Russell Hobbs Customer Service and Spare Parts phoneline

bxboards

So I ordered a Russell Hobbs built-in microwave from Amazon, which arrived with everything bagged and sealed as expected but was missing parts mentioned on Page 20 of the manual - just some screws and adjusters to fix and locate to the cupboard.

So I decide to phone Russell Hobbs on the phone line mentioned in the manual - first thing they say to me is that it would be better / quicker to return it to Amazon and get a replacement!

I point out that I'm happy to just have the parts sent rather than return everything (20kg box!) - Russell Hobbs seemed very reluctant to actually offer 'Customer Service' and very keen to punt onto Amazon with quicker / easier / we might not be able to get the parts line. Very frustrating as what is missing would fit into a jiffy bag. I said I'm really fine to wait a few days, and lots of huffing and puffing, and 'well I've have to e-mail them!' and you could practically feel the eye rolling / sighing the other end of the phone line.

I'm always polite on the phone, and simply asked if they could kindly send on the missing parts from Page 20 of the manual - I was made to feel that I was inconveniencing them, and they'd much rather just punt the problem back to Amazon. Environmentally if nothing else, sending DPD to collect it, and for Amazon to resend another 20kg item for the sake of some bits of plastic and screws seems very inefficient.

Really poor attitude Russell Hobbs! If you don't want to supply Customer Service / Spare Parts, don't put this in the user manual!

DoaM

Technically though they're right ... you have no contract with RH as you bought from Amazon, not RH.

But if you'd approached Amazon they wouldn't have sent you a bag of spare parts as they probably won't have them and won't be setup to deal with missing parts issues, so the only solution would be the return/replacement - with no guarantee the replacement would have the noted parts!

tl;dr ... RH were in the right but could have handled it better.