Small business with personal service
I needed a dishwasher delivered to a 3rd floor flat in Scotland during a pandemic. This led to endless searching: most companies wouldn't deliver to Scotland, would only leave the dishwasher on the street for me to carry up the stairs, or were out of stock in my preferred dishwasher. Thain met the delivery criteria: they did a two-man delivery that carried it up the stairs.
The website is half-baked: the warranty page says "awaiting" and the buy now pay later section says "tttttttttttttttttttttttttt". And some of the product details are broken like "etc. are cleaned residue-free" isn't a "wash programme." They offer to remove your old appliance for £10 but there isn't a way to pay for it on the website. This all said sketchy to me and I was worried about ordering. But I did anyway, getting a single-digit order number from mielescotland.com.
It's clear this is a relatively small company. Called their customer service to confirm delivery details and I did get transferred to another number because I wasn't in the Highlands. But on that number, the same person answers every time and he is one of the owners. He told me the £10 for taking away my old dishwasher could be paid to the delivery person.
They didn't have my particular dishwasher in stock but passed by order up to Miele. Then Miele sent me a text message saying it would be one-man delivery to the street! Call Miele customer service, they insist it's one-person delivery. And taking an old dishwasher is free, they'd never charge for that! The representative was flabbergasted at the idea of handing cash to the delivery person. Call Thain back and the owner says that call centre is in England and he guarantees the delivery will be two-man because he knows the delivery people. So I started taking odds about what would happen.
The delivery was in fact two people who carried it up the stairs. And they did take my old dishwasher. Oddly, they weren't expecting the £10 that Thain had told me to pay them for removing the dishwasher; they were prepared to take it for free. Their response was "wish they told us that."
The text from Miele had promised a second text with a two-hour delivery period sent the day before delivery. No such text arrived; I got a call 15 minutes before the dishwasher showed up.
The product page on their website for G7100 SC says "£100 Cashback" and the company owner explained this is a manufacturer rebate with Miele. However, I haven't been able to locate a current rebate programme from Miele for this model, only one that expired.
Overall, this is a relatively small business that's starting to do e-commerce but hasn't quite gotten their act together with a complete website. But the personal service on the phone followed by the delivery as promised made up for some glitches.