About four or five times a year, I redeem Flybuys points for a reward. So far this year I've got a barbecue, some nice Sony noise-cancelling headphones, a Blunt umbrella,and a Dyson hair dryer for the missus. The headphones I picked up myself from Noel Leeming, everything else was delivered in less than ten days.

Until now. I know we live in strange times and Covid has affected all sorts of things, but...

07 November
I redeemed 1,125 points for a reward. During redemption there was a message saying that there may be some delays and delivery should be within "8 working days".

17 November
Eight working day have elapsed and nothing has arrived. I try phoning the 0800 number and hang up after waiting 20 minutes. I send a polite email asking if they can (1) confirm whether the item has been dispatched, (2) provide an estimated delivery date, and (3) whether they have tracking numbers for their deliveries.    

20 November
I get a reply saying "our rewards team are on the case". It doesn't answer any of my three direct questions. Instead it lists my delivery address and asks me to confirm whether it's correct. I reply immediately and tell them it is.

26 November
Fifteen working days since redeeming my points and I haven't had any further communication. I send another reasonably polite email (1) asking for an update, and (2) can they confirm if it has been dispatched yet.

28 November
I get a reply, again completely ignoring my questions, and again asking me to confirm my delivery address. My reply is quite terse this time, but I manually type in my delivery address. All this address confirmation makes me think maybe the item has been sent but got lost in transit, so again I ask if they can confirm if it has been dispatched.

29 November (today)
I receive this reply:
"I'm afraid, we're sorry to say, the reward is out of stock and we’re unable to confirm when it will be available again, therefore we've had to remove it from our website. As soon as stock arrives, your reward will be packed and sent out to you. If you’d rather not wait, we’d, of course, be happy to refund your points so you can choose something else instead."

I'd expect a website to show whether an item is in stock or not, but I guess items on the Flybuys store come from a number of different suppliers, so understand perhaps the information isn't immediately available. But surely they know whether an item has been dispatched or not? Then, to have their customer service people completely ignore simple direct questions and just deploy what seem like stalling tactics. It all seems very poor. I don't remember them ever being like this before, after being a member for 21 years.