According To Gem

Having toyed with the idea of buying Origins‘ VitaZing  for months, I jumped at the chance to purchase it as part of the Brightening Musts set which includes not only the full size VitaZing but also a 30ml Modern Friction (my favourite Origins product!) and 5ml GinZing for £1 less than the price of VitaZing on it’s own. To be honest the offer looked too good to be true, but having used Origins for years I trusted that all would be fine and placed my order for the set and their new Super Spot Remover as my skin tends to get a bit temperamental at this time of year.

To be totally honest, I expected to be blogging about what an amazing deal the set was and had planned to review each of the products individually. Unfortunately instead I will be writing about what a terrible experience I have had with them thus far.

I placed my order on October 22nd and all seemed fine and dandy, the confirmation of my order popped up in my inbox promising an email confirming dispatch as soon as my order was ready to go and delivery between 2-5 days. “Perfect” I thought, it’ll be here for the weekend ready for me to blog about.

The weekend came and went, but there was no sign of my parcel and no dispatch email. I checked my bank and the money had left my account on the 23rd, just one day after I placed the order. I sent an email to originsonline@origins.co.uk  the email Origins recommends you send any customer service queries to and asked where my order was and when I could expect to receive it. I then waited, and waited, and waited some more. Last night I took to twitter, asking where my order was and was quickly met by a tweet asking me to grab my order number and call or email them. Being fairly late I opted to email them again querying what was happening. Their website states their email service runs 24/7 so naively I expected to have a response by the morning, or at least lunchtime given their SOCOM team and specifically asked me to contact them, but no response came.

Having now given them several chances to rectify the situation and without any comment from them, I finally picked up the phone (I would have done this earlier but work has been crazy busy so I’ve had little in the way of time recently). I was greeted by a nice enough girl who assured me she’d look into the issue and then quickly told me I’d signed for the package on the 26th at 2.50pm. Knowing I was knee deep in launching a game at that time last week I explained it wasn’t possible for me to have been home to sign for it and asked if she had the signature to hand or a reference for who had signed. She placed me on hold, finally coming back to reassure me it had definitely been signed for by W..H..A..R..L spelling it out as she went. I asked how I’d even pronounce the name and she said she had no idea, that was just who had signed for it. She is now going to speak to Yodel and ask them to interview the driver in question who will no doubt say they delivered it to an address (that wasn’t mine), where someone signed on my behalf. Usually the address is one that either isn’t local or that doesn’t exist leaving me will little to no hope of ever seeing my order again.

I also asked why I’d never received a dispatch email and was told they must have the wrong email for me, strange given the confirmation email reached me ok. They also couldn’t give me the tracking number so I could follow up with Yodel myself, which kinda leaves me in limbo, waiting for Origins to get back in touch with me. And let’s face it, they haven’t been too good at communication up until now.

This is now the fourth time I have “lost” a parcel being delivered by Yodel. Thankfully on the other occassions the companies have been quick to rectify the situation by way of a replacement or refund on the occassion that the item was out of stock. I’d like to think Origin will do the same, but given that they currently feel the issue is between myself and Yodel (despite not even having a tracking number!) I’m not holding my breath on this having a happy ending. As a result I will be actively avoiding any companies who use Yodel to ship items as they just aren’t a reliable delivery service and I just don’t have the time to mess around trying to track down “lost” packages.