It took three attempts for Argos/Habitat to deliver a small item (a Christmas tree decoration). As I wasn’t at home for the first two delivery attempts, I tried to amend the delivery instructions on the order. But the Argos website isn’t set up to allow this at all. I tried to do this via the customer support agent on the website. They were not able to help with this. They could not even cancel the order and reorder it as it was already scheduled for delivery. It needed to be escalated to another team and would have taken more time. Not worth it for such a small order.

It was finally delivered on the third attempt. I’m told the delivery driver was quite surly and threw his hands up in frustration when told that my partner would come down to the door to collect the item.

But the irony is, the difference between the standard delivery price (£4) and a timed delivery slot (£6) was only £2. If Argos/Habitat had made the cost of both options the same, I could have picked a timed slot that would have avoided the two failed deliveries, and saved the delivery service money in labour and fuel costs.

Failed deliveries also show up in the website as if you’ve returned an item, although you don’t get charged extra for this. This looks like a hack job by the website development team and doesn’t promote confidence in the ordering system.

Some business process review is needed to improve the customer experience here.