So, yesterday, I published a blog post telling you all about my “experience†with the personal shopper at House of Fraser.
Why? Because that is what I do! This blog recently passed its 9th year of life, and its known (if you’re in desperate need to classify it) as a female lifestyle blog. Its me, and its the stuff that I get up to. (I’ve been known to describe it as “the bits of crap that litter my headâ€. Lifestyle sounds a bit better)
The majority of my readers are women of a similar age to me, and likely to be on a similar (well, for their sakes, I’d hope better!) salaries. Single women, no responsibilities, disposable income. Great target audience if you’re, I don’t know, a large retailer trying to sell clothing and other items.
I’m not usually the sort of person to say anything at the time, but I believe that if something happens to you – both good and bad – then you should tell someone. I’ve emailed companies before if I’ve had amazing service, because people should be rewarded! I thought it would be polite to say to House of Fraser what I had written – seems silly telling you lot and not the people concerned!
I received a polite email back, saying that unfortunately the website contact bit could only deal with website queries, but they’d pass it on to the Bristol store.
Fair enough.
About an hour later, I received this email from my WordPress, saying that there was a comment to be moderated on the personal shopper post.
Quite rude isn’t it? I was about to head into my WordPress app, and approve it when I saw where it had been posted from. mail2.hof.co.uk
Well thats embarrassing. hof.co.uk, redirects, as you’d expect to the House of Fraser website.
For a company who, lets face it, probably would like all those 20 somethings coming and spending their disposable income in store, this is quite a cockup! Social media, such as blogs and Twitter, is quite an important thing in terms of advertising these days. Within 5 minutes of posting the above picture on Twitter, I’d had lots of replies from people saying how disgusted they were.
Perhaps theres a really good reason for this. House of Fraser, I can’t wait for your reply!
Update: I’ve had a reply back from the womenswear manager at the Bristol store about the original reason for the blog post – you can see her response on the original post.
Update (2) A follow up to this post can be found here.
clearly house of Frazer pay their staff too much!
I had a similarly crap experience at HoF personal shopping. I wanted a dress for a wedding, and specifically wanted a dress that was young and trendy but not too fitted as I’m a bit self conscious. I said I didn’t want anything too expensive. I also said no prom style dresses as I already had one. What do I get? Only Karen Millen fitted dresses for £150 and prom style dresses! I have a sneaking suspicion that she might have been after commission. Call me cynical. There was also no discussion of what might suit me, which to be honest was what I had thought was the point of the whole thing. In the end I bought nothing and got something myself from Warehouse the next week. What a waste of time.
Wow, what a horrible experience! I agree £80 is a perfectly reasonable budget for an outfit, particularly if it’s “going out” clothes that don’t have to stand up to the same wear and tear that everyday stuff does, nor be worn as often.
Her attitude was utterly rude at the time, and then to get such a snooty comment from someone at HoF… appalling, I’m rather pleased I never shop in there!
Me and my mate Phil went to Primark the other day looking for “a surprise” for his lady.
In the Cambridge branch we encountered Rosie, who personal-shopped us for a budget of £9.
Good work Primarni, bad times HoF.