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New customer being cheated on purchase, no refund --- horrible service!

Changg
4: Newbie

Dear Sir or Madam,

 

I would like to make a complaint on very unsatisfactory customer service from vodafone store at Kilburn London (NW6 4JD), which was a shockingly bad experience for me as a first time customer.

 

I visited store at 11:30am on 18/5/16, looking forward to buy Microsoft Lumia 650 as a gift for my father's birthday. Store assistant ARIEL kept me waiting for more than one hour and ended up telling me phone in black colour I intended to purchase was reserved by another customer and she got me another phone. When I asked about it, she told me it was the SAME phone in older version. Although I clearly said to her many times, I already told my father I was going to buy Lumia 650 and only wished to buy this model, ARIEL did NOT informed me this was a different model, which as I later found out was Microsoft Lumia 550! Moreover, she told me she could not arrange a pay monthly contract as I wanted, and asked me to go for a pay as you go plan and purchase a £10 sim card [Removed by Moderator] in extra. As a first time customer who had to change plans, I carefully asked about all information including return policy in case my father did not like smartphone (or was not used to it due to his age). She said I could return and get refund in 14 days. In particular, I asked about sim card and told her I would not touch it in the beginning if my father did not like this phone, she said I could definitely return sim and get refund.

 

So I made a purchase of £60 (including £50 for phone and £10 for sim, order number on receipt is SBL-10000000180237477) and left after spending nearly 1.5 hour in store (payment made at 12:53pm as shown on receipt). However when I got home, I found out phone was Microsoft Lumia 550, NOT Microsoft Lumia 650 I intended to purchase! Therefore I immediately went back to store at 4pm and asked to return everything and get full refund. However, after taking back the phone and printing out receipt, ARIEL suddenly told me she would not accept return of the sim card, which I did not touch at all. I was very surprised at the change of return policy because she did tell me I could return the sim just 3 hours ago. When asked about this, she said "yes you could return sim card -- in 10 MINUTES".

 

I was very shocked to hear the new "10 MINUTES" policy, because this means she cheated me, a customer on original purchase --- had she told me I could not return sim card, I would have stopped purchase and reconsidered! Therefore, I asked to speak to store manager KUNAL about this issue, who simply and nearly rudely told me "no you can not return the sim!" without showing any care about the issue. I was shocked by his attitude and said I would have to make a complaint, however he replied "then your refund of the phone would NOT be released"! 

 

I can not describe the horrible feeling I had at hearing this threatening reply, as they already had the return of the phone, how could they hold my money?!!!  Without any choice, I made a call to vodafone customer service to escalate this issue from store at 16:40 pm. So far after 2 days I still have not heard from vodafone customer service --- now I would like to contact you by writing regarding this shockingly bad customer experience:

 

  1. Store assistant cheated to make customer purchase;
  2. Store manager threatened not to release£50refund of the phone, when store already took back the phone from me.
  3. I had to come to store twice and spent more than 2 hours in the same afternoon, only getting bad service, wrong product and very horrible experience from bad customer service.

 

I look forward to a reasonable solution to this very issue --- please refund me for both sim and phone of £60, and consider my bad experience and hours of time wasted and efforts I had made here. Thank you in advance for your time and help.

 

 

Yours sincerely

 

Note from Moderator: Removed personal details, please refer to our Community Guidelines.

20 REPLIES 20

Annie_N
Community Champion (Retired)
Community Champion (Retired)
@Changg

I've been following this thread with some concern. I feel that you should get back in touch with the lady at Customer Relations, who had originally agreed your refund, to finally sort this out for you. Direct contact with other parts of the organisation are just causing further confusion, but @kids has probably suggested the explanation, that they have simply said that they can't use that route for a refund.