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On January 2 this year, my mother and I had gone into M&S to obtain a refund. The customer services department is based on the second floor of the branch.

My mother has a heart problem, osteoporosis and also has difficulty walking due to her breaking her hip six years ago.

We found that the customer lift had a piece of paper above it stating that the lift was out of order and no notice was displayed about using the staff lift instead.

Marks & Spencer in Worthing. Picture: Google Maps

We were also unaware that M&S had its own stairs to the second floor.

We tried the lift in the food hall, only to discover that it was also non-operational.

We then thought of using the Grafton car park stairs, which backs onto the M&S store, which we hoped would ascend to a door leading to customer services.

Many people passed us by on the stairs, including a partially sighted gentleman with his daughter and an elderly lady with a hip problem, all looking for customer services, too!

My mother started to get very out of breath and could no longer continue to climb the stairs upwards.

A lady with a newly bought suitcase, behind us on the stairwell, could see that my mother was struggling badly and told us that she was on level four of the car park and kindly offered to give us a lift to the correct level, where she thought the customer services department was based.

We climbed into her red Mini car and she took us back down to level two, showed us a door and told us customer services must be through it.

We thanked the lady profusely for her kindness and help.

The lady would only give her name as ‘Jane’. I didn’t think to get her car registration or address, as I was so concerned about my mother. Upon entering the door and descending a flight of steps, we found ourselves back in the food hall!

We decided that there was only one option left, and that was to use the moving escalator. My mother went first, promptly lost her footing, and fell backwards.

Luckily, I grabbed her and managed to stop her falling, but I couldn’t pull her off the moving escalator.

We shouted for help, and an elderly gentleman came to our aid, and literally pulled my mother off the escalator. He was so kind, and when we explained our predicament, he even offered to give my mother a piggy-back, back up the escalator!

He checked, that we were both okay, and no injuries, and preceded to find an M&S assistant to help us. As we were both badly shaken up, again, we did not have a chance to get this gentleman’s name. We are so immensely grateful to this kindly gentleman for coming to our aid.

He literally prevented my mother from having a tragic accident, whereby she could so easily have broken her back, or a limb, and ended up in hospital.

The assistant told us that the staff lift was working, and we could have, in fact, used it.

We explained to her that there was nothing to tell us that at all, so she took us to the staff lift.

The assistant then decided to try the customer lift on the way to the staff lift, and to our complete disbelief, it was back working!

We took the customer lift and I complained to the customer services section head, whereby she was most apologetic about M&S failing us and offered both of us a free hot drink on M&S as a way of an apology, of which we both accepted.

We cannot thank ‘Jane’, and the kind-hearted gentleman who came to our rescue enough, on that fateful day, for their deep compassion.

We hope that they recognise themselves through this letter.

They really are good Samaritans, the kindest of strangers, and we would even go so far, to call them both angels! Thanking you so very much, for what you both did.

Mrs. W. Bavastock-Hampshire

Exmoor Drive

Salvington

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Good Samaritans at Worthing Marks & Spencer