The Gift List - John Lewis Reviews

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The Gift List - John Lewis
★★☆☆☆
1.5
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Latest Reviews

“Avoid at all costs”

★☆☆☆☆

written by cosyn on 10/09/2023

We setup a John Lewis Gift List for our wedding guests and have run into all sorts of problems. The worse part is that the customer service team are unable to help. 1) You are not notified when a guest purchases a gift, however, you then only have 7 days to pick it up in store. If you don't pick it up within those 7 working days your gift is cancelled. 2) If you try to extend the pick-up date of the order by calling the John Lewis customer service number, you'll be asked to provide the name of the wedding guest who bought you the present, email address, home address, mobile phone. However, if your wedding guest forgot to add their name under the message section there is no way to find out who gave the present. And you will not be allowed to make changes and therefore your gift is cancelled. 3) If your wedding guests does in fact leave their name and order number this is still not enough to change the order pick up date. You still need to provide all of the details provided under point two. In our situation, some wedding guests come with plus one's, so if you dont know the plus one's exact details (home address) you will have to call everyone and ask for all of the above. At this point we have guests creating 'case numbers' to try to help with the whole process, but it's just spoiled the entire experience. Avoid.

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“Don’t have your wedding list here. Awful. ”

★☆☆☆☆

written by AllanReese19 on 21/10/2021

You really would think John Lewis would do wedding lists right. But no. I chose two items and for each I was asked to write a message which I did. Then when I went to check out it asked for another message. Also it would let me send the gifts to Mr and Mrs, I could only put one name. The gifts were also sent separately even though they were from the same list. And why do they presume you’re sending the gifts to yourself?? Then when they arrived, no names or message on either so had no idea who had sent it. Have your wedding list elsewhere.

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“DREADFUL, UNCARING”

★☆☆☆☆

written by 384Vaughan on 05/02/2020

We found the John Lewis Wedding List Service extremely poor: I question whether it is legal, it is certainly not ethical. And I see see we are not alone. For my daughter’s wedding last year, many guests purchased gifts from an on line John Lewis Gift List, at that time John Lewis took their money and banked it and the gift givers and the bride and groom both received confirmation from John Lewis that items had been purchased for them. However, on returning from honeymoon, they discovered a number of gifts were missing. When they phoned, John Lewis informed them that the missing items were no longer in stock, but they could collect gift vouchers to the value, from the store. Upsettingly, some items were parts of matching dinner service so they were left with an incomplete set. It is not the Gift List policy to “pick items” at the stage of purchase and payment, nor mark them as out of stock. This allows John Lewis to keep selling and accepting money for items, whether they are able to fulfil their order or not. John Lewis told me that my daughter had been informed – but the email address they gave me was unrecognisable. As only gift vouchers are given in compensation John Lewis profits from the situation and the young couple loses out. In John Lewis' explanatory letter they conceded that when someone purchases a gift item, they are not picked and put aside. Neither are "out of stock" items removed from sale or flagged, but the Gift List Service continues to sell and accept money for items in the (vague) hope that they will become in stock by the time the items are packed to send. In my daughter's case, John Lewis simply decided not to bother to restock the items that had been paid for. The gift givers still believe that their gifts have been received by the young couple, for they were never notified or given an option to purchase the items elsewhere. Thank you’s had to be written for unreceived gifts, rather than risk upsetting guests. Why were the people buying the gifts and paying for them not notified? No doubt that is also in their small print somewhere – entirely for their own benefit. When I wrote to the Managing Director, Ms Nickolds, I was expecting a reputable company like John Lewis to be concerned, and to have purchased the missing items for them, since they were still easily available elsewhere, I checked. But they declined to do so - instead pointing out the small print on the contract that my daughter and son in law had signed in the store - that allowed John Lewis to exchange any items for a gift card instead. This of course leaves John Lewis profiting from their unethical processes - at their customer’s expense. Eventually John Lewis gave my daughter and her husband cash equalling the sale value of the items – which was about a quarter of the price which they would have to pay elsewhere with their own money to obtain the missing items. Given their numerous value statements, I was somewhat taken aback that John Lewis were also not interested in learning from our experience and making improvement to their service, to at least help future customers. Shame on you John Lewis – in this instance, you have clearly failed to live up to your published key value statements: “DO RIGHT: We act with integrity and use our judgement to do the right thing ALL OR NOTHING: We put everything we have into everything we do GIVE MORE THAN YOU TAKE: We put more in, so everyone gets more out” I am left wondering how the decision makers in this case manage to sleep at night. I do hope, at least, other engaged couples think VERY carefully before trusting John Lewis with gifts for the biggest day of their life and the setting up of their home together.

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“Awful experience - be careful!”

★☆☆☆☆

written by HillarySanchez on 13/11/2018

At the start we thought the John Lewis gift list was amazing, it was great fun to go around store and select items and then have them automatically uploaded to a list. They also gave the option of vouchers and charity donations as part of the list which we loved. However it's the delivery that made this whole experience awful. We needed to get the gifts delivered to my husband's parent's house as our flat is tiny and we couldn't store them. We were only able to go to their house a couple of months later and we found that two items were missing. It's worth saying his parents are the sweetest most trustworthy people you could meet - you can imagine how they saw delivery as a massive responsibility and ensured everything went straight into secure storage off the delivery truck. However the two most expensive items on the list - a music player and a mini vacuum were missing. This was really distressing - our family and friends had clubbed together to buy these and they weren't there. It's was really upsetting to find. We contacted John Lewis and they sent a series of emails that basically quoted back T&Cs at us and said they weren't going to do anything as we hadn't told them this within two weeks (never mind it was physically impossible for us to check within two weeks!) and they wouldn't do anything about it - even looking into. It's worth noting that when the gifts were delivered they were collated in a load of big boxes and several of these had been damaged or had tape that had clearly been opened & then closed again beforehand. My husband's mum had taken pictures of these in case anything had been damaged - but she'd never imagined anything would be missing in a million years - this was supposed to be John Lewis service after all! I guess the last thing that was really upsetting was how they genuinely didn't care. Because it was out of their two week window they washed their hands of all responsibility and effectively told us “sorry, it’s your problem not ours". I really wish we hadn't gone with them - they pretend care about service but it's just marketing. I hate talking about this but I've promised to write this review in as many places as I can, as I don't think it's fair they can do things like this and still be seen as the best wedding list provider - it's just upsetting.

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“Poor customer experience ”

★☆☆☆☆

written by samanthamelville on 25/06/2018

We went with John Lewis for our gift list as we thought they were a reputable company. We no longer think this. Nearly half of the items people bought for us were discontinued apparently this is suppose to be updated every 2 weeks. They only tell you which items people have already ordered and paid for are discontinued and not the remainder of your list. Although guests are charged and presume they have bought you a particular present items are not actually put aside for you until you pick a delivery date. We complained to customer sevice who took no notice and told us people would call us back at certain times and didn’t. The customer service is disjointed. I wish I had done a gift list with amazon at least I could have found items to replace the ones that were discontinued. I would not recommend jl gift list to anyone. Apart from over £300 in gift vouchers I now have to spend in jl I will never be shopping there again.

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“JL Gift List for 2017 wedding, plus Kuoni honeymoon”

★★★☆☆

written by Cababacab on 01/10/2017

Despite some redeeming features, overall we were disappointed in the JL Gift List for our wedding (Spring 2017). Given how popular/common JLGL was, we expected more. The start is fine, and you get a scanner for the store and some free cake in the JL cafe (free cake!), so if you like JL products then this part is good. We wanted our honeymoon to be included as part of the GL so that people could donate to that if they preferred, and this was possible as we were going with Kuoni, JL's partners. This was thankfully possible, meaning we didn't need separate lists for items vs experience, although the website is clunky and you can't add more than 30 characters to describe your honeymoon request. However, the "guide" sheet we were provided on how to use the GL was very amateur and of very poor quality (almost illegible photocopy, full of typos and not at all helpful); further, we found that for a number of items it wasn't possible to add to the GL (e.g. you cannot add any artwork) "in case it runs out of stock", despite the fact that they were only prints and we could see them in store months after the event, suggesting these had a low turnover / are replaced regardless... A number of normal items (e.g. irons) were also replaced with vouchers at a late stage, due to "changing suppliers". There were further replacements / delays in getting some standard items which were "out of stock for GL", depite being in ample supply at JL. Whilst I understand that JL and GL are run separately from a corporate perspective, as a customer we don't expect to have to then do an online JL shop to buy the things that GL had run out of... As a futher minor gripe - there's no way to identify who bought what without doing a manual cross-reference to the online list. To end on a positive, we did end up with a whole bunch of fun things that were of the quality we expected, keeping this review up at 3 stars.

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“Bitterly impersonal & disappointing throughout ”

★☆☆☆☆

written by Eilbeck on 05/07/2017

Very very disappointing!!! Gifts not available so vouchers issued a day before delivery! Items delivered unwrapped so imagine toaster boxes, pans in polythene bags rather than beautifully wrapped gifts! No messages attached to individual items so need to cross reference all items with the online list. They make such a fuss about recieving it all together and the excitement but after the joy of a wedding and the post wedding blues this has only added to our upset. Beyond disappointed and not what I expected for a company that promotes quality and attention to detail! I would not recommend this service to anyone!!!! Even Amazon wrap their gifts! Xxx

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“Extremely poor service”

★☆☆☆☆

written by Connell215 on 04/07/2017

We decided on John Lewis for our wedding list, at first everything seemed fine. The only issue we didn't like was how guests couldn't select gifts to be sent to them but rather you could only purchase online and assume gifts would be sent on to the bride and groom... unfortunately this is where the problem then lies. Arranging delivery for our items seemed easy enough, I was able to select my home address and select a day - our wedding was 2nd June 2017 but items couldn't be delivered until Friday 30th June - a little odd I thought but I didn't query it. I had no annual leave left so I got my mum to take a day off work on Friday 30th June so she could sit in our house and wait on the delivery - late evening and still no delivery - nothing, no calls. I'd already rang John Lewis and questioned if the delivery driver would call before delivery but I was told no.. I rang John Lewis on the Friday evening and was told I'd actually been given incorrect information and my delivery was booked but might arrive on the Saturday instead but more likely on the Monday, I was furious as I'd got my mum to take a day off to await this delivery. So here we are on the Tuesday and there is still absolutely no mention of my delivery, no cards through the door- nothing! Not only has delivery been a joke but a guest had bought us vouchers - John Lewis didn't contact me to say these wouldn't be included in my order, instead they only informed me of this when I contacted them about something different. similarly an item was out of stock on the list but someone had purchased it, this then had to be ordered from a different stockist website and sent separately. . . to date I have received absolutely no items from John Lewis. Beyond disappointed with this service, wish I had never ever used them for a wedding list.

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“Just Awful”

★☆☆☆☆

written by SoSadAwfulCompany on 29/10/2016

I used to be a really loyal John Lewis customer but these people are a joke. You can't use vouchers to pay for additional items on the list. It took 3 hours in store to arrange a delivery for your items. On delivery day, they cancelled mid morning as they hadn't got the items together. And according to our guests it takes around half an hour in store to make a purchase from the list. Utter shambles.

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“Laughably bad”

★☆☆☆☆

written by JaylenHubbard on 23/09/2016

I cannot express how poor this service is. It is miles apart from the in store service and runs like a completely separate business. Just a few examples of the areas of frustration - purchased gift aren't guaranteed to be delivered - multiple deliveries required to get all gifts purchased - gifts selected online and in store are treated as separate orders (you have to speak to separate customer service teams for delivery) - gift vouchers cannot be used for items on the list - gifts arrive over packaged and via unreliable delivery companies So so frustrating!!!

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“Purchased Gifts not Guaranteed! ”

★☆☆☆☆

written by watssaz on 03/08/2016

We selected items for our gift list at our nearest store, Exeter, 3 days before our list was open to guests. Selection was fairly straight forward. The advisor informed us that although we were the nearest branch to our address, their delivery drivers didn't go that far and therefore they would arrange a courier. We booked a delivery date for a Saturday as we work full time. A few days before our delivery and after the list had been closed we were contacted to say 2 items that had been purchased were now out of stock. I was completely surprised. We were not notified that this could happen and I do feel that if you purchase something, why is not then reserved. The advisor stated that we were the lucky ones as other lists had up to 60% missing! The advisor also stated our delivery date was in fact the day the items were being sent to our nearest store - Avonmouth?! Someone would contact us in due course to book a delivery. Delivery was finally arranged to arrive 16 days after our original date. The night before delivery we were contacted again to say another 2 items were out of stock. It turns out that all the items were in the sale. I find it extremely bad that a large company such as John Lewis are unable to reserve goods already purchased so that they do not then get sold by store to other customers. For their benefit, they have lots of small print that protects them from admitting any wrong doing but ethically I do believe this is not good practice. The goods arrived safely however, there is not list included to say who has bought what, again this is extremely disappointing. I have heard numerous issues with John Lewis gift lists and after my experience with them I would not recommend. The staff are clearly aware of the issues and have ample training in dealing with all the questions that are thrown at them. They are just trying to make the best of a bad system. This has taken away the pleasure of receiving our wedding gifts and I hope this review can help others to be aware.

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“Poor service”

★★☆☆☆

written by andyedw on 06/10/2015

We chose our gift list items online, I was a bit wary from the start as the Website looks like it was written 10 years ago, it is badly in need of a facelift and disappointingly there was nowhere to write a personal message to your guests or personalise your gift list page in anyway. Our guests used the site fine and purchased gifts/vouchers. Then came the point of delivery. They couldn't give us a delivery date, only a delivery range of anytime within 2 weeks. The delivery came in 5 different parcels. As we weren't at home as we didn't know when they would arrive some were left with neighbours and some were taken back to the depot and were sent back to John Lewis. John Lewis couldn't find the returned delivery so had to ask me what was missing! We tried to arrange a pick-up instead, but the items weren't in stock at the nominated store so this wasn't possible. They couldn't arrange a "click and collect" from another store, I don't understand why, as you can if purchasing the goods online. So they re-sent the deliveries, this time with the promise to provide tracking details so I could arrange to be at home. But they failed to do so and the items are again back at the delivery companies depot! The saga rolls on...

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“Disorganised, impersonal and amateur ”

★☆☆☆☆

written by TristenBlackburn137 on 02/10/2015

We love john Lewis and had high expectations of their Gift List service. In reality it was terrible. It started ok with a reasonable in store experience (although we couldn't take advantage of the free tea and cake they offer as there were no cakes left at 3pm on Sunday in a big London store). It was down hill from there. They charged several of our guests £100 for an item that should have been £20 - even though we'd already written to John Lewis to say that the price was showing up wrong on our list and they said they had corrected it. We only found out our guests had paid too much by chance, when enquiring about a price match. The apology was half hearted given that they nearly robbed our guests and us of £160. The technology is poor so it's really hard to tell from the tiny pictures what the item is like (way inferior vs their regular website). The service was impersonal (fifteen emails from 15 different people so far). Despite John Lewis being all about price matching, for the Gift List they only price match if guests call to request that - as list owner you can't register for the price match (ridiculous as what guest is checking whether the item they just bought has changed price and what bride and groom would want to put their guests through additional hassle on their behalf anyway?). In fact, they treat the list owner as an irrelevant and mildly inconvenient part of dealing with their "real customers" - your guests - missing the point that the list is only with John Lewis because you chose it to be. No heart, no sense of joy or celebration. A third rate version of John Lewis. Avoid.

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“Mixed experience”

★★★☆☆

written by JadeO'Sullivan on 03/09/2015

Our experience had a been good, although our items were fairly straightforward. All items delivered but our Denby dinner service is a mix match of colours with over 50% items with defects (little holes in glazing, scratches, very diverse colours, and a badly chipped mug) These are worse than some of our Denby seconds. We now have to arrange an exchange. What a shame for something that should have been such a happy experience.

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“Awful and ruins what should be a great time”

★☆☆☆☆

written by Marcu235 on 10/08/2015

Awful 1. Items out of stock within a week 2. Items ordered when in stock not saved 3. By the time of delivery no stock available 4. Gift vouchers not sent out with the delivery - 9 day turn around 5. If I had wanted an alternative I would have chosen one. All high value items not in stock - just a load of gift vouchers Very sad. Avoid I once trusted John Lewis No more

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“Many items unavailable and terribly slow follow up”

★☆☆☆☆

written by RykerBrown on 22/04/2015

Unfortunately we cannot recommend this service and we suggest you try elsewhere. Many of the items that guests bought ended up not being available or are taking a long time to come into stock! We got married in November 2014 and we are still waiting for items to come back into stock before they can be delivered. Also they are telling us that some of the items that guests bought are not actually available. So how did the list get approved and how did guests pay for items that can't actually be bought?! The service is slow and painful. We wait and wait for replies and are passed from one person to the next without satisfactory resolution. We are surprised because originally we thought that John Lewis had good customer service but obviously their wedding list service is a very disappointing! Try elsewhere!

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“Wedding Gift List”

★☆☆☆☆

written by on 13/04/2015

We chose to have our gift list with John Lewis because we have always received fantastic service from them and also because of their reputation. What a mistake that was. We were told on Thursday our gifts would be delivered Friday but when they arrived we only received three items that were thrown in a box with no note of who they were from. When we complained they tried to blame it on us and basically told us a whole pack of lies as to why it had happened. The gift list team did not feel this needed to be passed to a manager as in their words it is all "fantastic" and "perfect"! If I had read these reviews we would not have arranged our gift list with John Lewis - this is not the John Lewis we know. We have now escalated this to senior management but in the meantime we are having to arrange more time off work to accept a further two deliveries. Also rather worryingly is that when your guests purchase gifts these are not put aside so when it comes to your list being closed they then inform you a number of these gifts are out of stock even though we found them in their store! I would advise anyone to stay well clear of this gift list. Their brochure states "Receiving the delivery of all your gifts is a wonderful moment". Sadly this is not a "moment" we have been able to experience, it has caused us nothing but stress and upset and how do you write your thank you cards when you haven't received your gifts?

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“No idea what they are doing”

★☆☆☆☆

written by kjsdfhlAKEFHLK on 05/01/2015

Our experience with John Lewis gift list has been pretty atrocious from beginning to end. We registered for our wedding (just a few items since we had heard bad reviews) and found that not only was it slim pickings, but several departments were not available for adding to gift lists (why-don't they want our money?). Then when we went to buy up our remaining items, we were told that our registry had been closed and we had to buy them over the phone (time consuming and seemingly unnecessary). When we called to order and pay for those items, we were told that a John Lewis gift card with a large balance was not eligible as payment for gift list items. WHY NOT?? This is disgusting. The gift card was specifically given to us so we could buy registry items. They refused to refund the gift card and I am absolutely outraged. With such dishonest and conning policies they should not be allowed to do business. I will never buy from them again and I will tell all of our friends to avoid them.

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“Terrible- better to ask for cash than to buy from John...”

★☆☆☆☆

written by helblythe on 01/10/2014

Terrible from start to end. Half the items we selected were out of stock by the time people came to buy, the other half were in stock when our guests selected them, chose them, paid for them but obviously weren't put aside or selected. It meant that the items our guests had carefully chosen weren't in stock when they came to be delivered. When I complained because one item had been something specific, they said they could only give me vouchers (which they didn't even post). I said the guest had bought that one specific item and I wanted the money back to buy it from elsewhere and they refused. I'm stuck with £650 on a giftcard and nothing I want from John Lewis and a sour taste in my mouth. They didn't even include the list of messages and who the gifts were from in the order. TERRIBLE. Do not use it.

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“think twice!”

★☆☆☆☆

written by on 25/07/2014

Both my children had their gift list through John Lews. One disaster is unfortunate - but two is incompetence. Items are not set aside when bought but 'picked' just before delivery. Consequently in summer things can become 'out of stock' due to sales. Numerous items were missing on delivery or unavailable for my daughter and three of the five boxes of gifts went missing for my son. No plausible explanation was given.

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