Tuesday, September 2, 2008

I suddenly realised, like gust of cold air blowing all the leaves of a tree, that the place where I ordered our oven is not, in fact, going to deliver it. Well maybe one day, just not soon.

Oven-buying is not as straightforward here as it is in England. In England you go to John lewis or Argos or Littlewoods and you order the oven of your choice. It is delivered and installed and everyone is happy.

Here everyone buys from Darty. I have bought plenty from Darty and it must be said that as long as you aren't stuck on any specific model Darty has enough choice and excellent customer service to be an acceptable consumer experience (take note, Emi!).

The oven I was after though it turned out wasn't as straightforward to source. I want a nice modern stainless steel range, with a 5 ring gas stove and a double oven. The whole 100 cm wide. It's the double oven that proved the sticking point. Noone seemed to sell a model with a big oven and tehn a little one for when you are just baking cookies. I saw a lovely de Dietrich model on their website but no shop seemed to sell it and de Dietrich, a French company, needs to put its customer service in order. The girl on the phone really didn't give a shit. And no, you can't buy direct from the manufacturer.

So i did an online search and found it. Not only that but from a discount white goods store, with a discount for the oven and a hood that came to 1000 euros. Placed the order, paid my 1000 euro deposit, and waited for delivery on July 17th.

July 17th came and went. August 17th came and went. 1000 euros went from our bank account but nobody answered my calls or emails. I kept saying that it was August, noone works in August. Then the end of August came and I tried to call. Noone answered the phone. I looked on line and even a desultory search threw up a dozen forums for disgruntled consumers to vent spleen. I am not, it seems, the first to deal with this company and find them wanting.

Bref, we sent them a threatening letter, who knows what this will result in. We paid by credit card so will eventually get our money back if it is genuine fraud. Otherwise I suppose they'll send us back our deposit.

It turns out I could have gone to BHV in the first place and placed a special order. next week I'm going there to buy myself an oven. It will be delivered in four weeks. Meanwhile we eat bagels toasted cheese sandwiches and bake potatoes in our toaster oven/microwave and I grumble.

2 comments:

Cath said...

FINALLY catching up with yr blog - sorry... when we moved in here there was no hob (did I tell you this?, think so) because of previous screw-ups with the worktop too tedious to describe, so Charles was forced to go to Fenwicks and buy a plug-in electric two-ring hob like we were students in a bedsit, and we used that for, oh, a month or two... As he said at the time, maybe for more money he could get to cook his supper over an open fire on the lawn. DEEPLY envious of yr garden. Really DEEPLY. But then it ALL looks, as we knew it would, really GREAT xx

jenny said...

i think it's time for some more pictures, perhaps an update on living with a stove?