MORRISONS supermarket company has taken six months to reimburse an elderly customer from Horsell for a payment discrepancy in a home delivery.

The company gave Derek Wooton £50, double the amount owed. But he has received no formal apology for the delay and the aggravation he and his neighbour suffered in trying to get a settlement.

Mr Wooton, an 89-year-old retired local authority surveyor, was called last week by a Morrisons manager who offered vouchers to reimburse an overpayment he made at the beginning of August.

“I turned down the vouchers and asked for cash, as I’m not shopping with Morrisons any more and have changed my delivery company,” said Mr Wooton. “Somebody just turned up in a car with £50 in an envelope. There was no letter with it, just the cash.”

The call to Mr Wooton came 
after the News & Mail asked a public relations firm that promotes Morrisons products to ask the company to settle the problem. Our emails and calls over more than a month to the supermarket giant’s media relations office were not answered.

Mr Wooton had received a home delivery of goods that were apparently for a different customer on 5 August. He paid £47.12 by card on the doorstep and then found that there were 14 items instead of the 26 he had ordered.

He calculated that he had paid £24.52 too much, for items he did not receive.

Mr Wooton reported the overpayment to Morrisons customer services and called them six more times over the next two weeks. He received unfulfilled promises of a call-back and a refund but no reimbursement was made.

His case was taken up by his neighbour, Sandra Kench, who contacted Morrisons head office and was advised to speak to customer services. “I made a very detailed complaint and they were able to see the history of the problem themselves,” she said.

“They apologised profusely, and it was clear that the manager of the Morrisons hub at Weybridge was ignoring all the reports.”

After making no progress with the complaint, Sandra reported it via the Morrisons corporate website.

“Random people replied, one acknowledging it was poor service, promising they would phone Derek, but the call never materialised. Derek is a lovely person, and not the kind of person to be rude or unfriendly, so there is no excuse for the way he was treated.”

Frustrated by the lack of 
action from Morrisons more than three months after the overpayment, Sandra contacted the News & Mail at the beginning of November.

With no response from the media relations department, we asked the PR agency to press Morrisons to reimburse the overpayment. The agency agreed to do that and Mr Wooton received his £50 on Wednesday last week.

Sandra told us: “I want to pass on my appreciation to you for chasing up Morrisons. Sadly, there was no apology forthcoming at any time during his discussions with them, which would have been a nice and appropriate gesture.

“It was great that you managed to intervene on Derek’s behalf and get some action taken.”