Hip Furniture Reviews 

Reply from Hip Furniture

Nov 29, 2011

Hi Hannah,

We are sorry to hear of the issues you have faced when ordering with our company. We thank you for bringing this to our attention recently. We do appreciate any feedback about our service, and take all on board. We constantly strive to improve the service we offer our customers.

In response to the points you’ve raised on your order;

The delivery times on the website are listed as the estimated delivery lead time for that item, and we do delivery the majority of our orders within this time frame. When deliveries exceed this delivery timeframe for whatever reason, we will endeavour to make our customers aware of any delays where possible, and any delays out with the quoted delivery lead time are rare. The delivery timeframes quoted are listed in working days. We can see from our system that we delivered 2 pieces from your order to you on the 12th working day so 2 days out of this time frame and we do apologise for this delay. The lead times on the site are estimates only and in no way a guarantee of a delivery time. But are listed as a quite to inform customers of how long they should expect to wait for their order.

Unfortunately as you have mentioned 2 of the items you ordered were out of stock at the time of ordering and we informed you of this the day after the order was placed, where you opted to stay on back order for these items. You were given the option to choose alternative items that were available and in stock, or be issued with a full refund for your order. You, as the customer, chose to stay on back order and so we actioned this for you. At any point on your order, you are of course entitled to request a full refund, and if requested, we would action this for you immediately upon request.

As you have stated the coffee table arrived to you damaged and this was passed to the warehouse to authorise a replacement item. This was unfortunate, and again is a rarity in occurrence. With the nature of how deliveries work with couriers, there is always a small amount of boxes that will get damaged that we put out. We do work to keep this to a minimum. On your order, we can see that the damage on the item was very minimal. So, at this point we offered you the discount of £100 to keep the item as a gesture of good will. Some customers would much prefer this method, rather than collection and replacement. You are of course entitled to a full refund for any item that arrives damaged. And again, we would fulfil this if and when requested. The damage on the coffee table you received was minimal to only one corner of the coffee table and this discount was offered as way as apology that the item had arrived damaged.

We will always offer our customers either a discount or a repair before organising a replacement as we find in a large number of instances customers are happy to take one of these options. You were entirely within your rights to refuse this and at this point the warehouse were contacted to confirm a replacement item was required.

Unfortunately we had no stock of the coffee table left at this point and you were offered £50 due to the delay which was accepted. This was offered as way of an apology for the delay in not being able to replace the coffee table immediately for you and this was something which you chose to accept.

Once the bookcase was back in stock we began to arrange delivery of this item to you, at this point the coffee table and tv stand were still out of stock and due into our warehouse. Unfortunately the delay lay with the manufacturer shipping the items to all UK retailers, and for this reason there was a delay in getting these items to you.

We then received a message from you that you would like to cancel the whole order and were not interested in waiting any longer for the items to come back into stock.

At this point we arranged with our couriers to collect the items you had received, and refunded you for the items that were on back order. In honesty, the collection took longer than we would have liked, and certainly longer than our normal collection service, and this is something we have now rectified. We aim to have collections from customer addresses done as fast as we possibly can, working closely with various courier companies in the UK to achieve this, we aim to have all collections done within 7 days at most. Most are achieved within a few days of the request being made.

As soon as the warehouse confirmed that the coffee table had been collected from you we issued the remaining refund to your card immediately, and sent you confirmation of this by email, confirming the amount refunded too. Can you confirm you’ve now received this amount back to your card as available funds? You should have received this some time ago. If there are any issues with this, please don’t hesitate to contact us by phone on 0845 2241481, or email our customer support team here at customersupport@hip-furniture.co.uk.

We do apologise if you feel you have experienced unsatisfactory customer service from us on this order. We have taken on board the comments you have made and the feedback you have issued to us. And we will continue to endeavour to keep improving the service that we offer our customers.

Reply from Hip Furniture

Nov 25, 2011

Hi Paul,

We are sorry to hear that you have experienced issues when ordering from us.

We can see from our systems that we have been trying to get the parts sent out to you, and we do apologise that this has taken so long.

We will arrange for these parts to be sent out as priority as soon as possible for you and are currently investigating the delay on this with our warehouse manager.

We hold full items only and do not keep replacement parts in stock and as such the parts are coming direct from the manufacturer and not from our warehouse and this can contribute to delays and is why we cannot give an exact delivery date.

Again please accept our apologies that you have not received good customer service.

We aim to have this resolved as soon as possible for you.

Reply from Hip Furniture

Nov 28, 2011

Reply sent to customer via email on 23rd November 2011;

Hi Karl,

Thank you for your email and my sincere apologies for the issues you have faced. We thank you for bringing the matter to attention, and alerting us to the service you have received.

Your complaint has been passed onto the senior management here at Hip Furniture, and matters have been put in place to ensure that this level of service is not replicated, and insurances have been made to bring a swift resolution to your order here.

The information passed across to you last week was to let you know that the refund should be authorised and confirmed to you within the next couple of days. At this point you should have been informed of the refund procedure and process, in that the payment will be made back to the card you have paid with and would be available within your account within 7-10 working days of the date of authorisation of your refund, and we apologise for any misunderstandings that arose from this not being made clear.

As for the item having been received back at the warehouse, there was some confusion with this due to the scanning systems being down within the warehouse. Usually as soon as an item is scanned, we are notified of the return, meaning we can action a refund against the item/order instantly. Because of this technical issue with the scanning equipment at warehouse floor level, there was a delay in us getting our official confirmation across and thus authorising your refund. These issues have now been rectified, and our usual high level of service, and speed of response, has been restored back to normal now.

The issues you faced with the delivery company are unacceptable and we appreciate you passing across the information on this. We will be taking this to them directly as this is not the service we want a representative of our company to provide and apologise that this combined with the other issues has meant an unsatisfactory level of service has been provided.

We can confirm that your refund has now been issued to you in full, and will be with you very shortly. The amount of time the amount will take to drop back into your account will vary on who you bank with, and their banking process, but will be back into your account in the next few days. Please let us know if you experience any further issues in receiving your refund back to you, but we can confirm the refund has been authorised, and the funds have left us and been sent back to you.

Reply from Hip Furniture

Nov 25, 2011

Hi Mr Jacobs,

We are sorry to hear that you experienced issues when ordering from our site.

When any order is placed the funds are taken at the time of the ordering to ensure the order can be paid for.

The chairs that you had ordered were out of stock at the time the order was placed, and we arranged for you to go onto back order. We arranged this directly with you at the time the order was placed.

We receive the chairs that you ordered direct from the manufacturer and unfortunately in this instance there were delays on the stock coming into our warehouse.

We did receive your instruction to cancel the order and this was passed to the warehouse for confirmation. We did not receive this confirmation as quickly as we would normally which is why the cancellation took longer than expected.

We do try to keep our customers as satisfied as possible and this is why alternatives and a discount were offered to you, to see if there was any more we could do for you.

All of our refunds take up to 7-10 working days to process and we do aim to have the money back to you asap and we apologise that there was a delay in processing this refund for you in the first instance.

We have no record that there have been issues with the refund going back onto your card and we trust that this money is now in your account.

Kind Regards

The Team @ Hip Furniture

Reply from Hip Furniture

Nov 25, 2011

Hi Maddie,

Sorry to hear you have experienced some issues when ordering from our company.

We do take payment for all orders as soon as the order is placed so as to ensure the order can be paid for.

If for any reason the order cannot be delivered we will offer the customer a number of options, including staying on back order or choosing an alternative product.

Could you please let us know what your order number was or what name the order was placed under so that we can investigate the issues you have faced.

Kind Regards

The Team @ Hip Furniture