declined d.

Apologies in advance for the long review.

Since Saturday July 24th, 2021, I have tried to order multiple items from the Mountain Warehouse Online Store. Mountain Warehouse has significant problems and their customer contact centre is in significant trouble. This was my first order with Mountain Warehouse. Expect a "1" star experience & a complete waste of your time.

Experience:

1. Shopping Cart (FAIL). Setup account + add items & repeatedly watch them disappear from the cart. Attempted numerous times on 2 different computers. No order# number generated. (big problem for a company who uses the order# as their primary reference key). Furnished multiple pictures to Mountain Warehouse customer service with clear descriptions of the transactional problems - highlighting the errors. The online issue is that I can add "2" items and then the 3rd deletes all the items. This has occurred (7+) times. I cannot process any of the items. I have to re-add each time. Complete waste of time.

2. Help Desk/Payment System (FAIL). Zendesk is absolute garbage. Wastes customer time. Creates problems rather than solving it. I received a "2" page generic e-mail response regarding "payment problems" that ignores the fact I could not initiate the payment process. It looks like someone copied & pasted a "canned" training manual response and sent it to me.

3. Rate Support (FAIL). Following any e-mail correspondence, I received numerous e-mails requesting to "rate the support received". This process is absolute rubbish. After 20+ emails they did not fix anything yet keep asking me to rate their horrible service. This is just plain stupid.

4. Marketing (FAIL). Received (6+) marketing e-mail "reminders" from London asking me..."Did you leave something behind?... or… "Still thinking about it?" yet still indicating an "EMPTY" shopping cart with an "ASK" that I complete the transaction. This is crazy…. I now receive two (2) marketing e-blasts every ~3-5 days. Note I did not opt in for marketing notifications. Who does this? I keep unsubscribing. Which legitimate company does this nonsense? Anyone heard of GDPR or CASL (Canadian Anti-Spam legislation)? Mountain Warehouse is not compliant.

5. Contact Centre - phone - (FAIL) Good luck if you can speak to anyone or if anyone calls you back. Repeated calls (3+) (#*******393 + *******649 - twice hung up on. Contacted Mountain Warehouse retail store in Vaughn Mills (unfortunately cannot assist online customers).

6. Customer Service email (FAIL) I sent (23+) emails to the contact centre over a (3) week period. Still unfilled order. Slow to respond and unresponsive agents. Resolving customer queries as quickly as possible is a cornerstone of good customer service. Speed should be of the essence — especially for smaller issues that don't take much time to solve. Instead I received a "pass the buck attitude" and " repeatedly requests" (remember the order # issue) for the same info provided. No accountability. Multiple agents involved (Clare Judd, Maria Blyth, Wasiq Khan, Archana Paraig etc...) I think these are fake names and a generic AI is being used. No human element here…. Expect generic AI responses requesting the same info (like an order #) and completely lack of follow-up by Mountain Warehouse. I sent pictures and clear documentation. Notified of request to have followup. Ignored.

7. Management Escalation (MARGINAL PASS) Finally received a call back from a manager in Germany (Sophie). Was initially very positive. Verbal commitment to honour the price, apply discount code & ship items. Some of the items were out of stock. Ok so we modified the order. Note I had previously being advised that a manager (Kelly Seingier) or alternative would call me back (3x).

8. Discount Codes (FAIL). I have been offered 10% & 20% (CUST20) discounts but unable to use them as the shopping cart is broken. Codes are useless if you cannot transact.

9. Fulfilment (FAIL) Received a Mountain Warehouse PayPal invoice 5 days later (asking for immediate payment). I initiated a bank transfer to my Paypal account (takes ~7-10 days). While awaiting the transfer I received a cancellation notice from Mountain Warehouse <5 days. I e-mailed customer service. They passed the buck and I quote "…. I have had a look at the details of the order and we give 7 days for the invoice to be paid, unfortunately this passed while waiting for the payment to come through…. I hope this helps the query. (Clare Judd)….?…. How about reissuing the invoice what about my order. It never started & never shipped. Yet I keep getting asks for the order # from the customer service department. I sent a list of the items I wished to purchase more than 12+ times (pictures, quantities, prices and links). Their process is broken. Their staff (excluding Sophie) simply do not care… Requests for a call-back from Sophie were simply ignored.

Customer service is key to long-term business success. Clearly Mountain Warehouse leadership is ignorant to this simple principle.

Here is some guidance for Mountain Warehouse leadership:

1. Operational efficiency is crucial for effective customer service. You have a huge gap here. Mountain Warehouse advertises fantastic products and excellent sales & discounts. Unfortunately I did not experience that. Apparently the 303+ reviews here also had similar concerns. Their leadership should read the comments and fix the problems.

2. Communication. Note if your customer service is unhelpful, unreliable, or just plain hard to get in touch with, folks will hear about it, and you'll lose customers over it. Paying attention to customer feedback includes looking back over the data, as well as listening in real-time. Show your customers you hear them when they take the time to speak to you. Don't ignore them.

3. Responsiveness. Customers understand that more complex queries take time to resolve. There's a difference between the time it takes you to respond and the speed at which you resolve their problems. Customers don't want to languish in a ticket queue.

4. Simplify. After having to scroll down through the multiple e-mails and seeing multiple names with no resolution I realize this company is in serious trouble. I would recommend any other online retailer. Most would pick up the phone and call after the 3rd e-mail. It took 20+ emails to get a response.

Consider a different approach. Build a "human-centric" customer service. Right now there is none in your firm. Mountain Warehouse needs to review industry best practices (Amazon, Shopify, Costco etc.) and work immediately to support their teams & improve their customer service.

To date (August 9th, 2020) there is no resolution in sight. I have now incurred PayPal fees for a transaction that was never completed. I never received the items I repeatedly attempted to order.