Asos purchase, and a warning about their customer service

I boycotted the Asos website for a few months, but I have decided to give it a try again because they now offer an Australian returns address.  Here is the (way too long) story of Asos's terrible customer service....

It all relates to a purchase made way back in the vintage era of January 2011. I ordered a lovely Vila one shoulder dress, and what arrived was a horrible Asos maxi dress. Completely incorrect item, and by then of course the dress I wanted had sold out. 

Asos instructed me to return the dress, and said they would reimburse me for return postage and refund me for the dress. I went to the post office, had the parcel weighed and took home a list of postage quotes. I emailed Asos listing the postage quotes for different types of postage and asked how they’d like me to send it. I noted that if I posted it seamail, it could take 3 months to arrive and was uninsured – I said I didn’t want to wait this long or take any chances for a refund, since the situation was their fault. Asos quickly replied, saying they would refund the postage and the amount for the dress upon receipt of proof of postage (not upon receiving the item). 

Perfect, that's fair, I thought. I wasted yet another lunch hour going to the post office and sending it off. I scanned and emailed the receipt to Asos, filling out their forms exactly as required.

What has followed was SIX MONTHS of emails back and forth between me and Asos, asking why I haven’t received my refund. Sometimes they wouldn’t reply, another time I had to resend my scanned postage receipt, every other time they would ask question which they would already know the answer to if they kept proper records, or I was promised that they would ‘look into the issue with the finance department’... Finally, after 4.5 months and 35 emails, I received a refund for the dress (but not postage). 

It took 1.5 further months and 10 further emails to get a refund for the postage.  I suppose because I had already spent so much time and expended so much effort in getting a refund for the dress, I was angry and wanted to get some sort of positive result to finally appease my anger. 

I don’t care if the first and second postage refund cheques supposedly went missing (this is what they eventually claimed), it doesn’t take this long to sort out a refund to which I’m entitled, and there’s no explanation for why it took me so long to be refunded for the dress when I was PROMISED that if I used the cheapest postage method, I would be refunded immediately upon providing proof of postage. I don't know anyone who would define "immediately" as 6 months later.

If they cannot be trusted to refund money rightfully owed and resolve a situation where the buyer is polite, rational and makes life easy for them by listing the events in detail in every detail sent (in recognition that a different staff member may deal with it every time), they certainly cannot be trusted with higher value items or problems. I am still very unhappy with Asos, and I will not be trusting them with much of my hard earned cash.

However, I could not go past these super cheap leather ballet flats when there was a voucher floating around for a further 20% off:

 $26 for a pair of genuine leather ballet flats? Yes please!