I have always like the clothes made by 1647, which is a mail order company which caters for women of goddess proportions. It was there that I turned to when I needed some special clothes for a presentation a few months ago, when my sister generously offered to pay for them.

I will admit that we may have made life confusing for them, because although my sister signed up for and paid for the clothes, I was the one with the account and the email. However, the clothes didn't come and didn't come, I gave up and bought some elsewhere, and when the clothes eventually appeared, I refused to take delivery of them, knowing that I would be returning them all.

That was when the fun really started. Although the company accepted the return and credited my sister with the money, as they had charged her twice for the clothes they sent, the net effect was a charge on her credit card for the total amount. Emails passing to and from the company didn't help... they just stated and restated that they had provided a refund for the money. Obviously, no one could be bothered to look at the actual information and just checked the one transaction all the time.

I become so desperate to have them treat me like a real sentient human being and not like an idiot, that i even resorted to emailing Dawn French's agent, Dawn French being one of the owners of 1647. I knew it wasn't appropriate, but by that stage I didn't care, I just wanted to get my sister the money back for the clothing I hadn't seen and hadn't had.

My sister got to the point where she had to put it in the hands of her credit card company, and eventually she got a full refund for both transactions. I didn't get a whisper of an apology, and neither did she. In fact the tone throughout was that we were a nuisance.

The episode was over and I let it go, but was somewhat astomished when, as few months later, 1647 contacted me with an email to tell me that they had set me up a new account to coincide with the opening of their new shiny website. I didn't want an account with their new shiny website because, although I hanker after their clothing, I don't trust the company, and so I wrote unsubscribing. And wrote and demanded and then eventually contacted their host company to complain. The nice young man there unsubscribed and said that the problem was that the name of the account on the 1647 mailing list was my sister's name and not mine, and so they had therefore ignored my instructions to remove my email address from the list.

I felt much more antagonistic towards them, but I let it go. But now... now I am receiving spam email addressed to my sister. And the ONLY people who have her name attached to my email is 1647. Obviously, they have sold my details on. And I am not happy about that, not at ALL.

So, love the clothes, hate the company. You've been warned.