Concord digital camera £19.99 [CLOSED]

michelefauk

Immediately ordered camera on thursday, only to see today that Empire had wrongly described it as 3.1 MP when it is only 2 MP! Phoned Empire to cancel only to be told that my order hadnt been processed at their end (despite my recieiving a confirmation email from them to say it was on its way and the money coming out of my bank account) and to phone back next week to cancel and arrange a refund which will take up to 7 days to arrange. Surely if they are advertising an item at a certain price, they are obliged to honour that? and how come it takes so long to get a refund?? Not impressed!

codetown

paulie558 wrote:

I've just plugged the 1GB SD card into this obtained from ebuyer for £22.It works fine and indicates I can store 1475 pics on in in best quality mode.
I'm replacing a 2mp kodak camera which was a pain to upload onto PC,so the pics are still the quality I'm used to.
Of course it's not right that they advertised a higher spec and sent this,but I have a camera that is ok to use,even the Tv comes in useful as I can use it in the kitchen to watch Simpsons/News whilst sorting out tea(blessed with living near tv transmitter).
So For £10 I'm happy.

Paulie,
could you confirm the 1 GB SD card is ok with the 2MP Concord 2040?

paulie558

codetown wrote:

Paulie,
could you confirm the 1 GB SD card is ok with the 2MP Concord 2040?

Yes it seems to be working fine.
If it is not compatible an error message should be displayed,but 1475 pics are avalible to take in HQ mode,which reduce as you take pics.
All you have to do is format the card from the menu.

codetown

I received the Concord 2040 (2 MP) instead of the 3040AF they were selling originally.
I am not too happy with it. Not just for the camera, but because I would have expected an equivalent replacement if the 3040AF went out of stock. The empire Stores has in its catalog a number of cameras technically equivalent to the 3040AF.

Getting a refund is not sufficient to me. Once they have accepted the order, confirmed it and taken the payment, they MUST fulfill the order as long as they are selling equivalent products, which they are as of today (18 March 2006).

Can anyone from MSE site put some pressure on them to make sure this happens?

ianonline

codetown wrote:

Can anyone from MSE site put some pressure on them to make sure this happens?

If you check out Martin's post above, you'll see he already has someone on the case.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=1792272&postcount=216

Jamie85

Just got back from the footy to find my piece of crap had arrived :rolleyes: immediatley filled in returns form and stuck sticker on package.....can't get through to the courier so have filled some request in online. As if that wasn't bad enough, they have billed me £19.99 and not sent the free gift (even though 3 confirmation emails stated £9.99 + a free TV! I did take a look at the camera and it's the worst I have EVER seen, had no weight to it and the screen was terrible....if you have a mobile with a camera (who doesn't these days?) then stick to that for taking photos! not only was Empires checkout process the WORST I have ever seen, their after sales is no better, won't be shopping there again.

codetown

Hi,
I just read this from the first page of this thread:

Update 17 March. We have had the following statement from Empire. If you have not yet received your camera and do not want the 2 megapixel version you may want to ring up and cancel.

“We have made a genuine mistake in describing this product as a 3 mega pixel camera on our website. The product on offer for just £19.99 was always a 2 mega pixel camera.

“If any customers are unhappy with their purchase they are welcome to return the product to us, free of charge, and receive a full refund in accordance with our returns policy.”

Guys, the above sentence from EmpireStores is a lie.

They might have been overwhelmed by requests or understood their offer was money-loss, but the original offer was clear and has four elements they cannot deny:

1) The photos were from the 3.1 Megapixel Concord 3040AF camera
2) The description mentioned clearly the '[the camera] has web cam functionality', which the 2040 does NOT have.
3) The confirmation message customers received mentioned 3.1 Megapixels.
4) The 2MP camera model Concord 2040 was also on sale at the same time. That was the reference n. SS6826, while this 3.1 MP offer was reference n. SW6826. They were clearly different with different pages and descriptions on the catalog!

They did confirm the sale of a 3.1 MP model and took the money from customers (my order was confirmed on the 11 and payment charged on the 14th!), even before starting to claim there was a mistake (which I believe they started doing -by chaging the item description- from 15 March PM).

A shop cannot advertise a 32" LCD TV and then send you a 21" one 'for a mistake in the original description'.
(BTW 21:32 is the same proportion as we have one of the important quality measures of the digital camers, i.e. 2:3.1 megapixels... we have in both cases -50% off the expected quality parameter!!).
This is a farse.

Besides the MP, also the external quality (and general appearance) of the 2040 is much inferior to the 3040 publicised!

They are still selling 3.1 MP cameras and should provide a 3.1 MP replacement to all customers that have bought it and had their written confirmation that it was a 3.1 MP camera.

Felicity

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE PEOPLE (most of you from your free coffee machine courtesy of the offer!).

OK, so you paid £10, you got an ok camera (which you will probably eBay anyway) and also a free, TV, coffee machine, cuddly toy etc.

AND YOU WANT TO COMPLAIN? If you don't like the deal - SEND IT BACK!

I love this site and have got lots of bargains because of it. It will be in danger if you start kicking up a fuss about something as minor as this!

For those of you saying 'I will never shop at x store again', HELLO! When companies are demographically profiling, do you really think they are going to say that 'Money Saving Expert Members' are high on their list of priorities? Erm no! They do NOT WANT customers like us, people who get things at huge discounts / half price / free!

Don't spoil things by getting on your 'I know my rights and I will fight them on the beaches' horse!

BE GRATEFUL, BE HAPPY and / or SEND IT BACK. Then move onto the next offer you are going to be fortunate to get for free or at enormous discounts!

Sorry to vent but I was getting really mad at reading this thread!

Felicity!

Deaf_Leopard

I completely agree. The more people who 'know their rights' kick up a stink about this deal the less inclined the company will be in the future to offer similar offers.

I bet the customer care managers at Empire are scratching their heads wondering what they did wrong. They'll probably have had more complaints about this camera offer than they will have had in the last 6 months about anything else and are probably completely baffled because all of the people who are complaining are getting a good deal!

In my personal circumstances, and I suspect I'm not alone here, the ONLY thing that misled me into thinking that the camera was 3MP was this site, and this site alone. As a consequence I strongly suspect I didn't read the Empire webpage properly and ended up with a 2MP camera, confirmed by e-mail perfectly legally and legitimately.

In the unlikely event that I don't get the camera, it doesn't work, or if the delivery people mess me around because I am very unlikely to be in at the scheduled delivery time, then I will be whinging to the company, or the courier as appropriate. Otherwise I will be keeping my mouth shut and quietly congratulating myself on having got myself a bargain.

It seems to me that the longer this site has become established the more unreasonable people are becoming in expecting better than first class customer service when they are blatantly and often greedily exploiting a loophole. Have you thought, for example, that the fact you are having difficulty getting through to the company is that an e-mail was sent out to 500k people who like a bargain (that is the equivalent of FIVE HUNDRED medium sided secondary schools don't forget) advertising a bargain. I know from past call centre experience, both as a customer and as an employee, that any targetted publicity at all quite often causes phone meltdown and frayed tempers.

silps

Deaf_Leopard wrote:

In my personal circumstances, and I suspect I'm not alone here, the ONLY thing that misled me into thinking that the camera was 3MP was this site, and this site alone. As a consequence I strongly suspect I didn't read the Empire webpage properly and ended up with a 2MP camera, confirmed by e-mail perfectly legally and legitimately.

No this site did not mislead you, when I ordered they (Empire), advertised a 3MP and confirmed a 3MP in the e-mail confirmation they sent. So get your facts right!