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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Rebecca Smithers

Milk & More deliveries turn sour

A Milk & More delivery van.
A bumpy ride for Milk & More’s popular deliveries. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

My wife and I have been customers of the local milkman for nearly 35 years, starting with United Dairies, then Unigate and now Milk & More – the UK doorstep delivery service for milk and selected groceries. But we are close to ending this due to extreme incompetence.

We have found it difficult to order goods and change our regular order because its new website keeps crashing. For the first time, it recently suspended a delivery.

We had an email on Sunday evening saying it was not coming – we assume because of (not very deep) snow. But, having paid £17 in advance, we are now finding it difficult to get this payment back.

We see from Trustpilot that we are not the only customers with problems. Müller (which now owns the company) appears to be destroying a service that has been efficient for many years. RS, Chobham, Surrey

Milk & More was bought by dairy giant Müller from Dairy Crest in December 2015 and has a national workforce of 1,100 milkmen and women (75% are franchisees) delivering more than 100m pints of milk in glass bottles every year.

The company may well have been a victim of its own success, as growing consumer concern about plastic waste has led to a surge in online customers – more than 12,000 so far this year. Its new website – involving the migration of 150,000 online customers from the old one – has piled on the pressure and upset many customers like you.

Chief executive Patrick Müller has recently apologised on Facebook. The company has also apologised to you and actioned your refund. But it came too late to keep your custom, as you did close your account. More broadly, it says: “We acknowledge that during the launch of the website we have experienced some technical issues, and to the customers affected we send our sincere apologies.”

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 terms and conditions

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