Google are an absolute nightmare - warranty warning

TheDeps

I’ve been involved in a dispute with google for the last few months, it’s driving me mad & costing me money.

In June I bought a Google Pixel 4a from Argos, in late July, the fingerprint sensor stopped working. Instead of going straight to argos, I thought it would be easier, since it was outside 30 days, to try to deal with Google. Never again.

Their online chat is easy enough to contact & after an initial impractical offer of a replacement phone being sent out to me within 7 working days of their receipt of mine, I managed to arrange an ‘advanced replacement’ which meant they would send me out a refurbished phone first & I had to return mine within a certain timeframe or I would be charged £399 for the replacement. Fair enough I thought.

The problems started when 3 days after the estimated delivery of the phone I could see it still hadn’t been despatched. So I made my first ‘complaint’ to google about this. At this point I was polite, I wasn’t in any hurry, I just wanted to check if there was a problem. Anyway, I was assured there was no problem, the short delay was down to covid. I accepted this, though found it a bit odd for a company as large as google.

Long story short, by mid September it still hadn’t been despatched. I had at this point had several discussions with them & was constantly told that my query had been escalated to a higher tier & that I would hear more in 24-48 hours. What actually happened after that time was I was told that same thing every day, regardless of whether I communicated over email or chat or phone. 24-48 hours

I decided I wanted to cancel the replacement. I spoke to Argos & explained that I would like to return the phone to them for a refund & instead they were very good about this, they said I should get a reference number from google, but if I couldn’t, then we could still sort it.

So I contacted google, several times, to cancel the order, each time I was met with the same response, it’s been escalated, 24-48 hours. This was now the response for cancelling an undespatched order, so that I could remove their £399 hold on my bank account so I could return the phone to Argos.

This went on & on until one day, I received an email from google, telling me my replacement phone had been despatched & would be with me the following day. After all this I did not trust google & I did not want this replacement. I contacted them & was told to refuse delivery, it would be returned to them & the hold would be removed on my funds. So that’s what I did.

Last week i finally returned my phone to argos & this week i received an email from google asking if I’d sent my old phone to them yet & to remind me that I would be charged £399 if it didn’t reach them by today (can you guess what’s happened?) Anyway I contacted google again & was assured that the hold was removed from their end and that was why I ‘hadn’t heard from them’, which was odd because I only contacted them because I had heard from them.

A couple of days later I got another email asking me to return my old phone, this time I didn’t contact them because I’d already been told the hold was removed. Today, surprise surprise, £399 has been taken, or is pending from my account. I’ve called the bank, they can’t do anything until it’s actually gone. I’ve contacted google again, been transferred 4 times without any of the advisors actually saying anything other than ‘you’ve reached the wrong dept’ before finally being told;

”sorry, I can see this has been escalated to a higher tier, we need to let them deal with it”

and while I wait for that, I’m £399 down.

So yeah, don’t deal with Google, it’s got me seriously thinking if it might be worth me deleting my google account, moving all my photos, emails, god knows what else somewhere else & taking all my google products out into the street for a ceremonial burning. 

tempus_fugit

Well obviously the lesson here is, go back to where you bought it from in the first place. 

But yes, it's frustrating and it seems to the big companies that are thus afflicted. I had a similar problem with Samsung, except it was an order that had not been fulfilled. Every time I called they said they would escalate it and it would 2-4 days. Every time I called them after the 2-4 days they would tell me the same thing every time, and these people that it had been escalated to could not be contacted by any means whatsoever. I eventually got the money back by opening a dispute via Paypal who got it refunded in a couple of days.

TheDeps

tempus_fugit said:

Well obviously the lesson here is, go back to where you bought it from in the first place. 

Definitely, just with it being out of the 30 day return period I thought it would need to be the manufacturer, I won’t make that mistake again.

The worst of it is that they can just take the money, I’m lucky that I have some savings & I can transfer some money into the account to cover it until I can get it back, but if that was all the money I had I would be completely buggered & all because the company are completely unresponsive & don’t seem to be able to be held to account

Jenni_D

Consumer rights are with the retailer not the manufacturer (unless you bought direct from the manufacturer, in which case they would also be the retailer).

Tokmon

TheDeps said:

I’ve been involved in a dispute with google for the last few months, it’s driving me mad & costing me money.

In June I bought a Google Pixel 4a from Argos, in late July, the fingerprint sensor stopped working. Instead of going straight to argos, I thought it would be easier, since it was outside 30 days, to try to deal with Google. Never again.

Their online chat is easy enough to contact & after an initial impractical offer of a replacement phone being sent out to me within 7 working days of their receipt of mine, I managed to arrange an ‘advanced replacement’ which meant they would send me out a refurbished phone first & I had to return mine within a certain timeframe or I would be charged £399 for the replacement. Fair enough I thought.

The problems started when 3 days after the estimated delivery of the phone I could see it still hadn’t been despatched. So I made my first ‘complaint’ to google about this. At this point I was polite, I wasn’t in any hurry, I just wanted to check if there was a problem. Anyway, I was assured there was no problem, the short delay was down to covid. I accepted this, though found it a bit odd for a company as large as google.

Long story short, by mid September it still hadn’t been despatched. I had at this point had several discussions with them & was constantly told that my query had been escalated to a higher tier & that I would hear more in 24-48 hours. What actually happened after that time was I was told that same thing every day, regardless of whether I communicated over email or chat or phone. 24-48 hours

I decided I wanted to cancel the replacement. I spoke to Argos & explained that I would like to return the phone to them for a refund & instead they were very good about this, they said I should get a reference number from google, but if I couldn’t, then we could still sort it.

So I contacted google, several times, to cancel the order, each time I was met with the same response, it’s been escalated, 24-48 hours. This was now the response for cancelling an undespatched order, so that I could remove their £399 hold on my bank account so I could return the phone to Argos.

This went on & on until one day, I received an email from google, telling me my replacement phone had been despatched & would be with me the following day. After all this I did not trust google & I did not want this replacement. I contacted them & was told to refuse delivery, it would be returned to them & the hold would be removed on my funds. So that’s what I did.

Last week i finally returned my phone to argos & this week i received an email from google asking if I’d sent my old phone to them yet & to remind me that I would be charged £399 if it didn’t reach them by today (can you guess what’s happened?) Anyway I contacted google again & was assured that the hold was removed from their end and that was why I ‘hadn’t heard from them’, which was odd because I only contacted them because I had heard from them.

A couple of days later I got another email asking me to return my old phone, this time I didn’t contact them because I’d already been told the hold was removed. Today, surprise surprise, £399 has been taken, or is pending from my account. I’ve called the bank, they can’t do anything until it’s actually gone. I’ve contacted google again, been transferred 4 times without any of the advisors actually saying anything other than ‘you’ve reached the wrong dept’ before finally being told;

”sorry, I can see this has been escalated to a higher tier, we need to let them deal with it”

and while I wait for that, I’m £399 down.

So yeah, don’t deal with Google, it’s got me seriously thinking if it might be worth me deleting my google account, moving all my photos, emails, god knows what else somewhere else & taking all my google products out into the street for a ceremonial burning. 

So you actually had a brand new replacement phone delivered and you decided to refuse delivery... talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!!!

Yes they were extremely incompetent up to then about organising the dispatch of the replacement but why didn't you just accept the replacement and move on instead of making it more difficult for yourself by rejecting it. I'm sure you think you've wont some victory by sticking to your "principles" and refusing to use their products anymore but in reality they don't care at all.

deannagone

I can understand the OP's action, why are people so cynical?  The phone broke quickly after purchase, the OP tried dealing with google and lost trust further.  The OP then didn't want to have the phone replaced anymore, she didn't trust the supplier anymore.  So when a replacement eventually turned up it was  refused.  

I can say I did the same thing with a freezer a couple of weeks ago.  Only four months old, two botched repair attempts, wrong part ordered, concerns about a new design, utterly useless customer services, I had visions of having to go through this again and again because the freezer might be unreliable (and continue to cost me a lot of money throwing out food when the fan failed and the whole thing defrosted) so I then asked for a different freezer.  Not out of awkwardness.., out of a lack of trust in that manufacturer.  However, I was lucky,  by then I'd found an email for the CEO of the holding company for complaints and was not dealing with their crummy standard customer services anymore.  But my story up to that point was much the same.

Sicard

So this is a case where Google isn't your friend.