I've been patronised by one particular Evans employee ever since.  Two people have dealt with my complaint, one has been fine, and the other one  ... well. I'm not going to go into it much, but suffice it to say that every email from Evans customer services made me feel worse about having placed my order with them, rather than better.  Yes, I've been angry. Yes, I've broken out the caps lock. But when the initial response to your complaint isn't even addressing your complaint properly, well, it's simply not good enough, frankly.

Evans are sorry, apparently, that I "feel" like no delivery has been attempted.  Well, Evans,  I'm sorry that your courier company have lied not once, not twice, but (at the time of writing) three times, both to me, and to you.  They've cost you a customer.  And I suspect I'm not alone - my twitter followers are full of horror stories about Hermes and their "delivery" service.  I, for one, am refusing to shop online with anyone who uses them. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you.  Fool me three times ... we are done.

I wore yoga shoes to my event.  Thanks, Clarks ;)

Share your home-delivery nightmare stories here, I'd love to hear them.


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7 comments

  1. Countless awful experiences with hermes and yodel. Most recently i got home in the peeing rain to find a soggy box full of jumpers at my door. They denied this and said they had a signature! I never het my parcels unless i chase their customer service dept. the parent companies have been too keen to shrug their shoulders and pass the buck to these companies, would be nice for them to take a bit more ownership.....on another note, i h too have ecod and small feet. Found evans boots werent good fit and had major baggy ankles and too tight at calves :( x

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  2. Hermes the delivery company who either don't deliver, throw packages over your fence, leave parcels under door mats or just at the door, panic when asked to deliver to a flat and pretend they have attempted delivery, refuse to answer emails and are point blank the WORST delivery company in existence!

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  3. Awful. Very awful.

    Not just the original problem but how it was dealt with.


    Mistakes happen, it's how it is dealt with that is important.

    And both companies completely let you down here

    ReplyDelete
  4. Countless "sorry we missed you" cards when I was at home (now, if I know a delivery is supposed to happen when I'm there, I open the blinds and wait, ready to jump at the delivery person who'll try to say I wasn't home when they tried to deliver.
    The most recent was from UPS: I asked for something to be delivered at work. Both my name and the company name were written on the label, and still they delivered to another company in the business park. Luckily, the person at the reception rang to let me know it was there but had someone less honest got it, then I'd never have seen this parcel.
    Oh, I also had something returned to sender with a note saying that my address does not exist...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Noted, along with countless other readers and tweeters. They deserve all the customers they will lose.....

    Er..I hope I'm not going to have to sit through trial by 50 Catchya's .....? (no connection just hate the b...y things)

    (No! It was url contains illegal characters!!!)

    And now my OpenID credentials could not be verified.

    Do I want to comment? Not now but think I need you to know about all this..

    XXXXXX

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  6. Hermes, DPD, Yodel etc are the reason that I have stopped shopping with QVC and Cocosa amongst others. The increased stress levels from chasing the couriers are just not worth the financial savings made on the purchase unfortunately.

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  7. Have just caught up on the whole saga - it sounds a nightmare, and I'm glad you at least got them to change the voucher to a cheque in the end - just goes to show it pays not to give in. Well, pays the charity in this case.

    Two thoughts:

    Is there any possibility at all the delivery company could have been trying to deliver to the wrong address? Not that that would make them any less in the wrong, but at least they'd be useless and incompetent rather than downright unscrupulous. Obviously I don't know your address so I don't know if something like this could have happened, but I used to know someone who lived at (something along the lines of) Postalcockup House, 1 Postalcockup Road. On the other side of the road was a block of flats called Postalcockup Court. Her family regularly used to get letters and parcels for Flat 1, Postalcockup Court, and at least some of theirs went to the flats, although a few parcels were never passed on to them and they suspected the people in the flats of keeping some of them.

    And on a more helpful note, I think BHS have got some boots quite similar to the ones you wanted - and a lot of their non-elastic boots are pretty generous in the calves too...

    ReplyDelete

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