Carphone Warehouse manager took our £10 airtime off us

Half_Price_Sky

My partner took a phone back to the Carphone Warehouse on Thursday and the manager took the sim with £10 O2 airtime on it off her and demanded she had to hand it over without refund otherwise she wasn't getting her money back for the phone so now she's £10 down.

I was already aware that they don't do refunds on the airtime or sim cards bought with phones but how can they be legally allowed to take it off her when we have paid for it fair and square? It belongs to us.

The manager insisted that the phone and the airtime were part of a package and couldn't be separated but it's not as if the phone couldn't be resold with another sim card surely.

He hadn't even asked for the sim card initially so presumably would have taken the phone back without it. It was only when my partner pointed out that she'd forgotten to remove it from the (phone) box that he refused to give it back.

Does anybody know where we stand here? I'm feeling very angry about this. A member of HUKD posted that they took a phone back to CPW today and were allowed to keep their airtime credit so it is possible to be returned without the sim.

I will be getting Consumer Direct involved if we don't get a satisfactory outcome from CPW. The only problem now is that she paid cash for the phone and he took the receipt off her too so we could find difficulties proving she even bought the thing in the first place!

Please help.

Old_Gold

The shop should have records of the transactions so unless they are going to be really devious there should be a record. Customer Service are often pretty useless so good luck there. I have found that even trying to get in touch with CPW executives leads to a blank so it may have to go to a complaint to an outside body.
Was the airtime loaded on to the phone? If so that could be an interesting situation but at the minimum the manager should have had to explain why he or she did what they did.

Half_Price_Sky

The airtime is supposed to be on the sim when you buy it. Except more often than not it isn't

In the old days when you'd buy a phone from CPW the airtime would come in the form of a code on the receipt which you'd key into the phone exactly how you would with a PAYG scratch card.

These days it's supposed to come pre loaded on the sim at purchase but in reality this is quite often not the case. I bought a phone 4 or 5 weeks ago for my girlfriend from CPW and they have yet to load the £10 credit onto the sim. Same thing happened when I bought one 18 months ago and same again when a few of the women in my work each bought the same phone they all had to fight for the airtime they'd rightly paid for.

They must be making a small fortune as presumably not everybody would chase it up. The more cynical amongst us might even suggest they’re doing this on purpose.