John Lewis & Partners — Local services in City of Edinburgh

I only ever leave 5-star reviews, and this is the first 1-star review I am ever leaving. This is a very long review but I need to get this off my chest.

This happened a few months ago and I didn’t post anything back then because I just wanted to forget about the incident but I still feel so angry and hurt regarding it so I’ll post it now.

For context, I am a 26 year old Indian woman.

I went to the Chanel beauty section because I wanted to buy a foundation from there. The white male salesperson was busy helping a white customer, so after my friend bought something from Jo Malone (the female employee there was wonderful), I just waited and was talking to my friend (another Asian woman) while we stood in front of the Chanel foundation collection. Neither of us were even touching anything. While we stood there for 10 minutes, 3 different employees came up to ask us what we were doing there.

The first one was a salesman from Sisley (a white man in glasses), he asked us what we wanted and when I told him I was just waiting to get some help with the foundation, he said “oh I don’t work for Chanel so I can’t help you with that”. So why are you coming up to us at Chanel and asking us what we want?

The second one was a white lady, and I think she was a general JL employee and didn’t work for any particular brand. She too came up to us and asked bluntly what we needed and I told her that we were just waiting for the Chanel employee to help me with the foundation colour match. She said “he’s busy so you’ll have to wait”. Like??? That’s what we’re doing!!

The same thing happened with yet another male employee coming up to us and asking if we needed any help. At this point, I was getting irritated because it felt like out of all the (majority white) customers, we were being treated with suspicion because we were brown-skinned Asians who somehow had the audacity to stand near Chanel products.

After the Chanel employee was done helping the white woman (a good 20+ minutes of service later), he finally came over to us and asked us what we wanted. He was EXTREMELY unenthusiastic and unfriendly, and when I just asked him which shade he thought would suit me, without even looking, he said “we don’t have all the shades here, you’ll have to go somewhere else”. Literally ALL the shades were available as testers so I was very confused hearing this. I told him “I just want a shade match, so you can try matching me using the tester shades”. After a lot of reluctance, he picked the LIGHTEST shade and swatched it on my hand (keep in mind that I’m a brown Indian woman). I told him that it was too light for me and pointed at the tester shade that I believed would be a match for my skin tone, and he very rudely said “I told you we don’t have all the shades, you can check somewhere else”. I thanked him and left, but I felt so humiliated. You can spend 20+ minutes serving a white woman but you can’t even spare two minutes helping an Indian woman?

I buy from luxury brands quite often and never have I ever encountered such staff acting like I’m there to rob products from the store. And then acting so rude and unhelpful when asked for assistance. Please train your staff better. There is no excuse for such racist behavior.

I will never buy from JL again. I went to another beauty shop located within St. James Quarter (H Beauty) and a lovely female employee there helped me with finding the correct Chanel foundation to buy. I have therefore only been purchasing my beauty products from that store since last year.

Rant...

I'm kinda regular customer of JL having purchased loads of stuff from here cuz always trust the quality and service. However, this time was a bit unpleasant.

While wandering around with my husband we saw that Nespresso was having a promotion on their coffee machines, and since I had just moved into a new house, I thought of buying one. Having no prior experience purchasing such machines offline at JL, I was unfamiliar with the process. I politely asked a Nespresso staff member and, after receiving a response, went to the cashier to inform the staff to retrieve the item.

It should have been a simple process: I say, the staff go and get the item with me, then we return to the till to pay. However, this middle-aged white male staff member with a name starting with N looked at me arrogantly and said, "You need to show me the way first before I can get it for you." The words themselves were fine, but his tone was impatient and condescending, as if he was thinking, "First time here, huh? How ignorant." It was quite unpleasant to hear. (It's not that I'm overly sensitive; even my husband was shocked and commented, "what's wrong with him lol") I stood still, staring directly at him. As he turned to leave the till and saw that I hadn't moved, he feigned concern and asked, "Is everything okay?" I responded with a cold laugh and a questioning tone, "Yes?" He probably realized that both my husband and I were clearly unhappy, so he didn't say anything more, got the item, and we finished the checkout. During the payment, I didn't ask for his name because I had already seen his name tag. The name wasn't hard to remember. If I unfortunately encounter him again and he behaves the same way, I will definitely complain until he gets fired. I wonder what's going wrong in his life that he takes out his frustration on innocent customers. With such poor professional conduct, he might want to consider a different job.

Luckily, the Nespresso staff were great! Super patient and they gave me a bunch of stuff . I also really liked the color of the...

Quite honestly this has been the worst delivery, installation and customer service experience I have ever had. We ordered a new washing machine from John Lewis, which included installation. The "engineer" wasn't allowed to turn the water off as wasn't qualified to turn the water off. He messed around and then left without fitting the machine. However, he neglected to tell us he hadn't put the waste pipe back on the washing machine, so when the kitchen tap was run, it flooded the kitchen and shorted the electrics. JL called me to rearrange the removal of the old machine, but when they heard what happened they passed it onto their "Managers" department. I then got a call, where I was accused of trying to claim compensation from them and that they wouldn't be paying anything, and their engineer didn't have to warn us the waste to the sink hand't been returned to how they found it. It was the most disgusting customer service I have ever encountered and basically accused me of looking for money. When honestly, they had arranged the call, not me. She didn't even apologise for all the issues. After this they arranged another visit to bring the new washing machine (oddly they told me I had refused the new one when I hadn't). When he came to deliver it, he took the old and they once again updated the system to say I'd refused the new one. When I called to find out what was happening, I then found out the new machine was smashed and dented and that’s probably why they didn't want to bring it up. We've now been waiting ages for a new machine (we don't have one as they took the old one away first) and JL really don't seem to care. It's just "we'll pass that on to our warehouse", "I'll put that in a comment on your notes". I usually order from JL as I respected their customer services and delivery. They are usually a little more expensive, but previously it was worth it. Now, I can't imagine buying anything from them again and would recommend people think twice before using them. Such a shame this as happened to such a...