Cracked rear of phone & customer services fail

ste_be

I bought a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge online with a debit card on the 12th February, and received it on the 13th. On the 19th Feb I noticed a crack on the rear glass which I believe is not through fault of my own.

I initially called customer services on the 21st to describe the issue. I've been sent between telephone customer services and in-store several times, including being sent to another store, with no-one admitting it's their problem and processing an immediate exchange, and several staff members telling me that the previous person I spoke to got it wrong.

I have a call recording of a conversation where I was told in no uncertain terms that they had noted appropriately on my account that if I go into a shop I should expect to received an immediate exchange, no questions asked.

It seems that "policy" is that with what they consider could be "user damage" (which I dispute) requires it to be sent off for evaluation. I've tried to refer them to their customer services agent that said I should receive an immediate exchange in-store but they are refusing to honour it.

I've written a complaint and included full detail of the timeline of events and where people keep telling me different things, and included the call recording. Their initial response hasn't addressed my issue and has told me again to go in-store to have it evaluated, which would require sending it off to the manufacturer. I would supposedly recieve compensation should it be a manufacturing issue.

I need this phone, and after all I've been through I don't think it's fair that I should require it to be sent off and be without it (even if they offer me a loan of another phone, which I've been told won't be the same). Even if the customer services agent did not have the authority to authorise the exchange, I am of the opinion that they should honour what he said as it's unacceptable and completely unreasonable for different people to tell me different things and have to keep going back and forth between places and customer services.

Does anyone here have any helpful thoughts regarding this? I think I'm probably going to stand my ground on the call recording / immediate exchange thing and if necessary escalate to an ADR.

bris

It's got a cracked screen, the obvious thing for anyone is that you dropped it. You are not going to get anyone to just exchange it without first giving them a chance to have it inspected.


The odds are not in your favour but one things for sure you will have to let them inspect it.

ste_be

Thanks for your response.

Edit: it's not the screen - it's the glass on the rear, right in the gap between the protector - which would have required a very specific impact to cause it....

I get what you're saying, and maybe that would have been the case had there not been a complete failure with the customer services.

Surely the fact that I was told absolutely clearly that I should receive an immediate swap (as I say, call recording proving this, with this guy on the phone being clear that the guy in store didn't follow the correct procedure) should be sufficient to support my case? I don't see why I should have to go through more faff waiting for an inspection etc after all they've put me through (multiple trips to stores and customer service calls).

I guess I could possibly be willing to compromise and let them inspect it, but only if they provide the same phone as a loan during the process, and at this point if it were to come back as a non-manufacturing fault I would still expect something from them as a goodwill gesture for their failed customer service (such as at least 50% of any repair paid by them).

mattyprice4004

Which retailer sold it to you?
I used to work for Carphone in the department dealing with this stuff, and I'll be honest - I'm not aware of them ever admitting a cracked case of any kind was a manufacture fault. It'd always be customer damage.

Also the loan phones werent equivalent, just a basic handset - and someone on the phone certainly didn't have the authority to auth an exchange if the phone had a crack.

ste_be

It was indeed carphone warehouse. I might have accepted the need to send it off for evaluation / repair originally (in fact I had my old phone with me ready to get that up and running again if I had to send it off) but after my customer service experience, I think they should at least offer something!

I think someone said they send if off to Samsung so in theory it's not carphone that would admit faulty manufacturing.

The guy on the phone was very clear that I should expect an on-the-spot exchange and was telling me that the guy in store didn't follow procedure, so there's no reason why I would think that he wasn't in a position to do so!