Mulberry Bush Ltd Reviews 

Antwoord van Mulberry Bush Ltd

7 jan 2016

Dear Mr Johnson,

Thank you for your comments. Let me provide our side of the story!

We literally sold thousands of Digibirds in the run up to Christmas and, no word of a lie, you were the only customer who didn’t get a whistle with the item. I heard the conversations you had with my colleagues and on no occasion did anyone ever say “some of them don’t come with a whistle”. That is totally not true – all of them do come with whistles and none of my staff have never said otherwise to any customers.

We were surprised that yours had arrived without a whistle but of course sometimes mistakes can happen in factories so naturally we offered to send a replacement whistle. We were keen to get this resolved for you so sent this item first class the very same day, to ensure the issue was resolved for you in plenty of time for Christmas.

What we did say was that Digibirds, in our experience, actually work better when you whistle into it yourself rather than using the whistle device. Clearly the whistle device should be there with the Digibird however, which is why we sent it again to you.

So we did send you a replacement whistle – which I can only presume got lost in the post on its way to you.

When you rang in the New Year we offered you a full refund. The particular Digibird you ordered is sold out and we don’t have any more spare whistles. This offer is still available for you. As we mentioned on the phone, simply return the Digibird to us in the condition you received it and we will give you a full refund. I believe we offered you our Freepost returns too so there will be no returns postage for you to pay. Give us a call and we can provide you with the Freepost details once again if you wish

I have to say I find it disappointing however that you have resorted to posting on TrustPilot when we provided the service we did for you and offered the refund to you as we did. I’m really not sure what else we could do or have done. There is no pleasing everyone I suppose!

Best wishes
Paul Copeland, Director
Mulberry Bush

Antwoord van Mulberry Bush Ltd

19 nov 2015

Dear Ms Harrison, it is very clearly stated on our website and in our catalogue that the farm animals and farmer family are not included with the Oldfield Farm, but can be bought separately. See: http://www.mulberrybush.co.uk/oldfield-farm and page 10 of our current catalogue. As we state on the website and in our catalogue, you are also able to buy the farm, the animals and the family as a package, saving money on the combined price of these items, but this is presumably not what you ordered. As such we believe your complaint is unjust and unfair, and that neither our website nor our catalogue are in anyway misleading on this matter. Please do call us on 01403 790796 if we can be of any further assistance. Best wishes, Mulberry Bush

Antwoord van Mulberry Bush Ltd

27 aug 2015

We were disappointed to see this review as, perhaps not unsurprisingly, it does not reflect our version of events with this customer.

We are always happy to give full refunds for items returned to us, but we do not think it unreasonable that we should ask for the item to be returned to us first. What company wouldn’t?

The product this customer ordered is a name train - carriages that have letters on that can spell out a child's name. They are supplied to us in assorted colours, and we therefore sell them in assorted colours. Our warehouse staff do try to ensure that a name looks both varied and attractive, but we can only supply those colours that we have in stock.

In this case the customer complained that within the boy’s name we had sent her there were two lilac letters - the suggestion being that this was an inappropriate colour for a boy. Unfortunately in this age of gender equality in toys it is impossible for us to know whether our customers subscribe to that view or, as it transpires in this case, are more traditional. We certainly could not undertake to contact all purchasers of this product to discuss the different colour of each letter that might be available, as this customer subsequently suggested we should.

Both members of our team who talked to this customer attempted to stress that we would be very pleased to replace the letters with alternatives if she would return them to us, or indeed give a refund for them. Unfortunately the customer felt that in view of the low cost of the items - £2.25 each - we should simply write them off and refund her, rather than her have to visit a post office to return them.

She also objected to our Postage and Packing charge in the first instance, but we believe our charges to be in line with most other online retailers. We know that many customers are unaware that the P & P charge also includes VAT, which cannot be avoided for British VAT registered companies. As this customer points out herself, the basic cost of postage is surprisingly expensive, which is why our P & P charges, net of VAT, are as close as possible to our actual cost, indeed we make a loss on the P & P on almost all orders.

The issue of our pricing of this product is a very different matter however. Hubbards Toy Cupboard do indeed currently have the same item at 99p but they are within their "Big Sale" category, and, somewhat misleadingly we might suggest, they do not mention the original price. It is impossible for us to compete on price with any business that is selling off stock, and Hubbards do, currently, seem to have their fair share of sale items and items that are unavailable. We cannot know of course why a competitor is selling off stock at cost or less.

Although this customer claimed our price was high compared with other online retailers our own checks online (which we do regularly in any event) show that we are about 10% cheaper than many, and 10% cheaper than the manufacturers themselves, who have their own retail site where the price is £2.49.

We must also express our opinion that it is disappointing that TrustPilot's view of a business can be so heavily skewed by poor reviews. Mulberry Bush have been selling children's toys and gifts for nearly 20 years and whilst, in that time, we have had the inevitable small number of complaints – which we always try our level best to resolve to our customers’ satisfaction – they are vastly outweighed by the number of compliments, and by the number of returning customers. We do not currently subscribe to TrustPilot and so have no means of encouraging reviews on this site, but we assure all potential customers, especially those who may be having second thoughts as a result of this review, that they can see numerous unsolicited good reviews and commendations on our own website and we have many more in letter form from our very many happy customers.

Jonathan Copeland
Managing Director
Mulberry Bush Ltd

Antwoord van Mulberry Bush Ltd

15 okt 2013

We felt we wanted to respond to this criticism. Yes - we were a day or so later than we would have wished in sending this order, as we were moving into larger premises that week. However, during this move we continued to despatch orders daily and gave priority to those needed urgently for a birthday etc – those we were aware of – and we soon cleared our small backlog.

Having ordered on our website on the Monday evening our normal service would be to despatch on the Thursday morning. On this occasion it was sent a day later, on the Friday. The customer called us after 4.00 p.m on that Friday, by which time her order had already left us. She would not accept that by that time there was no possibility of our getting it to her by the following morning as it was already in the hands of Royal Mail and a second despatch would have arrived no quicker.

We do ask on our website for customers to let us know if an order is required for a birthday, and we do all we can to make sure it arrives in time, as we do not wish to disappoint anyone, and last week we arranged urgent despatch for other satisfied customers who had informed us of their deadlines.

I can guarantee that no member of our staff was rude - unless asking whether we might be allowed to speak is classed as rudeness. I heard our end of the conversation with two of our people as it was escalated and I spoke to and apologised to the customer personally and I know that all at our end of the phone, at least, retained our calmness whilst explaining the situation.

Jonathan Copeland
Managing Director
Mulberry Bush Ltd