Emily Maitlis slams electricals retailer AO after ‘depressing beyond belief’ online delivery experience

Online delivery can be a cruel mistress. Get it right and you’re the hero of the day, but mess up and you will pay the price in this social media obsessed age.

By way of example, yesterday Emily Maitlis, a British journalist, documentary filmmaker, and former newsreader for the BBC, took to Twitter to lambast online retailer AO for a poor customer experience.

“Please save yourself the heartache of ever dealing with @ao for electrical deliveries. No show. No delivery,” she said.

“For a fridge that they promised to install two weeks ago. - and confirmed with us four times over the phone on separate calls. Depressing beyond belief.”

Ouch.

AO’s customer service peeps responded to the tweet, asking Maitlis to DM them with order details.

They did not, however, respond to our request for comment.

Other people, meanwhile, took the chance to vent spleen about AO:

“Hi Emily - I have had the same issues. Eventually not refunding me and ignoring all of my tweets. I see they came back to you straight away,” said one.

Another commented: “Where's my fridge. Don't pretend you care. You don't give a shit. Why does your customer have to resort to twitter to get a response?”

Whilst one person asked: “Why do companies always do this - “send DM” blah blah blah? How about - just get it right first time?”

Ocula Boost

Earlier this year, we reported that AO was tapping Ocula Technologies’ Ocula Boost solution.

The AI platform addresses abandoned shopping carts by analysing sites to: identify actions to improve the customer experience, accessibility and performance; rank insights based on predicted value and effort; and ensure teams focus on the right areas.

“Ocula Boost is helping us interpret the data and insights to show that our investments in content and performance are improving the website and ultimately making shopping for electricals even easier for our customers,” said Clare Evans, Head of E-commerce at AO.

“Being selected by AO is testament to our commitment to build the world’s leading e-commerce insight platform. The partnership is a great fit and we are excited about what we can achieve together,” commented Thomas McKenna, CEO at Ocula.