My Carphone Warehouse Experience

exspes

I noticed a lot of people posting on their 'Samsung Wave' page on the bargain alerts page, felt it deserved it's own post here as i would like to highlight their appalling customer service for everyone.

I ordered a Samsung Tocca Ultra from them on the 29/12/10 On the 5th of January 2011 i received my phone. The packaging for the phone had been opened at either end of the box, i thought nothing of it and accepted it from the postman. I opened the outer packaging to see that the box for my phone was damaged (as in had been let fall or put under something heavy) and slightly wet, the security seals from samsung were broken and the phone had fingerprints all over the screen. I e-mailed customer services and was told that they had opened the package to 'check quality' (aka some yob working in carphone warehouse wanted to have a look see at the phone, i'd rather have samsungs quality control checks than carphone warehouse's any day) and that i could go to a Carphone Warehouse store to exchange, i replied that i did not want to go to a store, i had bought the phone online for a reason.

After a week of emails on the 12th of January it was agreed, after i had quoted the Sale of goods and Supply of services act 1980 and threatened to contact the National Consumer Agency, that someone would call me about delivering a replacement, i received a call on January 14th at which point i was asked me again to come into the store, i said "i want it delivered as per our original contract" and he got snippy with me saying 'how are we supposed to exchange your phone so?' i said "surely that's your job to work that out" then the caller (who never gave their name) said 'ill have to talk to management, let me call you back."

On January 29th i sent another email informing the company that i had not received that call. As of the 1st of February i had received no correspondence to this email and so contacted the National Consumer Agency who instructed me to send them a formal email detailing my experience and i did so. The NCA informed me i could take the matter to the small claims court and with all the emailed evidence that carphone warehouse had sent me (admitting they opened the phone, that the package was wet and not handled correctly) that i would most likely win. I recieved an email from carphone warehouse yesterday 02/02/11 in which no solution was given to me what so ever only that 'a report had been made to head office' i replied saying (and this is a quote from the email)

"Please read the previous emails before you reply to my latest one. As i stated as per our contract i was to have a phone delivered to my house. It was also to be delivered in a timely fashion, 3-5 working days, over a month is not 3-5 working days. As far as i'm concerned your company has borrowed money off me for the last month. Also, you say 'a complaint has been lodge with head office' firstly am i ever going to see the outcome of that complaint or hear from anyone in head office? secondly that doesn't in any way tell me what you intend about replacing my phone, wasting my time and getting a loan from me, if that money had be left in my bank account for the last month i would have been earning interest on it. So again, how do you intend to go ab out replacing my phone and compensating me for my wasted time and borrowing my money. Saying sorry 10 times in an email doesn't address any of those issues."

Today i received an email saying they had no stock to replace my phone and as such were refunding me the full amount of the phone and that i could keep the phone. Which suited me down to the ground because i now don't care if the phone breaks because i got it for free.

Now i'm sure many of you are thinking 'jesus, what they did wasn't that bad' but the reason i consistently pushed it so far was that i was constantly told that my objections were unfounded because they (like most companies) would have expected me to give up and do what they wanted me to until they eventually got sick of dealing with me and essentially told me to **** off in the nicest way possible.

Anyway, moral of the story, if you recently have been ****ed over by Carphone Warehouse, push the matter as far as you can and show these companies that us as their customers are the reason that they exist in the first place.