Argos

Becles

Grrr - I'm cross with Argos!

My sons really wanted some outdoor mini Christmas trees, so I reserved some last Thurs to collect on Friday. Unfortunately my son was poorly and off school Friday, so I never got to collect them.

On checked stock yesterday morning, they were out of stock for home delivery and at all my local stores. I phoned customer services who said they were not getting any more stock in, but she searched the whole of my region and managed to find a set 30 miles away.

I decided to go and collect them yesterday. However when I got home, they are obviously a stock return as the internal packaging was just loose in the box, and when I plugged them in, they were broken :mad:

It's not fair selling returned stock as new to customers. It's not the first time it has happened to me, and it's put me off shopping at Argos again.

stugib

Becles wrote: »

It's not fair selling returned stock as new to customers. It's not the first time it has happened to me, and it's put me off shopping at Argos again.

The thing with Argos though, is that if you want the benefits of the 30-day returns policy, then you have to accept that sometimes you'll get items that other people have bought and returned as unwanted, so there may be less-than-perfect packaging inside. Argos aren't just going to bin everything that gets returned.

Unfortunately some people that do this may not be so honest, or just lazy, and return broken items and say they're working and just changed their mind. Ideally Argos would test everything that came back, and I suppose for electrical items they definitely should do this for H&S reasons, but I can understand it's more cost-effective for them to just take people's word for it and put them back on the shelves and deal with cases like yours when they come up.

wannabe_a_mum

Xmas decorations/trees etc used to be excluded from the 16 day money back gurantee............for H&S reasons...so you should contact CS and explain this to them - check the latest catalogue for the excluded notice.

stugib

wannabe_a_mum wrote: »

Xmas decorations/trees etc used to be excluded from the 16 day money back gurantee............for H&S reasons...so you should contact CS and explain this to them - check the latest catalogue for the excluded notice.

Good point! All the lights on the website have the dagger symbol to say they're excluded, so they shouldn't have been accepted for a return, shouldn't have been resold if reported faulty, and very unlikely to have been a display set.

Becles

I took the faulty trees back to my local store today.

I got to the till and said "I've brought these back for a refund becau" and was rudely cut off mid sentence as the lady snapped back "don't do refunds on lights". I explained they were faulty and didn't work. She looked at me suspiciously and asked if I was sure as people say they are broken to get round the no refunds policy. I invited her to plug them in herself, but she snapped "so you'll be wanting a replacement then?". I said I wanted a refund and explained that there was no more stock in any local stores and I'd had to drive a long way to get the faulty set. She just said "hmmmmm" and did the refund. I never got an apology at all :mad:

During the transaction she also kept popping off to help the girl on the next till who was having problems reserving all the items in a camera bundle. She didn't apologise for the interruption and not giving me her full attention either. How rude :mad:

Pennywise

Becles wrote: »

She just said "hmmmmm" and did the refund. I never got an apology at all :mad: During the transaction she also kept popping off to help the girl on the next till who was having problems reserving all the items in a camera bundle. She didn't apologise for the interruption and not giving me her full attention either. How rude :mad:

Sounds just like every Argos store I have had the misfortune to buy from. I think they must be trained to be rude and obnoxious. I dread having to take anything back because of their attitude, and because of that, I now dread buying anything from them in the first place, so their poor customer service has lost a lot of my custom. Most of the time they just won't listen and even when they do, they're just like the Currys/Dixon type - absolutely no idea at all of the sale of goods act nor basic contract law and keep harping on about "their policy"! At our local store, the manageress is a real b**** - I've had to complain to head office several times because she has wrongly refused a refund - every time HO agreed with me and I had to go back armed with their letter to get her to do it. Only last weekend, had an argument with an Argos bloke who refused to give me the £5 voucher for spending over £50 - it was there is black&white on billboards throughout the store but he still thought he knew best and I wasn't entitled - as usual, I was proved right and got the voucher. I just don't know what their problem is - you'd think they were paying out of their own pocket - are they are profit-related pay for annoying customers?