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Katie Morley Investigates Your consumer champion Pets at Home string of sausages toy nearly killed my dog

QFly, our three- year- old rescue Collie dog, had to have emergency surgery after ingesting two sharp foreign objects. They were in danger of perforating her bowel and stomach, and ultimately killing her.

The operation cost £2,139, an eyewatering sum of money for us, but without it she would have died a slow and painful death and we couldn’t let her suffer.

When the objects were removed we decided to keep them. The material was like nothing we or the vets had ever seen before. It looked like synthetic wood. It took a couple of months, but we finally realised that they were part of a plastic string- ofsausages dog toy that we had bought from Pets at Home.

We contacted Pets at Home to let it know about the incident. It asked for photographs and a report from the vets, both of which we provided. We also said we had kept the pieces for customer services to collect and inspect, but it didn’t seem interested in doing this.

Later Pets at Home confirmed that the sharp items in the pictures were indeed pieces of the sausage toy. However, it said that as the toy had a warning label advising owners to “supervise when being played with”, Fly’s injuries weren’t its fault.

This seems to be a complete copout to me. Dog toys are commonly played with to the point of destruction, especially ones sold as “tug of war” games, which this one was.

Pets at Home has offered to pay 10pc of our vet’s bill as a “goodwill gesture”, but frankly I’m unsatisfied with this. What’s more, it is still selling these toys in all its stores and I worry it is only a matter of time before this happens again to another dog.

– GO, Stockton-on-Tees

A

You say you did supervise play with this dog toy and as soon as you noticed the string of sausages had fallen apart you threw it in the bin. Unfortunately this wasn’t enough to stop your dog nearly dying as a result of ingesting a piece of it.

Horrifyingly, the composition of the plastic changed completely upon contact with your dog’s stomach acid, causing it to turn into a very hard, sharp and potentially lethal object.

So how can Pets at Home claim this toy is safe for dogs to play with? Well, it appears to be hiding behind an on-pack warning stating owners must supervise play. This essentially allows it to shift blame on to owners for not keeping an eye in the event that something goes wrong.

However, I don’t think this is good enough. In the real world, dog owners have busy lives with children screaming, doorbells ringing and work to attend to. It only took a split second for your dog to eat a piece of this sausage toy, meaning other dogs are surely vulnerable too. Despite the warning, it is impractical to expect a dog owner to watch their dog perfectly 100pc of the time. They would be better off not buying the toy in the first place.

Judging by Pets at Home’s online reviews, it seems a number of other shoppers are in agreement with this. Several comments below the listing for the toy on its website paint a rather worrying picture. It also appears that Fly isn’t the only dog to have been hospitalised after playing with it.

One customer said: “This toy was destroyed immediately and our fivemonth- old golden retriever ended up swallowing a sausage whole before we could get it off him. [ We had] a very expensive and traumatic trip to the vet because of this toy. Would not recommend at all, please buy something more sturdy to avoid the heartbreak.”

Another read: “So dangerous, thought this would be the perfect little toy for my dachshund puppy. Within a few minutes we had realised she’d bitten one of the noses off, threw it in the bin straight away.”

And another read: “Five-month- old cavapoo managed to bite the nose off ( I had to fish it out of the back of her mouth) and she managed to rip the rope apart easily. Not worth the risk or price for a few minutes of play.”

When I asked Pets at Home about this it said it had sold 150,000 of these sausage toys in the past year, with only “a small number” of complaints. It said it was not concerned over the wider safety of the toy and would not be issuing a product recall or safety notice. However, it has agreed, as a gesture of goodwill, to fully cover your £2,139 vet’s bill. Although this has come as a huge relief to you personally, concerns remain about this toy in general.

A Pets at Home spokesman said: “We have strict quality and safety protocols in place and all the products we stock meet required safety standards. Any complaints are looked into in detail and further investigations carried out if necessary, including in connection to quality, safety and customer messaging.

“Following an internal review, the business did not identify any quality issues with this product.”

I ordered a double bed from Swoon Editions on July 14 with an esti

New bed never arrived – then Swoon tried to double the price Q

mated delivery time of between one and two weeks. It was on sale at the time at a price of £ 349, with a £ 30 delivery charge, bringing the total to £379.

After seven weeks two deliveries were scheduled, but both were cancelled at the last minute. I was really annoyed as I had arranged to be off work and at home to receive them. Swoon sent me a message saying that, owing to an error with its stock, it would no longer be able to fulfil the order. It offered me the choice of using the money I had paid towards an alternative item or a refund with an offer of 15pc off a future order.

I decided to visit its website again and noticed the bed was still for sale, but with delivery in March 2023. However, it was no longer discounted in the sale and now cost £699. I told Swoon I would be prepared to wait until March for the bed as long as it could honour the original price so that I would still get what I had originally paid for, albeit seven months late.

Swoon took some time to consider this but in the end it said that, owing to the price difference, it would not be possible. Now it has offered me 20pc off a future purchase as a gesture of goodwill.

This doesn’t seem like great customer service to me. Can you help?

– MD, via email

A

Far from great, the customer service you received was utterly atrocious. That said, there is a rule in consumer law that allows retailers to retract prices that have been advertised erroneously. Clearly this wasn’t the case here, as Swoon tried twice to deliver the bed And not only had you paid for it, you had also taken two days out of the office to wait in for it.

On top of these failed deliveries, it really was the last straw to expect you to pay nearly twice as much for the bed as you had originally expected, as well as waiting until March to receive it.

I suspect Swoon may have been having issues with stock, which is why the bed now has such a long wait time. Although this is due to its supply chain, which may be outside its control, the way it handles disappointed customers like you is very much within its gift to get right and it really should have done better.

When I asked Swoon to reassess your case it said: “We never want to put our customers in a position where they feel we have let them down, so we are keen to turn this experience around for the customer.”

Swoon has now issued a replacement order at no extra cost to you and has also processed a 20pc refund to make up for the fact you’ll now have to wait several months to receive it. You are happy with this, although understandably you remain bitter about the failed deliveries.

Swoon said it had also “given feedback to its care team” so it could work towards giving customers a better experience.

I should think so too.

Money

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2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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