Next and the Case of the Melting Shirt – @nextofficial

I’ve been a Next Directory customer for years, I love their jeans especially, and I own a fair few shirts from there too! As I had a party to go I decided to order a nice new shirt, it wasn’t my usual style but I quite liked it. I wore it once, and then washed it and ironed it. The shirt was a ‘Soft Feel’ material so before sticking it under the iron I double checked the care label.

Here it is.

‘Iron on reverse’ – so I flipped the shirt inside out, turned the iron down to a low setting, and started ironing. I did the front right panel, then pulled it round to start doing the back, and there was a small tug of resistance as I moved the iron over. I quickly lifted it up to find a small section of the shirt had melted. I was pretty shocked, I re-read the care label. ‘Iron on reverse’ was all it said.

So here is what I was left with.

Brilliant.

Yesterday I tweeted about it and the @NextOfficial team gave me the Customer Services number to call. I gave them a bell this morning, the call was answered immediately (*good*). I was transferred to a lovely lady who listened to my complaint and said she’d put me on hold while she spoke to her Supervisor (fair enough). After a few minutes she came back and told me that it was odd that the first panel was fine and that it was only the back that had an issue. It is of course odd, but the shirt shouldn’t have melted AT ALL. Sensing my displeasure she put me on hold to speak to ‘Customer Relations’ who would know if they had had any other issues with this particular product.

When she came back, things started to go downhill rapidly..

Whilst she was still extremely nice, professional and polite, the general gist was as follows.

‘The shirt isn’t faulty, it’s user error.’

USER ERROR? I’m 30 years old.. I’ve ironed a lot of stuff in my time, I read the labels, I take my time ironing..

I KNOW HOW TO IRON!

I explained that the care label simply said ‘Iron on reverse’ , I ironed it at a low temperature too. If I’d have left the iron in one place (I didn’t), surely the damage would be more ‘iron-shaped’ rather than a patch.

So what am I left with? A £30 shirt with a hole in, and apparently NOTHING that I can do about it. Part 2