What is with them these days?
I was on their site earlier this evening (Tuesday) and see that their next deliveries on 'standard' service will now not be until Friday.
I suppose at least they've stopped calling it 'next day' service, and at least they give you warning in advance... shame though.
David
I don't know. In the past 4 years I've ordered loads of stuff and it has always come next day until the last 6 months. I ordered online on Sunday lunchtime and it obviously is not going to be delivered until at least tomorrow.
hmm, I didn't notice this.
Personally, I think this is a mistake. In the past ordering from screwfix got me deliveries next day and it was less effort than going to the shop. If deliveries are going to take 3-4 days I may have to reconsider this.
Hope your reading this Screwfix ;-)
Martin
-- Martin J. Evans Wetherby, UK
Tonights TV advert still said order by 17:00 for next day delivery.
Peter
I heard in the grapevine that Screwfix is now owned by B&Q and that the original founders have started a new company called Silverline Tools, If this is correct, it may be a possible reason for the sudden change of service.
From recollection they always had "deliver before 10am" and "deliver before 12pm" options but I have until recently always ordered before
6pm and got it the next day without pay "Unfortunately we are unable to fulfil any further orders for Standard next day, Saturday and pre 10/12 deliveries. Any orders placed today will now be delivered on Friday 24th September. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. "I don't know what the problem is but if this becomes standard I'd say it was a bad business decision and one I'll take into account in the future. My Sunday order is not here and holding me up on a job! I guess this posting kisses goodbye to me winning the pickup competetion. Shame really when the wishbone suspension on my Ford ranger collapsed yesterday (due to tensioner slipping off). Good marks to Ford for sorting it out in under 12 hours though.
Martin
-- Martin J. Evans Wetherby, UK
Not quite.
Screwfix has been owned by Kingfisher PLC (who also own B&Q, Castorama, etc.) for quite some time..
Some of the directors now appear to be involved in a business called Toolstation in Bristol
Silverline Tools operates from Yeovil, as does Screwfix for the moment.
.andy
To email, substitute .nospam with .gl
I'm glad to see this. I have only been using them for the last six months and while their service overall is quite good, only a minority of orders has arrived on time (that's ordinary and pre-12 orders both). They have nearly always turned up within 2-3 days. I think that is largely acceptable for non-urgent orders but not if they break promises to deliver next day. I would rather have a realistic deadline which is then kept - with the option of real next-day deadlines at extra cost which are also kept to.
Ordered Sunday 11am, delivered today(Tuesday) 12.30pm. When I spoke to the order taker, she said " We can't get anything else out of the warehouse today". I suspect that they are in the throes of moving the warehouse to the Midlands and are running down Yeovil. They are also having trouble with Parcel Farce AIUI. Parcel Farce are now using lots of subcontractors who don't always:-
1) Turn up to collect from Screwfix. 2) Turn up to deliver from the customers Parcel Farce local depot 2) Bother to deliver, even if it's on their van. By claiming that the customer is out, I suspect they can get paid for attempting to deliver.Talking to genuine Parcel Farce drivers, they are very fed up with the hassle they are getting from irate Screwfix customers, when the fault does not lay with their own people in the local depot.
A couple of weeks ago the order taker sounded as though she was in India. Have they moved their IT operations??? What a horrific thought!
Regards Capitol
I have ordered hundreds of times from Screwfix and up until recently I have only ever had a few late/wrong orders. However BOTH my last two have been late, and worst still I now feel I have to double check every order in order to verify its contents.
I dont like been lied to/let down, so after both my last orders I rang Screwfix and complained. The first time I was told that 'the day next day after Thursday was Monday, or at least it was that week' (and no it wasn't a bank holiday), and the last time I complained [which was last Friday] I was told it was MY FAULT by a Screwfix supervisor, and told that I should have know that their had delivery problems since it was clearly displayed on their homepage.
Since there is NO reason to ever visit screwfix's homepage when placing a web order (they obviously haven't heard of bookmarks and obviously dont believe people click on the links in the numerous junk special messages they send out (which bypasses this page)) I didnt see the notice.
While placing my last order I purposely double checked their delivery webpage knowing they stuffed up on my previous order, this STILL clearly states that "Order before 6:00pm and we WILL dispatch your order for next working day delivery". The screwfix supervisor I 'talked to' (shouted at) keep saying but the main page clearly says "Unfortunately we are unable to fulfill any further orders for Standard next day, ....", she didn't understand that a] I dont have to goto their homepage b] having conflicting information was less than helpful c] Even if I had gone to their homepage their delivery notice hardly jumps out at you. (making it an unavoidable part of the order process would have been a good idea).
Independently I have heard that Kingfisher (alias B&Q) [screwfixes new owners] are moving the main warehouse from Yeovil to somewhere up north [I believe Manchester but I might be wrong] and this is the real reason for the c**p service. All I can think is that the Yeovil workers have lost all motivation.
I still find it surprising that Screwfix rushs to hand out 10 quid voucher if you introduce a new customer, but it appears dont give a damn about the ones they already have.
James Bateman
In message , Martin Evans writes
It's been saying the same sort of message for a few weeks at least.
I don't get the impression it's intended to be permanent.
I had occasion to complain recently about their service and also mentioned the delivery delays. I got a reply from a Samantha Grimes who said:- "Our new fulfilment centre is now open. This has meant major changes to our business. Through its development we have experienced some initial issues resulting in a delay with our usual next day delivery.
Whist we are experiencing these issues we will manage customer expectations by advising when we can deliver.
Once this is fully operational we will deliver even higher levels of service.
Please be assured that Screwfix Direct Limited remains passionate about delivering to our customers the best next day service in the U.K."
I assume that this means that things will return to normal at some stage in the future.
John MIller
"We are sorry that we can not take your order at this time.
We are passionate about our next day delivery promise to our customers however we are very busy at the moment and unable to give you our usual high standard of service. As soon as we are confident that we can fulfil our delivery promise to you, normal service will resume.
Please note our contact centre is also unable to take your order at this time."
Toolstation here I come...
David
By the way, rememember BargainBob's, the somewhat bizarre 'more expensive' incarnation of Screwfix? What the hell happened to that - try checking out
[where "this" means a luvverly new Full-Fill-Ment Cent-uh.] I too hope that things will indeed return to normal; right now my recent experience is far from brilliant. Placed a Web order on 02sep; part-shipment of 3 small items by ParcelForce the day after the day after, then nowt for a few days. Phoned Sfx, got number of local depot carrier delivering rest of shipment (Lynx), Sfx expected delivery next day. Absence of black vans with spotted wild cats on the side for another couple'a days. Phoned Lynx - "ah yes, *that* parcel; don't think you want it Sir - it's damaged and most of the contents seem to have fallen out; do you want to phone Sfx yourself?" Which I did, got a sympathetic hearing and a promise of "immediate" redispatch, along with a warning that "immediate" would mean delivery in about 4 elapsed days in practice, wot with the New Warehouse and the weekend and all. This time passes, and a little longer; phone Sfx again. "Ah yes, sorry Sir, we did try ringing you, you see we couldn't despatch without having received the return [quite different from what I'd been told], but we have now had the return and will redespatch as soon as possible" - and again another warning about extended delivery times, sorry-Sir-can't-do-you-a-Guaranteed-Next-Day as we're not doing them for anyone right now.
More time passes, more lack of parcel. Ring again - "goodness me, I don't know *what* our admin people are up to, the person you spoke to before marked the redespatch for immediate action but I'm afraid it hasn't been done at all", and a promise of still-only-standard-despatch-won't-be-till-Tuesday-now (this being the previous Friday morning). Postcard yesterday (the relevant Tuesday) to say 2 items are out of stock - one of which, massively improbably, is
3.5x30mm Turbogold screws (you'd'a thunk it was an absolute staple item...) Today's Wednesday, and a Sfx parcel finally arrived; sadly, still incomplete - 2 items missing entirely, 1 short quantity. But it's got the Trubogold screws... which, in fact, they'd sent in the first part-delivery of the 3 little items...Oh, and the Website's unavailable tonight, on two tries half an hour apart, both times serving up a real Web page saying "the screwfix website is not available right now, we'll be back Real Soon Now" - i.e. their webserver or a standin are up and running, but the underlying order-taking system is down. The second time, just now, it has a bigger Sfx logo, and tells me
"We are passionate about our next day delivery promise to our customers however we are very busy at the moment and unable to give you our usual high standard of service. As soon as we are confident that we can fulfil our delivery promise to you, normal service will resume.
Please note our contact centre is also unable to take your order at this time."
So I can't even phone them to chase up the missing items. Oh, the nice chap who was embarassed by the lack of followup from Admin did arrange for a Sfx voucher to be included with today's parcel; a whole fiver's worth.
I do hope they'll get their act together: but right now, the same Internet wags who call the bundled Windows browser "Internet Exploder" and its earlier competitor "Netscrape" would be *very* tempted to replace the final vowel in the company name with the one immediately to its left on the keyboard...
Stefek
Tee-hee.
Snorted G&T up my nose, I did.
Placed an order with them today and was told orders placed today were being put down for delivery on MONDAY !! When asked the reason they said a warehouse move has caused major problems with the organisation - plausible I suppose - but heads should roll somewhere for the disruption caused by bad planning and inadequate crisis planning !
Nick
It's .co.uk
and I am sure a vehicle for offloading excess stock from Kingfisher subsidiaries for which they have purchase commitments and have exceeded their return rate.
.andy
To email, substitute .nospam with .gl
To be fair to them, they phoned me today at work to say the delivery would be tomorrow not today, and also sent a similar email home. Look at some of the discounts on toolstation, though. Cheapo genny down from £100 to £80.
I've only ever placed three orders with Screwfix, and they have delivered within 2 days. The last order was placed on Monday. But I've just been to Toolstation (a Toolstation virgin at the mo') and can't believe their prices! I thought that Screwfix's isolation valve was a bargain at £1.19 (was 99p the last time I got some), but Toolstation have these for 61p. Of course both are considerable savings over the local Focus rip-u-off at over £4 each!!!
I did check out the .com first and was slightly puzzled at the relevance
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