The saga started when I selected my upgrade online on a Sunday. I was pleasantly surprised that the website said my phone (Samsung galaxy S7)would be available to collect from the Bluewater store from 12:00 that day. However I did not have an opportunity to collect it until the next day (Monday evening).
On arrival at the store, I was informed that my phone was still 'in transit' and was not yet available for collection.
This was frustrating enough, and I returned home empty handed. I was promised that they would send me a text message when it did arrive.
The next day, my wife (who had selected her upgrade on Sunday at the same time as I did), received a text message saying her phone was ready for collection, so we went back to Bluewater late evening together to collect it. As luck would have it, my phone had also now arrived, although I had not received a text message to notify me as promised.
Everything now seemed to be ok - the customer service person gave us the phones along with new SIM cards and assured us that the new SIMs would be activated within 24 hours. We spent the following 24 hours in eager anticipation of the activation, only to find that nothing happened.
We decided to call customer service and were advised by a very helpful member of staff that nobody at the Bluewater store had even started the SIM transfer process, and that besides, it would only take a maximum of 12 hours, not 24 as the store staff originally told us. We also found out that we could have done this process ourselves by completing an online form. Customer service transferred the SIMs for us over the phone, and within 10 minutes our new SIMs were activated and the new phones could be used.
We were very pleased with the customer service offered over the phone, but disgusted that the store staff had not informed us of the proper procedure (this may seem obvious to them, but we are not well-seasoned mobile phone purchasers and had not changed SIM card in years), and also claimed that the transfer had been actioned and would take place within 24 hours - we could have kept on waiting forever and nothing would have happened had we not decided to contact customer services.
A very frustrating experience all round particularly with the wasted journey to Bluewater in the first place on a wild goose chase to collect a phone that hadn't even arrived after they assured me it had!
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