Waitrose Listens Over The Festive season

Waitrose Listens

I have at last had some success with my blog on website usage difficulties, www.theelseclauseonline.blogspot.com.

When I started this blog on elementary logical errors on websites I stated that its aim was less to chastise website owners than to improve customer experience, thus benefiting both the website owners and their customers, a potential win-win situation. When I note an error, I send the note to the website owner for a reaction. Alas, the message seems to have fallen on deaf ears, arrogance or indifference seeming to be the norm. ……...until now. Waitrose has given me my first potential success story.

Just before the new year I wanted to order some groceries from Waitrose for delivery to my son in Weston Super Mare. Having chosen the groceries I found that Waitrose apparently required a land-line telephone number for the delivery address and the house where my son lives has no telephone land-line; all the occupants have mobiles. I emailed Waitrose pointing out this impediment which, on the face of it, excludes all such households from their potential customer base. I understood the requirement for a telephone number at the delivery address but not the requirement for a land-line number. The first response from Waitrose was not promising, simply stating that I could register with Waitrose without giving a land-line telephone number. That totally missed my point and I feared I might have encountered another website where the robots have taken over.

However, I was asked to give feedback on this response and did so, restating my point. This resulted in another email from Waitrose acknowledging my point. It stated that I could have inserted a mobile telephone number where a compulsory land-line number was requested and that would have been accepted but agreed this was not clear on their website. Waitrose said the matter would be referred to their technical team. A fix could be very simple, simply removing the asterisk from land-line number field which denotes it as compulsory. That would also make one of the telephone number fields possibly redundant but that is not of any consequence. The important point for me is that I have at last found a website owner that acts positively to benignly intended criticism. Waitrose listened and, hopefully, will act accordingly to the benefit of all concerned.

The Festive Season

The festive season passed smoothly and enjoyably here. I had Christmas lunch at Steve and Jo's house with some other English friends and invited Steve, J and Nick back to my house in the evening on Boxing Day (not a holiday here). On new year's eve I went to French friends Rene and Armelle with several others to see in the new year. So it was all very enjoyable. The weather over the holiday period was bright and sunny but very cold and it has continued in the same vein. The cold temperature has curtailed my boules playing. I keep my boules in the boot of my car (available for any opportunity) but they are like ice cubes in my hand and I find it difficult to throw as I want while wearing a very necessary jacket. I've ventured out a few times but not for more than a couple of hours. I feel I could do with some global warming.