Bosses at Currys PC World apologise and compensate distressed customer

Trish Chipman was so incensed by the poor customer service that she wrote to Alex Baldock, the CEO of Dixons Carphone, to demand compensation.

Mrs Chipman said her problems began after she ordered a new cooker in November from Currys with a price of around £1,500. . A date to deliver the cooker was fixed for December 12.

She said: "We removed the old built-in cooker and paid for a gas engineer to come out to prepare for a new cooker. We also removed kitchen cabinets to make room for a new larger free-standing cooker.

"An hour before the delivery time, the driver rang to say the cooker glass was broken and he would not be delivering it.

" He strongly recommended several times we just cancel the order and start again with a new order. He strongly advised against ringing Currys customer services because that was‘very difficult and will take hours’.

"We didn’t cancel as we felt we could not start again as by that stage we had no functioning cooker. There are five of us in the household and we had nothing to cook on at all, so we had takeaways and cold foods until we bought a second cooker."

This cooker, from another retailer was delivered in 40 hours of the order being placed, but the family needed to call the gas engineer again to change gas for a second time.

According to Mrs Chipman, Currys had offered her three options after they were unable to deliver the cooker she had ordered: a black cooker with no compensation for accepting a colour that the family did not want, a silver cooker to be delivered at an unspecified point but not before December 22 or a more expensive cooker at Mrs Chipman's expense.

She said: "As none of these options were acceptable to me, the assistant agreed to email customer services to ask them to ring me to discuss how to resolve this."

"I waited eight days for Currys customer services to ring me but received no call-back.

"On December 24 I drove to Currys again, and stood in line with all the other very irate customers who had not received their deliveries and spoke to the assistant manager."

Mrs Chipman said she was told that Currys would never ring her to discuss the outcome of the case and she would need to repeatedly ring customer services to get updates on the case until an outcome was decided.

"I stated that was not acceptable" she said. "I work in healthcare and did not have the time to spend hours and hours ringing customer services.

" I started repeatedly emailing their senior team, asking for a refund plus my expenses. Overall, we are still £257.00 out of pocket from the experience, not to mention the distress, lost sleep, chest pain, the 17 hours of my time taken and my lost income. I just hope the refund arrives before our credit card bill for the second cooker is due."

In her letter to Mr Baldock, she stated: "I’m not sure how many people in this difficult time can throw away £1,560 but our family is not one who can."

A Currys PC World spokesperson, said: “We have apologised to Mrs Chipman for the time it has taken to resolve her issue, and have refunded her the full value of the vouchers she used to pay for the product.

"We have also reimbursed her for the costs she incurred during the process, along with a gesture of goodwill. Mrs Chipman is pleased with the resolution.”

According to the spokesman, Mrs Chipman ordered a cooker, however upon delivery she was advised it had been damaged and that she request a refund as the model was no longer in stock

The spokesman added: "Following conversations about alternative products, Mrs Chipman bought a new cooker from another retailer

"As a result, we have agreed to refund Mrs Chipman for the full price of the vouchers she used to pay for the product, along with £200 in petrol costs, costs for an unused engineer appointment, and a gesture of goodwill."

The company recently apologised to another customer for the stress and inconvenience she had experienced. Dawn Collett had written to Alex Baldock, the CEO of Dixons Carphone, because she was so exasperated by the company’s failure to send the television she had ordered to the correct store and the repeated delays she faced in gaining a refund.

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