I’ve been using www.play.com for a number of years, up till about six months ago I can’t say i ever really had a problem with them. In the past six months though, I’ve noticed a marked increase in the number of orders I place with them that are dispatched but never arrive. Forcing me to then have to wait 21 days before they can send out replacements.
Up until a month ago this wouldn’t have really bothered me … hey shit happens right? I mean as long as you know the they’re doing something about it and a replacement is on the way, it’s not the end of the world, right?
Several months ago I pre-ordered Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, a game I’ve been looking forward to playing for several reasons – the fact that I’m part of a global gaming team that is supposed to be competing against other teams is only one of the reason’s I made sure I got my pre-order in pretty early! trusting that Play would send it out on time and I’d be amongst the first to get it installed and my rig set up. I knew something was wrong when the game was finally released at the end of September and not only had I not received it but I’d not received an email telling me it had been dispatched. So I logged onto my Play.com account and went to have a look at my order history to find that the item was marked as “Posted”.
This felt odd … I’d never had play send me something without me being sent a dispatch notification, so I figured I’d call them up to see what was going on and when I was likely to receive it. The customer services representative that I spoke to informed me that I had to wait 21 days before they could send out a replacement, he didn’t offer me any other details at the time, and simply told me the item had been posted and there wasn’t anything they could do until the 21 days had elapsed. I informed him that I had not received a dispatch notification email which didn’t seem to bother him, and in fact he was quite dismissive ( apparently emails do get lost 😉 ). I hung up feeling a bit cheesed off. Later that day I spoke to a colleague of mine who is also an avid FPS gamer and he asked me how I was getting on with QuakeWars, when I told him I hadn’t received it he basically filled me in on how he had given up using Play.com long ago because he felt they were dishonest in how they represent what has actually gone wrong when an order goes missing.
This all piqued my interest so several hours later on the same day I called Play.com up again and spoke to a different customer services representative and basically told her that my order hadn’t arrived, I hadn’t received a dispatch notification and the item was marked as POSTED in my account history. She apologised profusely and told me the item was never sent out, she told me she had just checked on the system, and although my account shows it as POSTED it was never dispatched, there was some kind of glitch at the warehouse. To her credit she was very polite and and very apologetic however she was confused as to why I hadn’t been told this earlier in the day when I had spoken to one of her colleagues. She told me the best thing to do was to cancel that order, and place it again, and they would see to it that it was dispatched straight away. So I said ok, and went ahead and did that. I should point out that this was on the 3rd of October.
Anyway’s I re-placed the order and ordered an additional item at the same time, and I figured these items would arrive pretty soon after that. Sadly the postal strike struck, and being the reasonable guy I am … I figured any delay this time was probably a result of the strike. I hadn’t really received any post in about ten days, so I didn’t feel the need to chase Play up.
Anyway this weekend I checked my account and once again noticed that the QuakeWars was marked as Posted, I went and checked my email account and found there wasn’t a dispatch notification for it, but there was one for the other item I had ordered. Mmmm de-ja-vu? at this point I called them up again and asked what was going on, I was immediately informed that for some reason the item had not been sent out. At this point I got a bit irate and asked, as one might, then why is it marked as Posted ( which means I can’t cancel the order ). He said he couldn’t explain that but that he would send an email to the warehouse to have the item sent out immediately. I hung up the phone in disgust, and then interestingly … I was still on the view my account page on Play.com … suddenly the last two items I had ordered changed status from Posted to Missing, It wasn’t fucking missing!!! They had never sent it out! So picked up the phone and called them up again … I was put through to the same guy I had spoken to moments earlier and he said he had changed the status of the item so that the warehouse would send out a replacement but the way the system works is it marks that item and any subsequent orders with the same state … I told him that made no sense whatsoever. He assured me I would get a dispatch notification soon and that the item would be sent out … as it stands I still can’t cancel my order, they have still charged me for the item … and guess what the item is once again marked as Posted … and I have not received a dispatch notification.
What troubles me the most about this whole situation is the total disconnect between their order placing/billing system and their dispatch/fulfillment system, it seems apparent that they bill individuals at the point at which the warehouse is sent the order but they never confirm whether or not the item has actually been sent out. What upsets me the most is after three attempts they still have failed to send out the item I ordered. They’re very quick to bill people, but they don’t check to see if they have actually sent out the items.
The cynic in me suspects that what’s actually happening is that due to the sheer volume of orders they receive, they mark items as in stock, or dispatched within 24 hours, when the reality is the items are not in stock, but customers think that they’ve posted off, when they don’t arrive we call up and are told to wait 21 days and then a replacement will be sent out – when in actual fact the item was never actually sent out until they got it in stock again.
So either Play.com is suffering from a spate of neolithic incompetence, or they’re just plain dishonest, in either case I wont ever use them again!
This morning I tried once again to call their customer support number again …. only to get the message “This service is temporarily unavailable” … No Shit!
I’m going to try to get the order canceled again today and get my money back off them, at which point I’ll place an order with www.amazon.co.uk, and I strongly urge people who have had problems receiving items from Play.com to delve a little deeper and if you find your being treated as I have, switch to a more competent vendor or one that has more integrity – whichever way you prefer to look at it.
Why not cancel and go into a shop to buy it? I never order online for a game I want on release day, just too risky. Sure I pay up to £10 more in a shop than online but I’m guaranteed to have it installed on day one. 🙂
I order quite alot of stuff from play.com. While I haven’t had any problems so far, I have noticed when I order something from them on Saturday I’ll often get a dispatched email from them on the Sunday.
The stuff I order is despatched from Jersey, and I’m in Jersey and I know the post office shuts down on Saturday and Sunday, so how they manage to despatch things over the weekend I don’t know.
I once met a guy who worked there, he said he’d never order from play.com, for the simple reason that he’s seen how stuff is treated down there.
I agree – I’ve used Play,com for years and everything has been A1. Now a parcel has been signed for by someone else and it’s impossible to get the matter sorted. The helpline is impossible – can’t speak to anyone. I need the goods by christmas and am infrormed I need to wait until 23/12/07 before I can sort this out. I’m going to my credit card company. This sort of thing is so easily sortable – have they lost their way?
I too have been having issues with play.com and also I have found their customer service centre to be absolutely useless.
I cannot agree with you more on the dismissive nature of some of their staff and how they speak to you and blame everything on you or anyone as long as it”s not themselves.
the thing I have noticed is that all the dismissive, coarse and downright ignorant operatives have been Irish, this is not a blight on Irish people, just a strange coincidence I have observed.
My ongoing most recent issue has now been rolling on for three months. I ordered a double cd from them and they sent me the single cd edition, I returned it and requested a replacement, they sent another single cd edition…. I returned it.
They sent me a replacement…….another single cd edition….
I called them and explained all of this, pointing out that their site was only advertising the double cd and yet I kept getting this single cd. They said they would have to put in a stock query and would order me another up.
A few days later I got an email from them stating they had the wrong stock and would order in new stock and send my double cd, fair enough……… a week or so I got the cd in the post……..the single cd edition!!!
So I calls them up and gets this character Dave the Irish person who has to be the worst customer service rep of all time, seriously, if you want to work in customer service you have to have at least some social interaction skills, this guy had none and basically it was all my fault, not only that but it was apparently my fault,
I asked if it was at all possible that when replacing my cd someone could physically check and make sure they were sending out the double cd (along with checking their stock) so as not to get another mistake winging it’s way to me….. he said this wasn’t possible, how the fuck not?
it’s a case of the tail wagging the dog, play.com appear to have no idea what they have in stock and what is getting sent out, soon as they have your money they couldn’t give a shit..
Anyway this Dave character, after much insolence and uselessness, says they won’t be sending out a replacement for ……21 days…. I point out it’s been over sixty days since this order began and the latest fuck up has been returned to them, he isn’t for shifting, so I tell him I want to speak to a manager and he tuts and toddles off, putting me on hold, few minutes later he is back…. no manager but will organise a replacement.
Fair enough, I hang up and four days later my cd arrives………the single cd edition.
I again return it only this time I just ask for a refund and order it from amazon.
they are quite unprofessional and hopeless are play and where they used to be my first port of call for orders they are almost a last resort.
a Shambles of a company.
I’ll bet one of the totally obnoxious, idiotic Irish customer UNsupport operatives you spoke to was BEN. Play.com’s customer support is well known as one of the worst ever. And you’re all completely right about what a wholly unprofessional, dishonest and incompetent outfit they are with a bunch of Irish monkeys running their books. When it comes to small orders under the value of £6 like DVDs, CDs, etc. they can get the items to you on time, but anything more than that and they just can’t cope, and if and when something goes wrong (which is normal, things happen – just as long as it gets sorted out) they’ll take your money, spit on you and blame it on somebody else. They seem to pull their employees out of some hole in Ireland, select only the stupidest people on earth with no clue about how to talk to people, put them behind a telephone and say ‘If anybody calls, just blame it on them’. I really don’t know why anybody uses them at all, everything is much cheaper on Amazon, and it’s delivered quicker, and they actually know what they’re doing.
Yeah, I spoke to Ben – he was some kind of a retard, no human interaction skill whatsoever. Okay, if they want to find the least skilled people so they can pay them the lowest wage – I think Play.com is starting to go under at this rate – but you could find more competent people just out of prison if it’s getting away with the lowest wage bill you want. Ben was a joke of a loser; he probably lives beside that phone.
“I once met a guy who worked there, he said he’d never order from play.com, for the simple reason that he’s seen how stuff is treated down there.”
Ordered a DVD got a totally different one.
Ordered a Microsoft Keyboard got a Laptop Backpack
Total Incompentance. I work in a dispatch environment short staffed and very busy and we make no mistakes.
I can only presume the person that put my dispatch note that said keyboard in the bag along with the backpack cant speak fucking english
I had the same kind of problems with play.com … first time I got a delivery date I had to wait until 15/08/2008 to report non-delivery. However, one day before that (14/08/2008) the posted date changed to that very day! so another 21 days to wait… I’m guessing another non-delivery. I called up to complain but what a surprise no joy except for the fact that 14/08/2008 as a delivery date will be placed in my account notes and I’ll be able to claim a refund on 04/09/2008 if it doesn’t turn up. it really did not answer my question about why 2 posted dates. we’ll see if they stick true to their word and issue me a refund or just change the posted date again and give me the same old rubbish. I expected rubbish from them… I’ve taken screen shots of the order and order history this time…
grrrrrrrrrrr ok end of my rant. play.com sucks.
I don’t have problems with Play.com anymore, because I haven’t used them in years!
I ordered 6 CD’s from Play.com on 08Sep2008 and so far received only 2 CD’s. When I log in to my account there is a note at the top telling me my account has been declined – yet all 6 items are listed in the order history as being posted and I recieved notifications to say they had been despatched. The money was charged to my card on the following working day. I need a refund but I notice we can only contact play.com by phoning an 0845 number. At this time, I would advise anyone reading this not to purchase anything from their website. I get the feeling the play.com website is crooked – I will update as I find out more.
Oh yeah, when they put the declined message at the top of your account, that’s their way of saying we know we’ve done you over, but we’re just going to distance ourselves from you and deny everything and blame it on someone else. Play.com are as bent and incompetent as they come. And their phone support (a-huh) is a monument to it.
I ordered Saints Row 2: Collector’s Edition and received the standard edition, after a phone call (£1.47) 3 emails and another call I am told I must send it back to prove I did not receive what I ordered.
I have given up with them and will no longer use their services, all I wanted was the difference between what I ordered and what I received or the additional items (I paid for) sent to me.
I pre-ordered Little Big Planet from play.com on 14 October. It was advertised as coming with a free downloadable Nariko character skin. I received the game on 3 November and their website said download codes would be emailed the week of release.
It’s now 21 November. Still no code. I have emailed codesandpromos@play.com, support@play.com, helpdesk@play.com and all I get is automated replies with support ticket numbers. I have phoned three times. The most recent phone call was today and it went like this:
Them: “Haven’t you heard from our codes and promotions yet?”
Me: “Nope” (thinks — if I had heard why on earth would I be phoning to ask where the code is? Because I want a chat?)
Them: “Ok, I’ll see if I can get you the code now”
Me: “Ok”
Them: “Oh. It says ‘resource not found’. I’ll have to email codesandpromos myself and get them to contact you straight back. Within 24 hours. Though I can’t promise that.”
To rub salt into the wounds, they are now selling Little Big Planet at £10 less than the pre-order price. Is this even legal, given that the game hasn’t been on the shelves for more than 28 days?
I’ll tell you what, I am never dealing with play.com again. They’re as hard to deal with as Sky (and that’s saying something). This was my first and last time. Thank goodness I have Resistance 2 pre-ordered with Amazon. They haven’t let me down even once in 10 years.
Yeah try amazon, whose OWN resellers bough their entire supply of wrath of the lich king collectors edition and then sold it on amazons own site for £130.
Play might suck, but amazon suck a lot more. Read up on the amazon spore fisco too
Glad to see that I’m not the only one having problems with Play. I’ve added Play to my own “blacklist” this morning and will never use them again for my own or my customers’ needs. I’m an IT Admin and will make a point of bad-mouthing Play at every opportunity. I have got a “story” but am not going to bore you with it now. Like many of the commenters, I’ve been using Play since the early days but now I can’t wait to see the bastards go bust.
The ONLY good thing about Play is the prices. Their website search is bloody awful and their customer services are useless. Factual reviews of mine (with information that I’ve had to scour from other web sources) have not been published because they have been slightly critical of Play’s lack of factual information (ie product dimentions! et al). Just last week I reviewed a 1TB drive and it was not published whilst another customer review on the drive was published; it read: “This is a great bargain it stores thousands of my media files and still has about 750 gb Remaining”. I mean, how bloody meaningless eeh? Pathetic.
This bloody company needs fucking off from the face of the earth, their customer service is a bloody joke, my order has been in the packing status for nearly 4 weeks, i’ve phoned them time and time again, they always seem to blame the warehouse, if the warehouse bods are that fucking useless then sack the retards and get some ppl that know what the hell they are doing, i’m now being told that my order will be despatched first thing at the begining of next week, thats a new one on me,, for the third bloody time,, these customer service people must think were all as stupid and as ignorant as themselves, and wait 21 days my arse, i’ll give them till the end of next week and i’ll get the credit card company to intervene and do a charge back, play take your money and make you beg for the items you have paid for,,, come to play.com and get your fucking mind played with, and while were at it, we’ll charge your card and make you wait months for your items,,,,, a bunch of muppets, the lot of them.
I’ve been a victim of fraud on Play.com and that was when they showed their truly appalling true colours. The bank sided with me and sent Play the bill. Play.com are awful, go to Amazon or HMV.com if you don’t want to be ripped off!
Pre-ordered the new 5FDP album in the middle of Septemeber expecting (stupidly it seems) that I would get it either on or the day after the release date. Still nothing. No-one is replying to me emails and the ‘Customer Care’ number is constantly engaged.
Like others who have posted here I will never use them again and will go out of my way to discourage others from doing so. I could’ve gone to HMV and bought it on the release date for a quid more. Shoddy service…
Been waiting on a refund from Play.com for over a month now. When i canceled the order the delivery was canceled in seconds, they’d already charged me (despite the fact that it was out of stock) and i have had to wait over 30 days (so far) to get my money back. I’ve emailed them several times and they’ve even admitted to me that they owe me a refund, so, why is this taking so long? They don’t seem to understand that this has become a matter of principle now and I’m not gonna forget about this and just let them have my money for nothing. I’ve now completely blacklisted this company and will never buy from them again, on the contrary, i’m gonna make it a mission of mine to tell anyone that’ll listen how shit Play.com are, hence this post. Thanks for reading.
I ordered a couple of show tickets from play.com. It was not until I got the email order confirmation that it was through a 4th party! Tickets arrived, great – thanks! Shame, they are FAKE and in someone else’s name! I have tried and tried again to get my money back, but to no avail. They say these tickets are non-transferrable but it is ok for them to sell them onto a 3rd/4th party?! These are duplicate tickets – GUARANTEED! In the process of discussing this with Trading Standards so watch this space!
I strongly recommend that we all boycott play.com but more importantly, don’t buy show tickets from them – they are not geniune. Customer Service does not exist even if you have spent hundreds of pounds with them over the years-it DOES NOT MATTER to them!
Play.com are a terrible company. I sold some items of mine (dvds, games, ps2 console etc) in December 2009, in order to fund a college trip of mine, I managed to raise £254 (after Play.com had taken all of their fees), transferred it to my bank account and was told it would be in my account in 7-10 days. This didn’t happen so I called up their ‘customer care’ helpline and was told that the transfer had gone through successfully and was just delayed due to the Christmas and New Year holidays (fair enough), and was told that it would be in my account the following week. Surprise, surprise this didn’t happen, phoned up again, and was told it was due to me supplying a pre-paid credit card and someone in their department wrongly authroised this when they shouldn’t of. Therefore I asked for a cheque to be sent, they said they didn’t offer this option and the only way to get my money is if I could find a friend who could transfer the money to their account for me. Ok I thought fair enough, managed to get my friend to do this using her proper bank account and credit card. Was told this had been done successfully and would be in my account 7-10 days later, which it wasn’t. Phoned up again and spoke to Jothathon in the PlayTrade department, and he told me that they were just waiting for the bank to authroise the payment and was asked to phone back the following morning and asked to speak to him directly (he supplied me with his extension number), did this and the lady I spoke to said she couldn’t put me through to him as they didn’t offer this service. Was put through to someone else in Belfast, she was extremly rude, of no help whatsoever and told me I would have to wait an additional 5-7 working days. I explained to her this wasn’t acceptable as this had been dragged out for two months and I was still not getting my money. She told me there was nothing else she could do and threatened to terminate the call on me. I realised this was going nowhere so ended the call and tried again.
Spoke to someone else this time who told me the account number wasn’t matching up with the sort code which was why the money was not going in. Double checked the bank details and found that they were correct. Phoned back and was told this time that the money was bouncing at my banks end. Phoned my bank who informed me that they would have no problem whatsoever in allowing the money to go through. Phoned Play.com again and informed them of this and was then told that Dave in the PlayTrade department had managed to sort the whole problem out and the money would be in my bank account 10-15 minutes later. Which to my surprise found that this wasn’t the case. I realised that there was no point phoning any more as I was told numerous excuses each time I phoned.
Therefore I contacted the Office Of Fair Trading in Jersey (where Play.com are based) and the Daily Mirror who contacted Play.com for me. The Daily Mirror were then told by Ian from Play.com that they couldn’t discuss my account details with anyone but me (how convienent), but they welcomed me to email them which I did. Recieved a reply about three days later stating that the change in my account details had triggered a security measure which was why I hadn’t recieved my money and that they were working to put the funds through manually and would be in my bank account by 11/02/2010. Surprise, surprise the money was not in my bank account. Emailed back play.com and have recieved a reply today stating that they have transferred my money successfully (I also spoke to someone from Play.com who informed me that the transfer had been done successfully) and apparently the money will be in my bank account at the beginning of next week.
I do not believe that the money will go in at all, as this has been dragging on for way over two months now, and I have still not seen the money. Play.com are an appualling company and I would strongly advise against dealing with them. The Daily Mirror printed the story in their investigations page Thursday 11th February 2010. Play.com are disgusting and should not be allowed to continue.
That’s a coincidence reading the story of the above poster. At around the same time when I transferred about £200 from my PlayTrade sales to my bank account, 30 days later still nothing had shown up, I contacted them and was told because of “a problem on their end” the transfer was returned to them and they would make the transfer again to show up in 10 days. I work for a bank and let me tell you it take 3-4 working days maximum for a BACS like that transfer to hit the account, never 10 working days. In all it took 40 days after receiving confirmation to receive the transfer for the proceeds of my sale after their messing me about. I’ve got previous experience of what a dishonest mess of a company Play.com are, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re deliberately trying to with hold these larger payments. Tell me more of your experience and let’s see what further action we can take.
I too have had the misfortune of dealing with Play.com (Better known as Plebs.com). They are totally clueless. I ordered an electrical item weeks ago and it still has not turned up. I am still going through the process of trying to get a refund. I am convinced that they never sent the item in the first place. I will never buy another thing from them.
Refunds from Play.Com are a Mission Impossible. I ordered several DVDs in October as Christmas presents. Most were from Play.com, but a few were from Play trade Suppliers. All eventually went fine but for one Play Trade Suppliers (bobsfilms), who claimed to have posted the DVD the following day, but come Christmas I had still not received it. Niether did I receive any reply to the 4 e-mails sent both via Play.com and direct to the supplier. I am still trying to get a refund from Play.com and its now February. After numerous calls to Play.com who went through the procedure of telling me I have to go through the loop for not having received the order and press the button requesting a refund; which does not exits next to the order because the Supplier claims to have sent it. Play.com have now told me 3 times; over the past 2 months that a refund will be issued, but still no refund has been received and hence I am still making calls and getting empty promises. Because the telephone number is an 0845 number and charged at 10pence per minute, by the time you have gone through the Press button 1 etc routine and then left in a queque for seven or eight minutes, each call has cost you at least a pound. Hence 4 calls later and trying to get my refund has cost me as much as the DVD; and therefore not worth pursueing any further. I think that is what they really hope for and hence never had any intentions of giving any refund.
At the same time as ordering those DVDs, I made some first time purchases from Amazon. Have just encountered a fault with one of the items; which they have replaced without question.
In fact the replacement was delivered even quicker that the original order and they covered costs for both the new delivery and the collection of the faulty item. A pity that Play.com cannot learn from them.