Buying a phone from Phones4U...

...in a word, don't. They don't seem to be terribly keen to have customers it seems.

I have just been on the phones4u site to buy a phone for my daughter for her birthday. Found the phone, filled in all the details, credit card, home address etc etc...except it seems I omitted to put the first line of my address into the form. Instead of telling me this however, pointing out the mistake and asking me to put in the missing details, phone4u took my order, charged my credit card and sent me a friendly email confirming the purchase:

"Thank you for placing your order with Phones 4u. It has now been received and is currently being processed. So sit back, relax, and we’ll take care of it from here"

Then, twenty minutes later the company emailed me again:

"During one of our standard checks, we hit a problem and could not finalise your order...If you ordered one of our Pay as You Go phones, we are unable to process your order further and it will be cancelled.
Thanks
Phones 4u"

No "please try again", no "here is the number to ring to order again", just the above.

So I rang the company. They told me what I had done so I asked why the internet ordering system didn't just refer me back and ask me to put in the missing details. "That's the way it is" was the gist of the answer. "Oh and by the way, you are now barred from buying a phone from us for 30 days. It's an anti-fraud measure".

So there you go - fail to fill in the phones4u online order form correctly and they won't tell you but they will cancel your order and ban you from buying another phone from them.

And they still took my money. And haven't given it back yet.

:T