Music Maggpie Scam?

palyniam

I just wanted to see if anyone else had this problem.
I recently sent of a perfect IPhone with all it's bits to Music Maggpie. After a week they have come back to me saying " Your Tech item has now been checked and was found to be in a different condition than originally described.

Order Number: 1897957 contained the following Tech item

Tech item: Apple iPhone 3GS 32gb White

We’ve received your Tech item, but when it has passed through our Quality Assessment process we have discovered it was in a different condition than you originally described, and has unfortunately been assessed as faulty.

What does this mean?

Unfortunately, we cannot accept Faulty goods as stated in our Terms & Conditions.

We have changed the status of your Tech because we found it to have one or more of the following conditions:

• Water or liquid damaged in any way

• Missing parts / all parts heavily damaged

• Item broken in two / bent

• IMEI Blocked

We are happy to recycle the faulty item responsibly and for free.

Or should you want the item to be returned to you we ask that you cover the administration and return postage charge of £15, as per our Terms & Conditions.

Now I have been on there facebook site and there are a few people on there saying the same thing as me.
Perfect phone, nothing wrong whatsoever and yet they say it is "faulty" and If I want it back I have to pay £15 or they will recycle it, now how do I get it back without paying as there was nothing wrong at all with the phone.
Paul:(

JReacher1

It's only perfect in your opinion. They don't agree and as they're selling it on they will have to make sure it's in pristine condition.

It's not a scam.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

palyniam wrote: »

We are happy to recycle the faulty item responsibly and for free.

I bet they are! recycle = sell for parts

Pay the £15, get the phone back and then complain, better than losing the phone as their service isn't great and they'll probably just "recycle" it whilst you are complaining.

paddyrg

This is the same deal as postal gold places - once they have your goods they make up a lowball number and hold your goods to effective ransom to return them when you realise you're being taken for a charlie.

PLog86

Not an outright scam, but close.

They will claim that items are faulty for the most tenuous of reasons. An indication of this, apart from the number of people who report sending them working phones only to be told they are useless is the fact that they will not tell you what was wrong, grouping a bunch of reasons so that it's very hard to argue the point.

Then they demand an outrageous fee to return your own property clearly expecting that you will just forget about the whole thing and leave them with a valuable phone which they can easily repair and make a hefty profit on, at your expense.

It's certainly very disreputable behaviour and not something that an honest person would find acceptable.

greatgimpo

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head wrote: »

I bet they are! recycle = sell for parts

Pay the £15, get the phone back and then complain, better than losing the phone as their service isn't great and they'll probably just "recycle" it whilst you are complaining.

Let's hope it doesn't come back more 'faulty' than it is now.;)

myusernamehasgone_2

Sell it on Ebay when it comes back , you should recoup you money and a bit more

palyniam

ahh well I get taken for a ride every so often, but at least you guys out there now know not to deal with Rip off music maggpie.

Nicklt

It's not just Music Magpie who do this. We had an iphone 4 that was fine apart from there was a slight scratch on the top right corner.

We sent it to one of these phone recycling companied who initially qouted £117 - sent it off and they come back with a revised qoute of £19!! Saying there was water damage (there are white strips in the charging port and headphone socket that turn a red colour when come in contact with water, these were both white still. They said the vibrate wasnt working, which is a lie as when the phone was returned it was working fine and also they said there was multiple scratches (they sent a photo of the phone that had scratches on, but it wasn't our phone as the scratches shown on the pic didn't exist on our phone.)

A few years back places like envirophone generally gave you what the originally qouted but now there are 100's of these sites and companies and of course profit in it has dropped so they quote a good price to get you in then qoute you way below that after in the hope you will just accept it.

£19 for perfect working iPhone 4 is a bit of an insult though, not when we then sold it on ebay for £97.

SConner_2

Going to add another point to this, I sent off my 3GS in good condition, ticked all their condition specifications. They emailed back to say it was faulty due to the four generic reasons and they wouldn't pay out.

I had to email to get the actual reason, Liquid Damage, but not submersion in a toilet damage, no, using it in the rain or having it ina steamy room:
'...course we are sorry if this is not the outcome you would have liked, but the terms and conditions are very clear about the classification of tech products and in this case this item in question was not up to standard. The products are all comprehensively tested by apple-trained individuals with years of experience who know the signs to look for during quality control.

We would like to take this time to reiterate that even if items are functional this does not necessarily mean that they are not faulty.

For example: liquid damage can occur from something as simple as using the item in wet weather, it does not necessarily mean that it has been fully submerged in liquid. Please note that damage like this does invalidate the manufacturers’ warranty.

Allowances are made for the fact that the items are second hand, we certainly do not expect them to be in brand new condition, but this is the very reason that the specifications about the quality are so precise.

(Like the bold and underlined to make me understand!)

This wasn't satisfactory, so emailed again quoting their own condition specifications, this is the reply I got:

'...Obviously as we were intending to purchase the iPhone from you, it is irritating for us also when they are found to be faulty by our Apple-trained assessment staff.
We appreciate that the phone may have seemed to have been in complete working order, and so we feel we should elaborate on why we have ruled the item as liquid damaged. There are liquid damage sensors on all iPhones, which turn a shade of red when the iPhone has been in contact with water. These sensors are notoriously sensitive, and can be set off by something as simple as the iPhone being in the room with you whilst you take a shower.

Unfortunately, when an iPhone is classed as liquid damaged, it invalidates the manufacturer’s warranty and makes it impossible to determine the cause of any future problems the iPhone may develop. Sadly we are unable to accept it as the iPhone is now considered to be faulty.

We apologise if this is an inconvenience and apologise to have to break this bad news to you. Sadly we will have to stick to our decision to class this iPhone as faulty, and decline it.'

1) How would the everyday user know how to check for that
2) If it happens often, why don't they add to their t&cs to prevent such 'irritating' happenings. (A. they make money from folk not knowing!)

Something to note if sending Apple items.

paddyrg

Just to reassure anyone else who suffers from this, Watchdog did a trial with a few of these companies, got phones independently checked beforehand, sent away as near-perfect...guess what? Lowball offer with templated 'it was rubbish here's a fiver and be grateful' letter. When pulled up on it they gave the usual '...thousands of customers, important to us, made a rare genuine mistake...' nonsense.

Don't trust any of 'em.