Fair warning!
Dear Sir,
I have been a customer of the Carphone Warehouse for nigh on 5 years now. I would go so far as to wonder if I was not the very-definition of a valued customer. Being that I have always had the top models of phone, taken the insurance, various headsets, Got in Talk Talk at home and been eying up your broadband offer. I have even been so far as to been taken down the pub by your head-office IT manager on a visit to your offices a few years ago. My wife also uses your services in the same way and whenever I am asked for a recommendation, which is often due to my job as a technical guru type, I have in the past been very complementary of your company and especially the staff in the Liverpool St branch.
However, all this good will has been torn to shreds by the events I am about to recount. By the way, all my calls to my work number (about half of the ones in this tale) are recorded and I am quite prepared to dig them out of the system if I have to.
Firstly, I get a call from Mr French, saying would I like to upgrade as I have had my nokia 9500 for ages? Sure, can I have a N80 please? No, they are not out yet and frankly, he says, go for the N70 etc etc. Fine. I am told that I will take delivery of the phone by “Friday at the latest, probably tomorrow”. If I had known at this point that he meant “Friday after the next ice age” then I wouldn’t have bothered. One thing, I ask, I need the phone delivered to my work address not my home address. This is because I work for a living and delivery people leave a little card saying that my item is awaiting me in Barking.
Now, I don’t suppose you are acquainted with the journey from my house in Buckhurst Hill to the far flung depots in Barking, but frankly it is quicker and simpler to get to Bangladesh on a pogo stick and thus I have all packages delivered to work in central London. This is very simple and not something that should be able to be cocked up.
I guess at this point I am beginning to sound like umpteen letters of complaint you must receive, whingeing about a slightly late phone delivery, but stick with me my story gets better.
Of course, says Mr French. No problem. Friday comes and goes.
The phone does not arrive.
On Monday I ring him three times and eventually he calls back and admits that he hasn’t even ordered it. What? “Er, yeah”, he says, “I haven’t ordered it sorry, and oh look you cant have the N70 on that tariff anymore…er hang on… ok got one, you will get it tomorrow”. Fine, whatever, prat, I think and get on with my life.
The phone does not arrive.
On the next Friday I call him back again and am told that it should be with me by Monday at the very latest. Monday comes and of course:
The phone does not arrive.
I then get home that night to find the delivery note I was dreading. The silly sods have sent it to my home address after all. This is no good. I contact Mr. French but he ignores my calls. In desperation I contact the general number and after three passes to other people and 30 minutes on hold I get through to someone in “tracking” and she says “Ah yes. Ok, there you go, you will get it tomorrow without fail to your work address.” But, guess what?
The phone does not arrive.
Three days later I go on holiday for a week, without the 2MB camera that the N70 features and I am forced to take the snaps on my 9500’s rather weak lens. For shame! I come back to work on Monday the 15th of May and am frankly astonished that the:
The. Phone. STILL. Hasn’t. Arrived.
I call, and again wait on the line for half an hour. The lady tells me that the address I gave her doesn’t exist so they had tried to deliver it to my home address again. Now there has been a building at my work address since the 18th century. I get at least twenty bits of mail a day and I damn well know the address is valid in every possible way as we are an international bank not a PO Box or a knocking shop. Finally the lady “finds” the address and I am told that I will get the phone Tuesday “Without fail.”
The phone does not arrive.
So today I go into the store outside Liverpool St and complain. The guy puts me through to the call centre and I say that frankly I don’t want the N70 anymore. I have been waiting so long that the N80 is now out and I want that. I am told that it is tough and I have agreed to a contract. How can I have agreed to a contract when I haven’t received the goods!? Tough again, apparently. I suggest that perhaps since I have to recieve the phone (eventually) I can simply reject it and send it back and then I am told, listen to this it is classic, “You have had the service for longer than 7 days and you cant cancel after 7 days.”
I can’t cancel a fucking phone I haven’t even fucking received after a bloody month of being consistently bullshitted?
No.
Well, how about I use my all-singing-all-dancing CPW insurance I pay for that can get me out of a contract?
No. I have to wait 6 months before I can use that.
So this is the situation. I have paid for something I don’t have, been lied to again and again, been mucked around by all departments only to have some smug bloke simply tell me that I am totally stuck with it because you idiots cant deliver a god damn phone?
Yes, that about sums it up.
Frankly, it was at this point I started getting angry and so hung up on the tyke. The man in the shop said that he would have the phone delivered to them in the next few days and he will call me when it is in. Resigned to this awful fate I leave empty handed yet again.
So what are you going to do about it? Frankly I would first suggest that a rebuke/dunk into boiling oil/keel hauling/hanging for the highest yardarm in Plymouth docking yard is due to Mr French who obviously cares more about his commission than your customers.
Secondly, I think it is not too much to ask for you to sort out a Nokia N80 for me. Thereafter you can keep this mythical N70 and I have some suggestions as to what you can do with it.
Thirdly, you can WRITE to me and say sorry.
Finally, I hope that my tale of woe is somehow awakening for your policy makers, that you can ill afford to loose such dedicated customers as my wife and myself. After all, one of your competitors offered me an Xbox360 to sign up with them and I said “No! I am with the Carphone Warehouse.”
I certainly wouldn’t say that today.
Yours truly,
Basho & Cesca are traveling with:
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