Gina E.

This is a long review, but I urge potential or disgruntled consumers to read throughly if in need of advice on contacting this company to deal with a complaint, and/or help with the decision of whether to complete a purchase or abandon cart before checkout. I wish I had read the reviews on here before purchasing as I would have been encouraged to spend elsewhere. This review is based on my own experience as a purchasing customer.

Don't be fooled by discounted prices, tempting voucher codes, and the speed of free delivery, companies should be judged on the speed, quality and sincerity of their response when any issues occur. Large companies without the option of store return should offer free returns or at least a drop off option. Instead, to return an item you have to email customer services, await some time for a response, print out your own returns form and then pay premium postal prices for delivery to ensure a safe return.

As you may have noticed from other reviews on here, once (or if) your return parcel arrives, the returns and refunds process itself is flawed. After only refunding half of my items (the cheapest half I might add), I had to wait a further four weeks for the second half to be refunded and only after eleven emails and nine replies from six different customer service advisors. After receiving confirmation that this had been refunded, once again, the incorrect amount was paid. It took an exchange of a further seven messages, a phone call and another three advisors (that's nine different advisors in total) to pay in the third instalment over a period of an additional eight days. This was a basic refund for return of unwanted goods. No damaged items and no postal refund were requested. There appears to be poor communication between the returns team, customer services and the finance department, who must be struggling to cope with the vast number of online brands incorporated into one infrastructure.

Furthermore, most decent online retailers that accept PayPal payments, do so without a surcharge. One can only assume that they wish to discourage customers from using PayPal, so it harder for them to make a claim for their money back when things go wrong. Not surprising then that The Hut Group are making record profits at the expense of the consumer. The Hut Group should consider spending less on their extravagant Christmas parties, marketing strategies and purchasing and renovating high end health clubs and more on investing in and improving their relationship with their employers, the consumer.

It is evident after personally using social media to contact this group of companies, a human response is immediate and they will attempt to directly message you in private. Retailers strongly dislike publicly displayed complaints for obvious reasons. As this company depends on technology and the internet for their success and growth, the unhappy customer must also utilise this to their own advantage. Therefore, I would urge those with a grievance to use social media as a communication tool instead of waiting up to 48 hours for a reply from customer services. Use *******@Coggles and their mother *******@thehutgroup rather *******@thehut_help as this account merely takes public attention away from the number of complaints. Additionally ensure you screenshot any evidence and attach to your message as this is quite embarrassing for companies and highly effective in getting an immediate response. Unsurprisingly,@thehut_help account isn't advertised on the 'contact us' page of their websites, it's just something you either know or you don't. Now you know.

In fairness, all negative reviews on sites are addressed by the feedback team. They follow the customer service textbook diligently - responding through positivity, apologising profusely and promising to pass feedback on to relevant departments. However, considering the recurrence of similar complaints, this is either insincere or not acted upon.

Coggles is one of the many great brands within The Hut Group and, as I big consumer of fashion, health and beauty products, I will miss ordering from some of them. Thankfully though, The Hut Group do not have a monopoly over online retail and all (or at least similar) brands can be purchased elsewhere. Thus, my advice to potential customers, who have managed to read this far, is to vote with your web browser and fulfil your requirements at the many other great online retailers that seem to value their customers more highly.