John Lewis has officially gone downhill – and my recent experience proves it
Anyone else have mixed feelings about the “prolific serial shoplifter”, aged 53, who made more than £500,000 by tricking stores, including John Lewis in Nottingham, into giving her refunds for items she’d never bought? Yes, I do know we’re supposed to disapprove. But I did feel a teeny pang of envy. How on earth did she manage that? Some of us can’t get a refund from John Lewis for items we have bought.
You can tell when a successful brand is in trouble because all the qualities you associate with it suddenly aren’t there any more. Take dear old John Lewis. Financial woes, the cost of lockdown crisis and tougher competition, as well as the expense of developing its online offering, are said to be among problems that have led to a £234 million loss last year. To that list, as I discovered, you can add laughably low stock (“You mean you want to buy a lipstick, madam? Sorry, we don’t have it in that colour. No, not that colour either”) and a precipitous plunge in customer service. The store that used to boast it was “Never knowingly undersold” needs a new tag-line: “Always knowingly understaffed.”
It grieves me to say this because I used to joke that John Lewis was my spiritual home. And I wasn’t joking. Half an hour amid the church-like hush of the towels department and I could feel order being restored to my bedraggled brain. It was so soothing and the staff were always so helpful.
When did the rot set in? Himself bought me a John Lewis cardie and jumper for Christmas. They were lovely, but when I went to put the jumper on I felt a lump. The security tag was still attached so I couldn’t wear it to a lunch on Boxing Day. Annoying, but I decided that I’d go into town in the new year and return the sweater. In the maelstrom of wrapping paper, the receipt had been lost, but I wasn’t worried. Not only did the item have the security tag inside, it also had a price ticket.
The trouble began at the cash-desk. I explained that my husband had bought me a present and I wanted to return it. I pointed to the security tag and said I was quite surprised he’d been able to get out of the shop with it on. What I was hoping to hear was: “Oh, madam, I’m so sorry, that’s our mistake. How disappointing. Let’s get you a refund.” Some small credit on a reward card for sending Himself home with an unwearable Christmas jumper would not have gone amiss either. The John Lewis of old would surely have obliged with a smile.
But the sales assistant was unhappy about the lack of a receipt. She summoned a young male manager from the jewellery department. Then, began the interrogation. Could I provide proof of purchase?
Well, yes, there was the John Lewis price tag and the John Lewis label and the John Lewis security tag (which should have been removed, you idiot!).
The manager wasn’t satisfied. Starting to get a teeny bit irritated (OK, borderline homicidal), I rang Himself and asked if he had a credit card receipt. He called back with the precise date and time of purchase and the amount. Unfortunately, the jumper was one of several Christmas presents he’d bought in JL that day and there was no record of an individual price for the jumper.
The manager then said he couldn’t give me a refund for the price on the tag because my husband “may have bought the jumper from the sale rail”. Couldn’t he check what day the sale had started and compare it with the date of purchase?
No, he couldn’t. Primly, he said he was taking my jumper to “lock it in a drawer” while I went home to try and find the missing receipt. I haven’t felt that humiliated since Mrs Price confiscated my French skipping elastic and locked it in her desk in junior school in 1969. Only when I got back to the car, did I start boiling with indignation.
Friends and colleagues all have similar John Lewis stories. “If you are just one day over the date now, you can’t return things.” “They never have any stock – so when you do want to swap something it’s never in the store.” “The returns room is always in the bowels of the store and the queue is horrendous.”
Last week, a friend said she’d spotted a dress she liked in the window of Peter Jones (owned by JL) in London and was about to pop in to try it. When she looked more closely, she saw a notice saying they dress dummies in the window in clothes you can only buy online. Hopeless.
I can’t help feeling that the sad decline of John Lewis is a commentary on the British middle classes who loved to shop there. In the past three years, we have been bled dry mentally, physically and – with the highest tax burden for 70 years – financially.
It’s increasingly clear that Dame Sharon White, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, will have to go. She gave herself an extremely odd priority; to challenge and “rebalance the strong male culture”, filling 60 per cent of leadership positions with women.
Quite frankly, John Lewis customers don’t care how gender diverse the management is. We’d like to be able to speak to an assistant, please. Oh, a refund for an item you haven’t shoplifted would be appreciated.
