Staggered Achica has achieved 1.5 stars...

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Achica - www.achica.com
★☆☆☆☆
1.4
11.0% of users recommend this
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Fowler31's review of Achica - www.achica.com

“Staggered Achica has achieved 1.5 stars...”

★☆☆☆☆

written by Fowler31 on 20/11/2014

I am completely gobsmacked that this company has achieved an overall rating of 1.5 stars. Is that +1.5 or -1.5. Do you do negative ratings? Why can't I leave zero stars?

You want plenty of detail? Here goes: I was a customer of Achica from years back - 4-5 years ago, when they had just started out and the website was basic, no mobile version and little in the way of email. Back then, you used to pay for your item and it arrived, beautifully packed, within a few days. Now, they do not give a toss about customer service.

I haven't ordered from them for over a year, and against my better judgement, when some glass lampshades that I'd been after for ages came up on a sale I ordered them and some funky lightbulbs to go with the shades.

Some six weeks after paying for the lampshades, I today came home from work to find a large cardboard box in a puddle outside my house. This was my Achica parcel (thanks Yodel - you make a well-matched business partner to Achica and probably advise each other on customer service).

I opened the soggy box to find one strip of bubble wrap around the two boxes of glass lampshades (the boxes are about 30cm cubed, and weigh about 1kg each). By some miracle only one lampshade was smashed to pieces (I have the cuts and blood on my carpet to prove that the lampshade arrived broken), and I just know what response I will get to my complaint to Achica's "customer disservice" department. They'll say they only order sufficient items from the manufacturer to fulfil the orders they've received. This time, it just isn't good enough for me.

To add to my distress, I opened the funky lightbulb boxes (casuallly thrown in the bottom of the box with the lampshades with no protection except for a tightly fitting cardboard box around the bulb - they were outside the carelessly thrown bubble wrap), only to find that both lightbulbs are covered in greasy fingerprints. They do not look new, they look like some hooky piece of tat from a disreputable market stall, and certainly NOT worth £9 each.

I've been messed around so much by this company. About 18 months ago I ordered a terrarium (sort of tiny, indoor greenhouse) from them. This arrived in just the manufacturer's box with an address label stuck on it. There was just no point even opening the box, I could hear the clinking of smashed glass without doing that. I asked for a replacement, but was told I couldn't have one and eventually I got a refund.

Some 3 months later the same offer was on, so I ordered another terrarium thinking, "surely, they'll have learned how to package up something fragile?" But no, same thing again - no packaging, smashed item, painfully slow refund.

I honestly believe that the combined IQ of everyone working at Achica is less than my shoe size (6, by the way). Surely they want to make money, not take customers' money, order and pay for goods from suppliers, and then have to give a refund to the customer? Where is the business sense in that? Are they relying on making a profit from having the use of my money for 6 weeks before having to refund me? REALLY? Is that their business model??

My advice to anyone suckered into a "good deal" from Achica is STEER WELL CLEAR, THEY ARE A BUNCH OF IDIOTS WHO CAN'T EVEN SEE HOW THEIR BUSINESS MODEL IS A FAILURE.

  • 2 x lampshades @ £65 each. 2 x lightbulbs @ £9 each.

    Goods purchased & cost

  • A few weeks late

    Delivery

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