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Thursday 5 March 2009

Next Directory - underhand tactics at their stores

My birthday was just last month, reaching the ripe old age of 41. My Sister and Mum sent me those electronic gift cards, so off to M&S and Next I went.

While in Next a young gentleman sidled up to me and asked if I wanted to win a sports car, why not, so in for a penny, in for a pound as they say so I signed the postcard and put my address.

Imagine my surprise a week later when a letter arrived from Next Directory saying they needed more information before they could send me the Directory.

Strange, I hadn't ticked anything asking for one. So I popped back to the Next shop on Princes Street, Edinburgh and lo and behold on the till was a similar postcard - in fact half of it was the same, the prize draw the other half which the sales assistant had obviously torn off before he spoke to customers was all about the Next Directory and the infamous tick box to not receive any further details.

This is completely underhanded sales tactics and I am absolutely hacked off with Next.

When I called their main number there were no supervisors, managers or anyone from customer relations, however if I left my number they would call back - I don't think so!

I will be notifying Trading Standards about this because obviously the greedy bosses at Next pay a bonus to their shop floor staff for each account opened, but come on Next, at least do it honestly! Back in the day when I worked for Collier and then Burtons we never, and I really do mean never targeted young customers and were very open about what they were signing.

The underlying issue I have with this was everyone was targeted including the younger customers who might be tempted to spend a lot on the Directory and get into debt when we are facing a major credit crisis as a country. Sorry Next but you are out of order on this one.

2 comments:

Alan Muhammed said...

Retailers are getting desperate. Returns policies also seem to be changing at stores.

Whether that's because during the credit crunch, more people are challenging bad products or not, I don't know

April said...

Next have just tricked me into opening an account online. I thought I was simply making a purchase and it turns out I have a credit account!! There is NOTHING on any of the pages to indicate you are opening an account but apparently it is in the terms and conditions at the end. Extremely underhand. They also refused to cancel my account immediately and I have to wait for the courier to deliver the goods back to the warehouse. I've reported them to Watchdog but i'll give trading standards a bell too. What a foul underhand company!

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