Bharat S. M. Karavadra

Is the UK Becoming a Shop with No Service. (updated).

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007

Last year, I bought 2 contracts and phones from Carphone Warehouse. The deal for each contract included a cash back deal which I was happy with till now.

The contracts expired on 12th March 2007 and I am still getting bills. This year, I sent them a letter in January, an email in March and a fax in March to get a confirmation of the termination of the contracts. This has not arrived. All I get is technical excuses and bills and I haven’t had my last cash back and instead I got my cash back request returned in the post with an X next my name and address without any information. What the bloody hell is going on in the UK?

I have replied with about the termination of the contracts and I will soon be finding out about the cash back request.

I also got 2 contracts and phones using the 3 (Three) network through a reseller shop, again with a cash back deal. When I went to get my cash back processed, the shop was shut down. So I called 3 and they more or less said that it wasn’t their problem and to contact my local Trading Standards office. I will do this soon and update this article.

Anyway, back to the issue of “shop and no service” – I can see all the big brands now offering great products and services with easy access (shops, retailers, websites, email, credit card processing, etc) but after they have got your money, trying to get the same level of access to support and issues becomes a long drawn out process. You effectively have to become the customer service manager. So, what the hell do their customer service managers do, or where are they?

All I have seen is that when you need help after your money is taken, you get a bloody call centre somewhere else in the world (South Africa, India, etc) who simply read from their interactive help pages on the computer screen and they don’t listen to your problem because they have not been told to… they have to fit you into their form based support interface which takes ages and then they realise that you don’t fit into the computerised solution maker and pass you on to some other department where you have to repeat everything whilst paying for a national rate call. Then they say some “expert” will call you back and they never do and you have to chase them.

So the moral of this article (in my opinion) is that the UK big brands are becoming shops, moving their “after money grabbing” needs to cheaper countries and not supporting you when you need them.

I’m sure I’ll have more to had to this article soon.

From a very very pissed of Bharat !

Updated: 11 April 2007 at 15:18:
I’ve written to Carphone Warehouse and asked them why they have not processed my cash back requests and sent 1 of them back with an X. Let’s see what they have to say.

I went to see Birmingham Trading Standards this morning about my issue with M3 Phones and I was told to write about my complaint to M3 Phones, 3 (Three), and Birmingham Trading Standards themselves. I have done this. Again, Let’s see what they all have to say.