When Shoo told me about the ASOS sale I was predictably excited. Who doesn’t love online sales and online shopping? Especially when work demands mean that you don’t have time to shop in real life.

So I gathered orders and spree-ed for ASOS clothes. Used VPost Europe (new!) as my delivery address.

A few days later, I receive an email from ASOS saying that they have canceled my order because they don’t ship to freight forwarders, a “recent business decision”. Without warning anyone on their website. Or maybe I failed to read the fine print – so all right. No real complaints. I resubmit the order and put my home address as the mailing addy instead.

Four days later, I get the same freaking email from Mr. Liam Ivory.

By this time I’m royally pissed. Not only did they wait FOUR DAYS to process the order, they obviously have not checked the info properly. How is my home address a freight forwarder?

I immediately composed and fired off a snarky email.

An hour later, a Racheal replies. (It’s normally spelt Rachael, actually. It’s like Micheal. Urgh.)

She continually spells my name with a space in the middle, despite me consistently spelling her name wrong the way she spells it and signing off with my name written the correct way. Annoying.

Now I’m really irritated. She wants me to send such private details in a jpg over the Internet? Ooookay. I reply saying I refuse to do so and it is incumbent upon her to fix things, and fix them now. Politely but strongly worded.

Her email back politely insists that she needs them, that she cannot unblock my account and process my order without them, and assures me they destroy the info as soon as the “security checks” are passed.

Okay. So I scan in my IC and bank statement, making sure to blank out the personal details. My email to her is brief:

“Please expedite my order as this has already delayed shipping for four days. Thank you for your assistance.”

Her reply literally makes me hit the roof.

So I return this.

“Dear Racheal,

This is really bordering on ridiculous. How long will it take to clear my account? Why do I have to resubmit the order? This is completely your company’s incompetence – because my order was cancelled due to your own error. Now you are telling me I have to wait for you to clear my account before you can process my order.

Being an overseas customer, it was prudent for a few friends to make one single purchase by combining orders. As such, I have three other people also waiting for their items that have twice been re-ordered.

Firstly, you did not make it clear on your website that you do not ship to freight forwarders. That’s fine. I understand the policy behind it and simply reordered items the first time it did not get through.

Secondly, you cancelled my order by accident – and now will not even help reserve the items that may now be out of stock due to your constant delays. Four days to process my order and THEN tell me that you have cancelled it? And THEN tell me that it wa a mistake?

Thirdly, you won’t even accept new orders from me until my account is cleared. How am I going to get my order through then?

Fourthly, there is no sufficient apology made for this second, major inconvenience, and no suggestion of how my shopping experience may be improved in future, or any reparation that can be made for this debacle.

The culmination of all these points reflects a great lack of responsibility and culpability on your part and I really hope that in future ASOS does not treat its customers in such a manner. It has completely ruined my shopping experience with ASOS.

Kindly inform me once my account is cleared. I will re-order for my friends and I but you can be sure that I will not be making any future orders with ASOS.

Thank you.”

But obviously neither of us are done.

She then emails me to say:

Me:

I am now awaiting her next salvo.

Okay you know what, I’m exhausted, I don’t want to argue with her anymore. I JUST WANT MY FRICKIN’ CLOTHES.

I swear I am never going to purchase from ASOS again. It’s absolutely ridiculous. How can my billing address not be the same? It’s either bloody UOB or it’s ASOS, and I prefer to think UOB can’t possibly be dumb enough to get my address wrong.

[6 bends in the road]