Why did Milk & More cancel my delivery for no reason?

It claimed there were problems with my credit card, but there was nothing wrong

It looks as though Milk & More (the milk delivery service) is up to its old tricks. It recently switched from collecting payments one month in arrears, to one week in advance. Overnight, I received a message saying it had “attempted to take your weekly payment on three occasions but unfortunately have been unable to. Your regular deliveries for this week, commencing Monday, 3 September, have been cancelled. We will try to take payment again ... for the following week’s orders. If you would still like to receive regular deliveries, simply sign in and ensure your payment details are correct.”

I know there is nothing wrong with my credit card. I tried using the link to “My Account”, but received the message “Cannot reach this page”. I then tried phoning “customer care” and was told my call would be answered “within 60 minutes”.

JR, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire

This is the latest technical glitch – which has affected a few thousand customers – from the company whose woes we have chronicled repeatedly. It was bought by dairy giant Müller from Dairy Crest in 2015 and has a national workforce of 1,100 delivering more than 100m pints of milk in glass bottles a year. Concern about plastic waste has led to a surge in demand while a new website, involving the migration of 150,000 online customers, has piled on the pressure.

It sent us this statement: “We would like to apologise to all customers who have been affected by us failing to take their payments, which unfortunately meant that deliveries on 3 September were affected. We fully understand the issue, have rectified it and are in the process of taking payments for this week’s orders, which will be delivered as usual. Any customer who didn’t receive their delivery on Monday will be fully refunded and we apologise for the inconvenience. We realise that on this occasion we have failed to meet our usual high standards of service. Please be assured that customers’ bank information is totally secure.” Again, a further plea for the company to get its act together.

We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions

Contributor

Rebecca Smithers

The GuardianTramp

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