I hate Carphone Warehouse and Lifeline

9^th of June 2004

On Sunday I had my mobile phone stolen and yesterday I went to pick up my replacement phone in Liverpool street station (bus travel from my home). What I lost was a Nokia 7250i.

So yesterday, after lunch I went down to the Carphone warehouse at Liverpool st. station to pick up my replacement phone because the shop here in Barbican told me that the Liverpool st shop is the only one who has it in stock (this happened on Monday). Finally there they explain to me that it's out of stock everywhere and that I had to choose a different phone for the same or less value. After endless haggling with the lady in the shop and someone on the phone I caved in and had to settle with an Ericsson T610. The only other decent option was a Nokia 6100 which was worth £80 less than my previous phone. A difference I would NOT cash in on. Even the Ericsson was worth £10 less.

So, in conclusion; just because they didn't have any decent phones in anywhere I had to degrade to a phone I didn't want PLUS pay liability charge of £29.50!!! In other words I lost out on this deal a lot even though it wasn't my fault the phone was stolen in the first place.

The guy in the other shop I had to walk to wouldn't give the phone to me in the box but rather as phone, battery and new SIM in a paper bag (which I had to ask for!). Finally back home I realised that they forgot to give me a charger.

This whole mess cost me two hours and I had to talk to two shop assistants and three people on the phone in the two shops. I confirmed my address twice and had to say loud my password three times.

Needless to say I'm very dissatisfied about this whole thing. I should have read the 3-page-small-print policy more carefully in which it apparently says that they are not liable for any loss of value :) Apparently I have to suffer for their lack of compensation even though I pay for the insurance. What they should have done was to be flexible and "suck up" to me to avoid the bad publicity. Speard the URL of this page so they get what they deserve.

UPDATE II

Because of threats from CPW's Legal Department of defamation comments published on this page I've decided to remove all the comments since according to the Defamatory Defence act I'll have to comply and act as I'm having the power to do so. It's been a hectic two days of studying the legal material on defamation, a lot thanks to some lawyer friends who pointed me in the right direction of reading material and general advice. However, it appears that they've acted on my site a bit late since the already got a £245,000 fine from the FSA

To all the people who've posted comments on this page: thanks for sharing your thoughts even though some of them were pretty vulgar :)