I used to be a big fan of the Natural Collection, an online department store for all things green. You can shop there without a pricking conscience, and we used to do at least one big order for household stuff (eco-friendly washing powder and washing up liquid, recycled bin bags etc) a year, with occasional eco treats as well.

Then along came the Ethical Superstore, and we loved them too, with their different range of environmentally-friendly stuff including some awesome gadgets.

And then they merged, and although it may be a coincidence it seems as though that has scuppered the Natural Collection customer service team. I’m a big fan of customer service – I’ve even written an article on customer service for writers – having spent most of my working life involved in providing customer services.

There had been occasional problems with our Natural Collection orders, swiftly rectified. But when I placed my latest order, on June 11th, I didn’t forsee it becoming a complete nightmare. I ordered two replacement millett pillows (if you get an achey neck at night, I can recommend them, they’re very comfy) – an item we have ordered a couple of times in the past. But when they arrived on June 17th they were tiny, more like cushions than pillows and certainly too small to fill a standard pillow case – and this despite the hefty price tag of £26 each.

I emailed the customer service team and explained the above, and received an automated response. I waited for an answer from a human, and waited. I tried again on 25th June, and got another automated response but nothing more helpful. On 3rd July I got in touch with one of my Twitter contacts – who happens to be head of marketing for the Natural Collection – and queried whether their customer service system was actually working.

He chased it, and their response, on 4th July, was an email that made reference to a conversation I’d never had and invited me to return the pillows for a refund – at my expense. Another prod of the marketing guy elicited a phone call from a lady called Sarah, who thought we may have received the wrong pillows and arranged for them to be collected by courier. She said she would ring back and confirm when the courier was coming, but in the end she didn’t and he just turned up.

The next contact was a few days later, and was an automated despatch email – apparently two new pillows were on the way. They duly arrived, and we noticed that a certain amount of millett had leaked from one of them. We assumed the velcro fastening had come loose in transit, but on closer inspection it turns out that one of the pillows has a rip in it.

I can’t face going through the same palaver a second time and so I have decided to patch it up and just never order from the Natural Collection again. I told them on 4th July that they’d lost me as a customer, but they were convinced they could put it right. They didn’t, their loss. We’ll just buy our stuff from the Green Shopping catalogue instead.