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The Carphone Warehouse St'cock' Up You Stuck in it?

J

JoseJ

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 17, 2008
12
0
Chorley, Lancs
Just a thread to club together any and all info about any one who has had false promises made the Carphone Warehouse about the delivery of their iPhone. Also any news about people getting their phone or when they might.

My story being:

Thought i'd try my luck on Friday morning at 8:30 at the CPW after seeing the queue of about 20 people outside the local O2 store in Chorley. The doors to the CPW were open so I walked in and gingerly asked "Got any iPhones?" "Yes!" the guy says. "Really?" I say "any 16Gb?" Sorry you have to order this for Monday delivery. Ok then i'll wait two more days please take my money see you Monday.

Monday rolls round I call the store sorry its going to be Wednesday. Well honestly I was expecting that. So Wednesday rolls round, sorry its going to be Next Monday now 'Oh great' *sarcasm*.

Funny thing is I got home from the store on Wednesday only to find an O2 bill on the floor asking me for £30 for the phone I don't currently have.

I'm going to the Trafford center tomorrow on a planned trip for my week off work. If they have 16Gb any colour i'm getting one and Carphone can hopefully give my phone to someone else who is stuck in my predicament.
 
I tried to buy one on Friday morning too, deciding to go to my local o2 store. I got there at about half 8 thinking the store would be open at 9am (normal opening time as stated online) but they were already open with a big queue. I asked the guy how many 16gb iPhones they had, for him to reply they sold them already after deciding to open earlier than advertised..

So, off I go to CPW just around the corner. It had just opened at 9 and there were about 4 people in there. I went straight upto the counter and asked the manager whether they had any more 16gb iPhones left.. to my surprise, he said yes! So he took down my details and told me to 'stand over there'. After 'standing over there' for almost an hour waiting for it to accept my upgrade (original iphone owner since it came out) he called me over and asked whether i'd like to leave and they would call me back when ready. I said sure, confirmed my name, number and order for 16gb model to which he replied they don't have any in stock.. I asked him why he originally told me they did have them in stock but he said, they did have them but they were already sold. Not only did that piss me off but he tried fobbing me off saying he 'thought' i had asked for an 8gb model which they did have in stock. I couldn't have made myself clearer when originally asking for the 16gb model... grrrr.

I gave up with that store after he had the cheek to ask whether i wanted one ordered with a wait of upto a week. I weren't going to give that neanderthal any of my money.

Went to another CPW store so they could order it in for me instead, got served by Vicki Pollards twin sister.. after about 40 minutes of her trying to figure out how to use the computer and asking for my details about 10 times after she kept forgetting my name, finally paid for the bloody thing and got a receipt. Was promised it would be in by Monday with a good chance it would be in on the next day (Saturday).

I went back in there on Monday, spoke to a guy in there asking if it had come in, which he and the store manager replied it would 100% definitely be in tomorrow (Tuesday) and they would call me that day at 3pm.

Well after receiving no call, I went back in there only to receive an apology that it weren't in yet and that when it does come in, to come back and push for a freebie like a case or something..

I keep checking my order status online but its still on stage 2, saying its out of stock and should have arrived Monday 14th.

This has been absolutely ridiculous, my brother is waiting to buy my original iPhone off me too which will pay for the new handset. I just wish Apple would have let upgrades done at it's stores. I used to work in an Apple store myself and it makes me wonder how other companies can have such bad customer service in comparison to Apple stores. I guess the staff in other stores are much less passionate about where they work...
 
I have heard lots of bad things about the carphone warehouse, not just with the iPhone.
 
I'm in a similar boat - here are the majority from a letter I wrote to them on Monday (edited to remove any names of sales staff)

-----

On 11th July at 07:10 I started queueing at your Newcastle-under-Lyme store for a 16 gig iPhone. I was first in line and looking forward to owning my 16 gig iPhone at 08:02 when the doors were reported to be opened. The doors finally opened at 09:00 at which time I was told by your staff member that they hadn't received any 16 gig iPhones. I'm sure you can understand how upset I was seeing as, if I had waited at the O2 store I would have gotten one. The manager pre-ordered 2 (one for myself and 1 for my friend who was 2nd in line) from the Longton shop. We drove from there to the
Longton store to find that they had only had 2 delivered and they had already been allotted to people in their queue.

Dejected we returned to our respective offices. Where I wrote an email of complaints about your store not receiving any stock and how annoyed I was choosing your company instead of O2.

Friday lunch time my friend who was 2nd in line popped back into your
Newcastle-under-Lyme store, and was informed that they had managed to secure some 16 gigs. I was back at the store within 10 minutes. We completed the sale (my office is in the next town, so 10 minutes is fast). The sales agent said that if they were on the system then they were definitely in the warehouse so we would get the iPhone on Monday, Tuesday at the latest if there was a problem with the postage. On the receipt I have it clearly states in the description 'APPIPHONE3G16GB TO BE DELIVERED MONDAY, 14-JULY-08'.

This lunch time my friend went into the store to pick up his and my iPhones and was told that they still hadn't received our iPhones from the warehouse and had received a note saying that it would be Friday. He notified me of this when he returned to his office. I went ballistic.

I called your sales department to find out what was happening. The first gentleman I spoke to cut me off whilst supposedly attempting to transfer me to the relevant department. Even more annoyed I called again and spoke to a gentleman who was very apologetic took my details and told me that
my order was on 'back-order'. He also said that they will be getting shipments, and if the store has told us Friday then there is a chance that it might be there on Friday. I asked if he could tell me for definite and he couldn't. He told me that all he could do was apologise.

The following is cut and pasted from your website

At the Carphone Warehouse, we believe in being totally honest with our customers. That means that when you see an item with the "In stock" badge against it, we guarantee that this item is in stock.
You can still 'back-order' an out of stock item and we will send it to you as soon as it is back in stock. We will also give you regular updates as to when the new stock is due to arrive.
Please note: When comparing our offers to other websites, be careful to check that they mean 'In stock' when they say it. Many websites will happily take your order for an In stock item, only to tell you that the item is not in stock but due in "any day now", and then leave you hanging for weeks on end...
----
Obviously this guarantee isn't real. If it was real then I would have my iPhone now as when I bought the iPhone I was lead to believe that your warehouse had it in stock and your empty promises of delivery dates seem that now your doing just what you say is bad about your competitors.

Why did I wait in line rather than pre-ordering from your website? In the past I had bought things that had been promised shipments on the release date but had invariably not arrived until days if not weeks later. I was so looking forward to owning my iPhone that I didn't want this happening.

Why did I assume that queueing would get me an iPhone? I called both your sales desk and the O2 sales desk on the Thursday afternoon/evening and was assured by both of you that stores would be receiving iPhones. I asked if that would be 16 gig ones as well as 8 and was told yes but only black.

Why did I chose your shop rather than the O2 shop? We choose you over the O2 store as fewer people knew that you were also selling it at your stores and the queues would likely be shorter and I had been recommended that you were 'the good guys'.

In conclusion - I am extremely annoyed. I was 1st in the queue (Feel free to check) at the store and am still without an iPhone. Even if I do get the iPhone this week that will have been 1 weeks worth of contract that I have paid for whilst not having the phone to use on the contract. I have spent just
under 1 hour on hold on your 0870 087 0870 and 0845 601 0411 numbers which I will be charged for. I am now without a mobile phone as I believed you that you would have the phone for me Today. I feel cheated that you allowed your staff to take my money when you didn't have the stock
to sell. I feel like you stole 2 hours off me whilst I queued up at the front of the queue when your store hadn't even been sent the phones. I feel angry that you have turned what should be an enjoyable purchase of something that I have been saving up for for the past few months and something that I was really looking forward to having into something that I may now always
associate with stress and anger, assuming it ever arrives.


yours Anoyedly

Jon

-----------------------------------------------

I have received no response to the above letter yet.

But i also recieved a bill from O2 for £31 on wednesday

In addition to this I have today been informed that tomorrow is a likely day when my iPhone will arrive. I am also not convinced. To be honest I have now got to the stage where I don't think I want it any more. No matter how good it is it cant be worth the aggro, the lies, and the wasted time its cost me up to yet.
 
update

I post this update and advice to you from my new iPhone. It did not however come from the carphone warehouse. After being told by them that it would be A WEEK ON MONDAY for my new phone I took it upon my self to drive to the Apple store in the trafford center Manchester. Where upon they whisked me with open arms to a seat in front of a shiny new iMac. Took my details and no more than 10 minutes later I was the proud owner of a shiny black 16Gb iphone.

My advice is this if you can get to an apple store do. Go on to apple.com/uk find the phone number of your nearest store give them a quick ring see if they have the stock (they probably will!) go buy one and then cancel your carphone order. If the staff at the store you ordered it from are as fed up with the iPhone as the customers who were waiting for it, they will gladly refund you and cancel your contract. Make sure you do this before next Friday if you signed your contract last Friday because you only have 14 days to cancel even if you haven't received your phone yet.
 
Also I sent an email to carphone about 3 days ago despite them saying "we will contact you in 24 hours" I am yet to receive a reply. Despite absolutely wasting my time with Carphone (If i'd known I would have gone to the Trafford Center on Saturday Morning). I do have to say that the guys at the chorley store were helpful when it came to canceling letting me go straight away and giving me a quick ring (On my new iPhone poetic justice) so say that it was all sorted and the refund was on its way.

It seems that carphone retail staff had had about enough crap from folks like us, since it was obviously a "HEAD OFFICE MISTAKE" (I've been there used to work for a computer game store I can list but a few stock issues Wii PS3 360 DS PSP the list goes on...)

If you can get to an Apple store it will be worth the hastle!
 
thanks for the advice Jose I think i will do just that..

by the way - I have just sent emails off to t3.com and techdigest.tv telling them of my story. Maybe its worth if other people do similare we can at least let the uk population know how bad CPW are for customer service and save them from the hastle that we have had.
 
may i just correct the above post by myself - when i said bad for customer service - i meant their head office not their shop staff who I personally feel really sorry for as they have had to cope with lots of complaints from people like myself who are not at all happy
 
cancelled my upgrade order

well I tried to order an upgrade to 16gb 3g online via O2 with the rest of us - failed - so went to CPW - showed me the stock figures - yes def you can have one -= def in by monday.

today still no iphone - no idea when they'll get one.

so I cancelled- I don't particularly blame them - they are just not set up to cope with this kind of demand, and apple couldn't manufacture enough, and on the face it's a fairly minor hardware upgrade, and when they had so much trouble shifting the original iphones, they really didn't expect this kind of rabid hunger for the update.

I'm gonna wait till they are freely available in the O2 shops, and get a 16gb white one prob after the summer (what summer?...)
 
On Thursday 10th, spotted on CPW that they had stock. Quickly ordered one. By the end of the day had proceeded to stage 3/dispatched. Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday - no sign and no word from them. Phoned and after multiple transfers and pieces of hold music, I was told O2 had required a £150 deposit. And they didn't think to tell me!

I angrily cancelled. I've now bought one in Apple store (funnily enough O2 didn't require a deposit this time).

Avoid CPW. They are either incompetent or fraudulent in the way they have oversold their iPhone stocks.
 
iphone4 said:
On Thursday 10th, spotted on CPW that they had stock. Quickly ordered one. By the end of the day had proceeded to stage 3/dispatched. Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday - no sign and no word from them. Phoned and after multiple transfers and pieces of hold music, I was told O2 had required a £150 deposit. And they didn't think to tell me!

I angrily cancelled. I've now bought one in Apple store (funnily enough O2 didn't require a deposit this time).

Avoid CPW. They are either incompetent or fraudulent in the way they have oversold their iPhone stocks.
Click to expand...


pretty much same as me, apart from mine never reached dispatched, i ordered early on thursday 10th and when i cancelled (wednesday) it was still in processing so i went to an apple store and 5min later walked out with a 16GB white iphone 3g :cool:
 
zoetropeuk - It's not the fact that it is or isn't just a phone. were not saying how wonderful it is, or how much we yearn for it, Its the fact that the car-phone warehouse were selling things they didn't have, even though they said they did have it and then telling continual fibs. I would be equally upset if I had bought a bed only to find that they had lied when they said it was in stock, and then lied to say that it would be with me the following day. and then continued to mess me around.
 
Had a meeting in Bournemouth on launch day so headed down there early and saw a massive queue outside the 02 shop (it was 06:40)...Asked a chap where the local CPW was, he pointed across the street - no queue and an opening an hour earlier...got to question some logic...

I was the first one through the door at 07:02 (maybe six of us in total) to be told that no 16GB in stock - annoying but I'm 31 so have learned to stop chucking tantrums and decided to wait...I guess I must have been the first person in Bournemouth to get the contract. Walked out £59 lighter with a sim card and a promise that it would be delivered on Monday.

Worked from home (which was a blessing as got loads done) but at 9.36 my doorbell rang with a CityLink courier telling me how lucky I was...

Was feeling rather dubious about the delivery but it all seemed ok in the end. Two days to wait and plan apps to download didn't really do me any harm.

I guess I was lucky as my order went on so early?
 
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