Bought phone online from eGlobalCentral, where do I stand?

cefh17

Hi,

I bought a phone (< 600) in November 2015 from eGlobalCentral EU (phone dispatched from the UK) and all was fine until it stopped working all of a sudden. Having read online on various fora the particular first batch phone that I bought is prone to a bootloop issue rendering the phone unusable should it occur.

I opened an RMA with the retailer and they eventually accepted it and I sent it off by registered mail to their facility in Surrey. A week after they signed for the parcel (18th August) I got an e-mail saying they had received it and would begin work soon. A week passed and I asked when I can expect it and they said a couple of weeks. It's now 19th Sept and after a few more emails in fairly unstructured English they're still fobbing me off saying it's still under repair and we'll get in touch when we can.

What I'm wondering is, what can I do if a retailer is taking an unacceptable length of time to carry out a repair on a product? Also, if the phone does come back and the same fault re-occurs outside of the 1 year warranty provided by the retailer is there EU legislation to define reasonable life spans of products under which they're still liable for refund/repair/replacement?

Thanks in advance.

johndoe99

have you left a review here:

https://ie.trustpilot.com/review/eglobalcentral.co.uk

they seems to answer the negative reviews.

From the reviews it seems like a pretty bad site.

cefh17

Posted one there, thanks for recommending the site, hopefully they take the finger out!

cefh17

Nearly 10 days later and there's no update on either the main website itself or trustpilot, what a load of chancers.. Does anyone know if there are an EU laws or guidelines for what's an acceptable time frame for a product repair? Kind of starting to feel like scaring them quoting legislation is the only way to hurry them up

dudara

AFAIK the only requirement is that the repair should take a reasonable amount of time. In this case, I would be of the opinion that more than a reasonable amount of time has elapsed.

Looking for EU legislation to guide you can be tricky, as not all countries have enacted all EU directives. So I recommend contacting the European Consumer Centre Ireland for more information.

cefh17

Thank you for the reply Dudara. I'd have bit my tongue at the 3-4 week estimate they originally provided but it's pushing it's 7th week now with essentially no change/update. Will take a look at that now

Kings Inns or bust

You can open a case through the european small claims procedure, pop along to your local District Court and see if they can be of any assistance. It would be great if you could open a case in England but I have no idea of the jurisdictional issues when purchasing from Ireland. I don't know if you have a choice of venue. The resource suggested by Dudara may also assist you there.

Court papers landing on the door mat have a tendency to focus the mind and in fact some companies have some very interesting internal procedures.

cefh17

Thanks for the reply Kings Inn,

I got in touch with the agency Dudara linked and they were shockingly quick to get back. After explaining the case and where I had bought it from they're saying that despite the website asbeing branded as EU and the phone itself being shipped from the EU that they're T+C have them down as being Hong Kong excluding them essentially. I figured given that the repair centre/shipping centre is in the UK that they'd still have to play by EU rules but I'm not so sure now.

Chancers hey!