Argos Card Troubles!!

purplepixi

I'll give everyone advanced warning on this - it's long!!

Any way, we had £604 outstanding on the Argos card, so we were going to use my husbands MBNA (intrest free) credit card to pay it off.

We went to do it online, but due to the nature of the number it didn't go through, so my husband phone them and did it over the phone, I told him to tell them the Argos account number as a reference, they said they didn't need it. I had to phone Argos to get the account number and sort code that was needed, and they transfured the balance.

Today (28 Dec), we got an argos bill, saying we were over due and now owed them £635. So I phone them and explained that the money was probabaly in cyber space somewhere and just needed allocating to our account. The guy I spoke to, asked if I could confirm the amount and the day it was paid, which I did, then he said that that wasn't enough and they needed proof that we made the payment, I asked if he could just take the number of the account it can from he said no. And told me I had to go to Argos and get them to fax the MBNA statement, where they would confirm it and transfur the money.

So off we went to Argos, a 20min drive, as we live in the country. We got there and cued for the customer services (christmas returns a night mare), and then I explained to the girl at the desk what I needed, she was a bit confused and went off to get the manager, the manager then said to me, that they didn't take payments in the store and couldn't help. I explained again what I needed, so she said, that basically I just needed to borrow their fax machine, which was pretty much it.

She phone Argos card services for me and then went off to fax the statement, then said that the bloke needed to talk to me.

So she put me on the phone (please remember at this point we are holding up the cue in Argos), the guy said that the statement wasn't sufficient, and he needed the account number and sort code from me as to find out where it went, I explained that I phone and asked for one, it wasn't specific to my account, and he said that they couldn't trace the money unless he had the account number, and it was totally my fault for not putting a reference number on the payment. I was by this point getting very stressed, and told him that he had better find out where it had gone, as it's not easy to come by that amount of money and we had had a 20 min drive to get to the store and I needed it sorted. He then started shouting at me saying he didn't like my tone of voice and that it was all my fault and I had cause the problem and he wouldn't be able to find the money until they had the account number. So I endned up in tears, I couldn't talk to him anymore so I put my husband on, at which point the manager had come round the other side of the desk to see if I was OK.

My husband told the guy that he didn't appreciate him upsetting me, and the guy blamed me again, and said that they have thousands of customers and if they all don't put references on the payments it would be chaos. But after some persuasion he said that it would be paid to our account.

Now can someone answer me this - how come it took the store manager, myself and my husband to have to argue with this bloke before he would look for this payment? I'm sure if they tried they could trace the day it was paid, the ammount and the card number it came from and put it on the right account.

But it took me breaking down into tears in Argos before anything would be done, and we are not yet even sure if its been sorted yet.

Needless to say if they don't sort it out, I'll be taking them to small claims court (maybe I should have them done for stress aswell).


Argos have a very nice way of saying :xmassign:

tattooed_lady

Hiya, unfortunately I think this is a common problem when trying to transfer a balance from an Argos card. If you search this forum for 'Argos' you will find many other threads about this very problem. Sorry you had such a hard time

moneyuser

Hehe your story sounds like my dealings with Argos up until the customer services queue bit.

I made a payment online and forgot to put the reference no on. Got charged interest, rang them up and explained. They said fax statement, so I went to local argos and they faxed it after checking with manager. I did have to make a couple of calls in between as I did send the statement by post (recorded) but apparantly it got lost. I also had to ring them to see if they had received the fax. Their computer "wasn't showing it as being received" so I asked them to go and physically check, and they found it

I got the interest back plus a bit extra, needless to say I quickly closed the account and won't be using it again.

Hope you get sorted

purplepixi

Well, after the above - very long message I thought all this would be sorted - boy was I wrong!!!

I gave it a week before phoning to check to see if the payment had been sorted. When I rang the girl I spoke to said the department that dealt with it wasn't open till 11am, and she'd ring me back - true to her word she rung me back.

She said she could understand why I was so upset, but the department that dealt with it said that the bank statement wasn't proof enough of our payment (because it only said balance transfer), and that I needed to contact the bank and get them to send proof.

Well it was my husbands account so I had to wait for him to come home, he phone them and they were very helpful and said they would ring once it had been done. 2 days later he phoned them, yes they said, it had been done, so I phone Argos and they said that it hadn't gone through yet, and got told to leave it another few days.

During that time my husband got a phone call from the bank saying that Argos, had told the bank that the account reference number was wrong (we double checked it and it was right), and that we had put the money in the Argos Additions account, not the Argos Card account. Now this made me angry, because, I double checked the account number, and it's the same as the one written on the back of the Giro Slip - for paying from your bank, so unless they're telling their 100,000 something customers that the account number is wrong, I think they are just making up excuses.

Anyway, the bank said they were being so difficult about the money that they are recalling it, so we can pay by cheque instead, with proof of payment.

So, it still hasn't been paid off yet because we are now waiting to get the money back.

People like this make me so angry, especially as they've now charged us £30 in charges.

Needless to say, there will be a rather stern letter with the closure of the account when this is sorted!!!!