Boots, lifts and staff!!! Must read!

[tripchar]

Morning all,

Yesterday I went into Boots with my 9 week old son, I had him in his pushchair. I was intending to purchase some things for him and they were upstairs. Luckily (or not read on) they have a lift. So I queued for the lift...it took a while but it arrived, got in with two other mums and babies. This is where the trouble started....We went up to the first floor then the lift plummeted to Lower ground then back up to first, down to lower ground before jolting back up to the first floor, the doors finally opened after 5 mins. The babies were fine, one was laughing, one looked confused and mine was asleep thank god! Anyway, Im shaking like an idiot and we got out. We got a member of staff and told them what had just happened and she said " the lift is out of order"....we explained their were no signs. She said "wheer are the engineers? they must have walked away from the job and not replaced the signs!" She went to get help. othe two mums went off to shop but still no-one was stopping anyone travelling in the lift.

I could see two mums with pushchairs paying, so I stayed in front of the lift entrance to stop them. whilst this was happeneing the lift did the same thing again with another shopper inside (we had therefore not missed any out of order signs) she got out very shaken. I explained that someone was getting help but there seemed to be noone or nothing actually stopping people from going in apart from me. The girl at the till next to the lift overheard and looked over. The two mums with pushchairs had then finished paying and came over...I explained again and then told them what had happened in the lift. The girl at the till started to get shirty. She shouted " actually someone IS dealing with it" I yelled back at her "no-one is stopping anyone travelling in the lift, there should be a member of staff stopping people from getting in" the girl at the till continued with her attitude problem which was now being overheard by the other two mums. At this point I was still shakiing like a leaf and whilst being helpful and doing the staff's job for them I was getting abuse by the very ill mannered member of staff.

I was fuming...finally someone came and relived me of my duty, I then was maroon on the first floor and trying to get some assistance....I would be quite happy if my son could toddle down stairs or even if I had a buggy, but being nine weeks old he is still in a proper pram, as they have to lay flat at that age.

Anyway I saw a manager who gave me a voucher for £20 when I explained how angr I was and that I was going to get the items I wanted from mothercare, but once i had thought about this I realised that Boots had grossly neglected us by not making sure out of order signs were on the lift to stop people getting in. I was also given abuse whilst being helpfull to the staff who were busy at that time.....

I want to take this further!

My husband was spitting feather

[tripchar]

btw, sorry for bad spelling and grammer but i have my sleeping baby in one arm here hope it is unerstandable. Im not illiterate just not used to using one hand for typing!

[mortis]

i think your first port of call should be the health and safty executive. as allowing you to use this lift when it was out of order is definatly something they can deal with.

 

also not sure but if this lift is the only way for someone using a wheelchair to acces the higer/lower floors (which if it is the only way someone with a buggy could then would be a safe bet) then they are also in breach of the disability discrimination act as well

 

not sure if either of these would help you getting any kind of personal remedy to the situation however it would get the store/company in to a lot of trouble