I ordered and paid in full for a mixed case of beer from Beer Hawk online. It promised three-day delivery, but I still didn’t have my beers 10 days later, and the order tracker showed that my case had not even left the warehouse. Replies from Beer Hawk are sporadic, but occasionally it responds to emails and promises that the beers will be sent out imminently, but they never are.
Looking at the most recent posts on Reviews.co.uk, there are a lot of other dissatisfied customers. I’ve also seen quite a lot of negative feedback on its Facebook page, but it gets deleted after a day or so. If only it were as quick dispatching the beer as it is deleting critical comments! When I check the status of my order it remains “pending”.
I have been an occasional Beer Hawk customer and was thinking about ordering more regularly, but I feel so let down by the poor service, I think, with regret, I will have to go elsewhere. ML, Winchester, Hants
Beer Hawk is a specialist beer retailer that claims it “hunts out” the world’s best beer from a range of more than 500 – but a quick internet search confirms that customers have had difficulties with delivery and customer service.
When we got in touch, someone answered the phone promptly and noted your details, which led to co-founder and director Chris France contacting us. He explained that the company has just moved premises and has also been upgrading its warehouse management system, which led to a small number of orders – including yours – being delayed for six days beyond normal lead times. But France admits it failed to respond quickly enough to your emails and also failed its own 24-hour response target. He said: “ML’s experience has been below the standards we expect of ourselves, and I have spoken to him offering a full refund and asked him to accept the beer he ordered for free as a token of our apology.
“Good customer service is a fundamental part of what we do as a business and we ask customers to independently review our service. Beer Hawk scores an average of 4.7 out of 5 and the additional investment in a new warehouse and systems is intended to drive that even higher. It is hugely frustrating that some customers have suffered a blip in the short term and I have apologised to ML personally.”
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