AO.com: Absolutely flipping brilliant (John Lewis: Total Fail)

I needed a Fridge. A tall free-standing one. We’ve got some work going on in the kitchen but it’s going to be quite a while before that’s complete so I determined, with a bit of persuasion of my wife, that we should just order a big temporary fridge… that, when everything is all finished, we can use in the garage for drinks and other things. 

I was going to order via very.co.uk — I absolutely love them, particularly the manner in which they handle the ‘take 3’ credit payment stuff. Alas it was going to be a few days before they could get the fridge out so I thought I’d finally get a John Lewis account setup and try and give the ailing old favourite a shot.

I was pretty impressed with the nice looking website and I got the order processed in double quick time.

Unfortunately the standard reality of British business — the fulfilment — caused a problem. They were due to deliver on Tuesday morning. My wife waited in the house until just past midday before calling it quits. The usual story. She got a call from the delivery chaps who promised to deliver on Wednesday morning. Same old challenge. My wife waited until midday and… yeah… nothing. No call, nothing.

I looked at the John Lewis online order system and saw that the fridge was set to be delivered NEXT Tuesday.

I phoned up John Lewis — famous, apparently, for their brilliant service. I explained that I’d like to cancel the order because of non-delivery. I wondered how they’d react. 

The polite lady promptly agreed. 

Job done. 

That was simple. She’s refunded the money. I was expecting some kind of rescue attempt from the famously helpful brand — but I was quite content that they just processed the cancellation efficiently.

Dear reader, I visited AO.com on my iPhone, found the same (or very similar) model and had it purchased within about 5 minutes of putting the phone down on John Lewis. In fact, the AO.com order confirmation arrived faster than the John Lewis refund acknowledgement! 

I did this all on my iPhone. I cannot praise the AO.com user journey in more glowing terms than to say they have absolutely nailed it. 

I think I was able to process the whole order in about 3 screens. I was pained at the possibility of filling in my credit card details on the iPhone browser, but actually, that only took about 30 seconds. Boom! Amazing. Absolutely amazing.