Bag's Rants

Big business bad practises. Well a couple of them.

Anyway just before Christmas my main fridge just stopped dead. It was making a funny noise and then after a few days just stopped. No cooling and all it ended up being was a small pantry with a door light. As it was close to Christmas I decided it wasn't worth the hassle of fighting my way through the hordes looking for Xmas goods so I left it until the new year.

So anyway I decided to buy my Fridge from Currys. So off I trundled to the local store, I like looking at some things and wanted to check the sizes etc. I chose my model and paid for it all within about 10 minutes. Delivery was scheduled for the next weekend and off I went happy.

Have you ever noticed when you go out shopping for something that you always seem to have these big businesses like Currys with snazzy web pages and prices really low as in the usual white goods, low prices and rapid turnover and all available for delivery in just a few days. Delivery which you pay extra for naturally as anyone can squeeze a big fridge freezer into their eco bugs normally.

Next weekend, last weekend in real time, arrived and I was staying in anyway so I didn't bother about the delivery slot but barely into the delivery time of 0800 to 1700, at 0810 my machine was delivered and they were wheeling away the old one. Very efficiently and very nice they were also. Excellent service. So with the warning of leave it for a few hours the more the better ringing in my ears I left it until the next day before switching it on.

What a racket came out of it. Sounding like a bearing gone. But I remembered the guy said it may start noisy so I thought I'll leave it until it get to normal operating temperature then see what it was like. Well it ground on all night. I'd already decided I couldn't live with the noise by Sunday evening so I looked at the guarantee and got the contact details.

Mmmm. A enhanced rate number so forget that. They keep you hanging on with a very slow talker saying that if you want to start again press 9 and so on. Ah! An Email address so as it was Sunday I Emailed the support people with my problem.

Then I went a bit poorly and so didn't notice that time had passed with no response. Until last night. Not much better but actually though. Hey not heard anything from that useless lot yet.

So today I bit the bullet and phoned up the number for Currys support. Sure enough press this and say that and eventually I was put through to the manufacturer. I asked for a returns number only to be told they couldn't do that I had to go through the supplier, Currys. So off I went again through the route and I ended up the same place. Again to be told the same thing. try this number, a different one, Mmmm. Third time lucky. I almost immediately fell into the same loop and this time the computer had problems with my responses partly because of the words I was using and partly because I was coughing as my throat was being ripped apart.

So I went to their web page and found yet another number and this time it looked like there might be a real live boy at the end. It wasn't Pinocchio but it was a live un so I explained my problem. He said to get a returns number from the supplier and gave me a new number for that.

Progress. I phoned up the number and was immediately in the same loop as before and ended up with, possibly even, the same person I spoke to before who said that they don't give out return numbers to customers and I would have to contact Currys on the very first number I had tried.

I gave up. Tomorrow I'm going to visit the Currys store I bought it from and spread my germs around every one of their staff I can reach to cough and splutter over. Except for the manager. They can run the place on their own.

I'd ask you to click here and send an Email to Currys saying they have lousy service but it clearly doesn't get looked at and probably goes directly into the spam tray so I won't waste your time. You already invested way too much reading this far.

That's the matter with all the FMCG outlets it's all hunky dorey until you need to deviate from the simple pay and take process they love. Then you actually discover that that is where their strength is and everything is committed to that with nothing spare for those that fall outside the box.

posted by Bag @ 3:01 pm