Milk & More delivery service recently sent letters to my elderly mother saying that if she didn’t switch to an online account it would no longer deliver to her from the end of September.
We are both customers and share a property (she lives in the annexe), albeit with separate entrances, bills and living quarters.
She would happily switch to online. However, the Milk & More website will not allow us to put two different accounts at this address, despite the fact it has, until now, been delivering one order to me and a separate one to her (paid separately with different customer accounts).
Its response is “no can do”, so now I order everything for both of us, then give her milk to her and she pays me back.
However, she wishes to keep her independence. And as her delivery has worked fine until now, I don’t understand why it can’t set it up to continue.
It seems as if it doesn’t care and is totally unwilling to find a solution, as well as not being bothered about losing two customers.
JD, Colchester
We contacted Milk & More which confirmed that it is operating an “online only” trial in your area. It says this is part of its drive to modernise the business and move towards a completely online system, offering what it believes will be a more efficient customer service with less costly administration.
In order for you and your mother to have different accounts, at what is effectively the same address, you would need to register the annexe as a separate address with the Post Office. This is because you need to be on its postal address file to be recognised for online deliveries.
Alternatively, you can carry on adding your mother’s order to your account but then indicate how you would like the delivery to be split between the house and annexe. This was apparently not explained to you by staff, for which Milk & More apologises.
It says: “We appreciate that some customers will be disappointed, and we are very sad if, as a result of this trial, we lose some customers. However, we believe that this is what we need to do to ensure the milkman and woman will be here for the generations to come.”
It is also providing details of alternative delivery companies.
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