Carphone Warehouse Nightmare - Advice please

mattyprice4004

Hello all.

Basically, after a bit of help with Carphone Warehouse. I used to infact work for them as a lot of you will know, but they've managed to royally mess up an iPhone 4 order my other half placed on Thursday.

Quick timeline:

Thursday.
1. Try to place order via CPW's website, the site hangs on the last page and when we try again, no recollection of order. So naturally we assume it's been cancelled and we telephone the Direct Sales team based in Acton, London.
2. Acton Direct Sales process our order, and we double check all the details including confirming our old addresses, time lived there and bank details. They also promise we will receive the handset in the post on Friday.

Friday.
No phone arrives, they stated in the initial call delivery can be up to 9pm. Of course customer services are closed at this time when it doesn't arrive.

Monday.
We call customer services, and speak to someone who promises they will get the phone to us tomorrow (Tuesday). We don't really have much confidence, so we call again and this information is confirmed by a 2nd individual. Excellent.

Tuesday (Today).
1. I work for myself, I left Carphone about 2 months ago. I sit in with my other half helping to look after our 7 week old daughter. Nothing arrives by 4pm, so naturally we're worried so we call back.
2. They now inform us that the information we've given them to pass Data Protection is wrong, which we find odd. We query it, and they say they can't tell us any more and we have to go to store. We tell them no, it's not our mistake and we are not taking our daughter out in this weather to fix THEIR mistake.
3. We call back the advisor that sold us the handset (luckily we had his direct number), and he accidentally let slip they've got an address at Delta Park Drive down. He then goes very quiet once he realises he's failed DPA. Delta Park Drive is about 2 miles from here, and my partner has never even been there, let alone lived there. We ask to speak to his manager, he refuses. We ask for our lead number (CPW customer reference) and he refuses. We end the call.
4. We call customer services, and using Google Maps, Royal Mail's postcode checker and some mental nouse we work out they probably have number 4 down (our house number) Delta Park Drive. The post code is very similar to ours.
We pass DPA with customer services using this information, and then tell them about the previous calls. The advisor tells us we have to go to store, but they won't be giving us a phone. It's just to change the address. We then ask of course where we go from here, they say they will have to investigate which will take days and get back to us! Not good enough in my opinion. We speak to a complaints specialist (they don't even have these as far as I know) and they're calling us back at 18.50.

What I'd like advice on is:
- What kind of recompense we can expect for waiting inside all day, cancelling a doctor's appointment I'll now have to take time off to re-attend and of course the time taken to make all of these calls today
- What would happen if the people who have received the phone rack up a huge bill, when we haven't even seen the handset
- Will we have to pay the phone bill for the days we haven't had the phone, through no fault of our own
- Who we can complain to about the disclosure of our personal information with regards to our bank details, phone number and other details included with the documentation they send with new handsets.
- Can they not just issue us a new handset from a Carphone Warehouse store, given we are not willing to wait thanks to their mistake?

As you can tell, I'm really not impressed!

jenniewb

Wow! They almost sound as bad as 3!

I can't answer all your questions but in terms of what to do: Report them to Trading Standards if you want re: DPA failure, consumer direct could help give you further information but IME they don't actually do anything, just explain legalities and where to go.

If this were me? I'd cancel the whole thing, I'd want to get hold of the most important person within the company that I could and explain the failures and errors. I'd wait to see if I felt like they were honestly sorry and if not try as hard as possible to get the problems known about for the sake of others and also just to get it off my chest! BBC Watchdog for example and any local papers and etc. If you have a blog, share it on there too and also prewarn friends who may want to consider them. Thats what I did with 3 Mobile when they scammed me twice into contracts I did not want and actually tried to cancel (they would not let me: had I had the knowledge I have now I'd be in a better situation all round and a few £hundred better off also!)

Hope you get somewhere- no doubt someone else will have a more helpful answer then me but incase they don't, its a start.

MissKeith

I would probably go to a store, tell them you want to make a serious complaint. They SHOULD note your lead with the details and then go through the Resolve team, which is Fanatical Support. It's a relatively new process according to an ex colleague of mine and it's apparently working very well.

mobilejunkie

That would make a change, although judging by recent chaos across cpw companies it would also be unbelievable.

MissKeith

mobilejunkie wrote: »

That would make a change, although judging by recent chaos across cpw companies it would also be unbelievable.

CPW itself was always okay, specifically in stores. I used to get incredibly annoyed with customer support telling customers to come to store to do things we shouldn't be doing and could potentially get in a lot of trouble for. Out of policy returns for example. Exchanges that were not physically possible on the system was another big issue. Any time a customer would have a major problem it would be yeah just go to store to sort it out, even though they could do exactly what we could and it would just be a waste of the customers time to send them in.

I really do think that CPW (direct -not sure about e2save/mobiles etc however) is trying to do the right thing for the customer, removing the stores commission, targeting them on customer service, this new Resolve process and consultation meetings with Retail staff. Lots of things are going on behind the scenes to try and fix things but it will take time. Shame I couldn't live off what they were paying me though!

mobilejunkie

My in-store experiences have been extremely mixed. From utterly awful to quite helpful. However, underlying everything is "the system"... it seems organisations forget that "systems" were created by people (company people) and NOT the customer. They also forget that without the customer they won't have a business.