Category Archives: Complaints

Complaints, Rants

Carphone Warehouse Manager tells woman ‘sweaty ears caused fault in phone’

18 Comments

I’ve had my problems with Carphone Warehouse in the past, as I mentioned here. I wasn’t expecting so many people however to come forward and post comments about they feel they have been ripped off by Carphone Warehouse.

My post has attracted over 80 comments, some from angry customers and some from angry Carphone Warehouse employees. This woman (Claire Robinson), a Carphone Warehouse employee, even pretended to be a customer to try and fool others into thinking Carphone Warehouse were a company that offered great customer service. The complaints against Carphone Warehouse on this website suggest otherwise.

I have now been contacted by another disgruntled Carphone Warehouse customer who has been told that her phone is faulty because of her husband’s sweaty ears!

Have a read of this response to a complaint email from Carphone Warehouse:

Dear Mr ******

Thank you for your email.

I’m sorry to hear that you are unhappy with the repair you have received and the decision that has been made to the fault with the handset.

When a mobile gets wet, whether it’s from precipitation, humidity or any type of liquid, it causes corrosion to the electronic circuits. This gets worse with time. Often, when the mobile dries out, it will work for a short period of time, anything from a day to several months, but eventually stops working for good.

A fault like this often happens when the mobile hasn’t been in obvious contact with liquids. This is because liquid damage can be caused by a variety of factors, and often without you being aware of it.

Important information

Liquid damage is something that is not covered by the manufacturer’s warranty. Even if you wanted to pay for us to repair your mobile, we won’t because we cannot guarantee how long the mobile will work for if it was damaged by a liquid. If you have insurance for your mobile, you should find out if you’re covered for liquid damage. If you don’t have insurance, then you may have to buy another mobile.

If you’d like another second opinion we would advise you to contact that manufacturer directly on 0845 045 5555. Taking all this into account we will not be able to action your request of repairing the handset free of charge.

I apologise I can not offer a more favourable response. If you need any more help please call our Customer Support team on 0870 087 0168, between 8 am and 8pm Monday – Friday, 9am – 8pm Saturday and 10am – 5pm Sunday.

Regards

Kelly Cole

The customer was told that the sweat from her husband’s ear could have been the cause of the fault to her phone, and they will not be repairing it for her.

So, be warned that if you buy a phone, answering it and holding it up to your ear could invalidate the warranty with Carphone Warehouse. This is almost as good as when Carphone Warehouse told me that their returns policy didn’t apply to phones.

Classic stuff.

Complaints, Rants

Laithwaites Complaints

11 Comments

This complaint with Laithwaites started as just a mild niggle, and one that I thought had been cleared up quickly and effectively by the Laithwaites customer services department… alas I was wrong.

I ordered a case of Spanish red wines before Christmas, and it arrived (via HDNL would you believe) in good time. I was impressed, and a little shocked. When I tried to open the fourth bottle, removing the foil cover, I found that the cork was damaged. There was only half a cork, it was on its side and the win in the bottle had been exposed to the elements since it had been bottled – it smelled very bad.

I phoned Laithwaites customer services team and was mildly surprised to find that they were willing to deal with it very quickly, offering to send me a £10 gift voucher for the bottle of wine. The chap on the phone said it would be with me by the end of the week.

A couple of weeks past, and several decent looking email offers from Laithwaites came and went while I was still waiting for my £10 voucher (which I would have used on one of the offers), to the point where I phoned them on January 5th to ask where my £10 voucher had gone.

Here is the phone call in full, together with the relevant section from the previous call in December where I WAS told that my voucher would be posted.

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Laithwaites Customer Service

In this call I am told once again that my compensation voucher would be posted to me, and yet, 10 days later, still no voucher.

To be honest, with Laithwaites customer services being so lackadaisical I’m not that keen on ordering from them again, even if this £10 voucher that I was promised before Christmas does eventually show up.

I paid for 13 bottles in December and have only been able to drink 12 – I still have the damaged bottle as evidence, or for emergencies should the alcohol levels in the house become dangerously low ;).

Has anyone else had any problems with Laithwaites, or had to make Laithwaites complaints?

Complaints, Humour, Internet, SEO

Carphone Warehouse employee lies

30 Comments

I’m pretty sure I’ve explained reputation management on this website before. It’s quite simple, it’s about making sure that your business or personal name features positive results in the search engines when someone searches for you.

That’s the basic idea at least. Yet most people don’t understand how this works, and they think that by visiting websites and forums that feature negative comments, and ‘pretending’ to be someone impartial who is posting a positive comment, they’ll redress the balance.

This is of course idiotic. The public aren’t that stupid and anyone who tries this will be found out for the moron that they are.

Take this comment by a ‘Carphone Warehouse customer’ for instance. The post itself ranks on the first page of Google for ‘Carphone Warehouse Complaints’, and has obviously been spotted by Carphone Warehouse themselves, who hoped to convince the 70+ people who had commented on the blog that Carphone Warehouse were in fact a good company, by pretending to be a customer.

Here is the comment in full:

Just thought I’d add, I’ve been a carphone warehouse customer for over 10 years now and have never had a bad experience with them. I have had to put 2 phones in for repair due to faults, I paid my deposit for “loan phone” and within a couple of weeks recieved my phone back working fine and had my deposit refunded within a reasonable time.

Happy customers don’t seem to get so passionate about their experience as unhappy buyers…

Surely we should be getting upset with the manufacturers issuing substandard goods onto the market, then washing their hands of said products, leaving the retailer to pick up the tab.

Sounds a little fishy doesn’t it?

The first line for example, “I’ve been a carphone warehouse customer for over 10 years now and have never had a bad experience with them” – that set the alarm bells ringing straight away. Anyone who claims to have been with Carphone Warehouse for 10 years and has never had a problem with them is clearly delusional, or not to be trusted.

The use of wording too seems a little odd, almost as though it came from a handbook “had my deposit refunded within a reasonable time”. What’s a reasonable time? Couldn’t they commit to a time?

The final paragraph that sided with the retailers clearly shows that this person works for a retailer. Nobody speaks like that otherwise.

Of course all of this is conjecture. I may be reading too much into this and this person may indeed be a genuine customer of Carphone Warehouse with 10 years of nothing but good experiences with them.

Then again, as this idiot used their REAL email address to post the comment, robinsc02@cpwplc.com, perhaps their comment should be taken with a HUGE pinch of salt.

C Robins of Carphone Warehouse; when you attempt to play reputation management online, pretending to be a customer of your own company, at least have the intelligence to NOT use your own business email address!

Muppet.

British Telecom, Complaints, CSA, Home Delivery Network, Rants

Watchdog has been ruined by the BBC

6 Comments

Those who know me will know that I love a good complaint. I’m renowned for it. Because of this, I’m a fan of BBC Watchdog. I often watch the show and get irate at the companies they’re exposing for their unethical practices and poor customer service.

Indeed, I like to perform my own exposes of companies, such as those that have often annoyed me like the CSA, BT and Direct Line, or companies that have the misfortune of having annoyed me just the once and lived to regret it forever, such as Home Delivery Network and Chester Council.

I’m a fan of Watchdog’s work, so much so that I even aided them with their quest to investigate Providence Properties (a company that didn’t annoy me, but I picked up the torch nonetheless).

However, this new series of Watchdog, which started last night, will have companies like Providence Properties popping the champagne corks. What was once a hard hitting consumer affairs show has been diluted into nothing more than a BBC version of Loose Women.

Did we need to see Anne Robinson and Gabby Roslin harping on about pushchairs? Did we have to watch a 10 minute video showing how many bags you can hang on the back of them before they topple over, despite even the voiceover admitting that the manufacturers tell you not to do it? And what purpose did strapping the buggies onto a bucking bronco and seeing how long it took to launch the doll from them actually serve?

None, none whatsoever.

They then complained about Virgin Media. Excellent, as a customer of Virgin Media I’ve had my share of complaints with them. However, complaining that Virgin Media make it difficult to sort out someone’s account after they’d died isn’t really anything to complain about. People would soon complain if it were made easy, then anyone could phone up and claim to be a relative, stating the account holder had died and they wanted all of the documents and account credit transferred to them.

Virgin Media acted responsibly.

I can’t believe I’m saying all of this, but it gets worse.

The report on sunbeds was completely redundant. It’s not illegal for under 18s to use them, so none of the health clubs were breaking the law. What’s the problem?

Just why has the show been merged with Rogue Traders? I’m not a fan of Rogue Traders because I believe the guy hosting it, Matt Allwright, is out of his depth, as he showed again. He’s in the perfect position to really get people’s back up yet seems to act like a petulant clown. If you want to see how to annoy people, read this website, it’s all there.

Matt Allwright followed some salesman from Craftmatic beds, claiming his technique of making three phone calls to the office was hard sell, and his claiming that the bed will make you look twenty years younger was unscrupulous. OK, if you believe that using a bed makes you look twenty years younger you deserve to be conned, and making several calls to the office to get ‘discounts’ for the client is a sales technique. It might not be pleasant, but salesman generally aren’t.

He hadn’t done anything wrong. Then when the Matt Allwright tried to crash the sales conference and was barred from entry he started acting like a child, ordering the man behind not to trap him in the door or it would be assault.

You’re not supposed to be getting worked up mate, they are!

He’s rubbish and the show has been ruined. Bring back Nicky Campbell and the decent format. If you want someone to do Rogue Traders properly, I’ll do it!

Complaints, Football, Internet

Sports Direct insults Hillsborough victims

2 Comments

You’d think that a company that sells sportswear and is owned by a Football chairman (Newcastle’s Mike Ashley) would know not to insult the Liverpool fans who died at Hillsborough in 1989.

You’d think, but you’d be wrong. Sports Direct (Sportsdirect.com) sold a shirt to a Manchester United fan (obviously) bearing the number 96, and the words YSB Not Enough.

  • 96 is the number of fans who died
  • YSB stands for ‘you scouse bastards’
  • Not Enough refers to how Man UTD fans wish more Liverpool fans had died

So why did Sports Direct print and sell this shirt? According to them, they didn’t know what it meant. The Man UTD fan put some photos of his new pride and joy on Facebook, which promptly got his account shut down and a score of complaints directed at Sports Direct, who have since apologised for selling the offensive shirt.

This does beg the question, just what were Sports Direct thinking? They’ve certainly created some publicity for themselves online, but it’s probably not what they would have wanted.

Complaints

Domino’s Pizza in Cheadle Hulme apologise for mistake

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Earlier this year I ordered some food from Domino’s Pizza in Cheadle Hulme and when the pizza arrived they tried to charge me more than the price quoted on the website. I phoned them back up while the delivery guy stood in the doorway and explained how the price on their website was different from the one they tried to charge me.

Even when the delivery guy himself took the phone and explained how the price on their website was indeed different (as they didn’t believe me) they still wouldn’t do anything about it.

Even the manager refused to honour the price when I spoke to him.

Well I’m pleased to say that the new manager of Domino’s Pizza in Cheadle Hulme, Manchester, has seen fit to make amends for the actions of the former manager. He found this post about the incident and contacted me through the website and by telephone to apologise.

All’s well that ends well with Domino’s Pizza, and thanks to Chris Nolan for quality customer service.

Complaints

HDNL Website gone down

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If you’ve tried to access Home Delivery Network’s website this morning to complain about their shoddy service you’ll have noticed that the website is down, as you can see below. Presumably the website has crashed under the weight of customers wanting to complain about the lack of delivery of their HDNL parcels, or perhaps the fact that their parcels have arrived damaged.

Maybe even they’ve gone bust? Who knows. If you are looking to complain to Home Delivery Network then you can reach them on the following phone number, a phone number that you won’t find on their website.

Home Delivery Network: 08448 111 816

Tell them I sent you!

hdnl

Complaints

Carphone Warehouse York

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Looking for the Carphone Warehouse in York? Thought as much, you might want to read this review of their service before you continue and perhaps revise your intentions to shop there.

Over a year ago I wrote a post about how Carphone Warehouse in Newport had tried to rip me off, before finally admitting they were wrong after I went to their complaints department.

The post has obviously struck a chord with other dissatisfied Carphone Warehouse customers leaving over 40 comments about their experiences with shoddy service from the company.

Today I received a comment on the post with one of the worst examples of poor service from Carphone Warehouse that I have ever read, and wanted to make sure that everyone had a chance to read it. The original comment can be read here, on the Carphone Warehouse Complaints post, and here it is in full from Jayne.

Carphone Warehouse in York most certainly have not heard of Customer Service!

I bought a PAYG mobile on 26th June for my daughters birthday on 3rd July – she loved it but the screen kept ‘flickering’ so I recharged it fully on 4th July. When I turned it back on there were lines on the screen so I took it back to CPW.

They told me that I had dropped the phone and it was not covered under warranty. I most certainly did not drop the phone! it was not out of my sight for the 24 hours it was in use. I then saw a Manager who said that I may not have dropped the phone but that it had been damaged and was not covered. There was no damage to the casing or the outside of the phone so I am intrigued as to how he ‘knows’ that I damaged the phone.

He would not budge, he would not agree to repair or replace the phone and when I pointed out that our family had 4 phones currently and always bought our phones from CPW but wouldnt in the future, he accused me of trying to blackmail him!

Anyway, I have contacted Trading Standards and have written a letter to CPW quoting the Sale of Goods Act 1979 asking for a full refund (I bought a phone elsewhere when they wouldnt help) – – fingers crossed I will get a refund but I will not take this lying down!

CPW – for the sake of £50 you have lost at least 4 future customers and probably many more as I tell everyone I know what happened and will continue to tell people until I am a satisfied customer (i.e. have my £50 back)