I’ve just been off the ‘phone with the lovely people at Coverplan who deal with the Dixon Stores Group Service Agreements. And they were very helpful indeed.
And to start this story from the beginning…
On Saturday 8th Jan I contacted PC World Customer Service phone line to tell them about my faulty mp3 player. They told me that MP3 Player faults are dealt with through the store. Fine. I’ll just go in and sort this out.
So the next day I wander into the local PC World, the store I bought the offending player from, and explain the situation to one of the wonderful customer service chaps. Their words of wisdom were: “Oh no, we don’t deal with them in store. You’ll have to call PC Service Call and they’ll log the fault and arrange a pick-up time.”
Fine. So on Monday (10th) I call PC Service Call. And they don’t deal with mp3 players, only PC and related equipment. And they assure me: “Oh no, it’s definatly PC World you deal with.”
Fine. So the following Friday (14th), which I have off anyway suffering from a serious case of Sinusitis, I trundle into the same branch of PC World clutching my mp3 player and a bad attitude. After 2 hours and a headache which is pushing my mood through the floor they say: “You have to send it directly to the company who repair them, Microgenics.”
Not good enough. After another hour of listening to my ranting they take the mp3 player off my hands and send it themselves. Result.
Using our Fantastomatic Time Viewer we can move the story on a couple of weeks.
It’s now today, and seven weeks since handing over the player. The Service Agreement states that a refund or replacement will be give if the device isn’t fixed within six weeks. It hasn’t been.
So this morning I call Microgenics to check on it’s progess. No answer.
Then I call PC World to find out what’s happening. As you can’t get through to the store I get through to PC World Customer Service, the people I talked to originally. They contact the store who are as helpful as always and they refer me to PC Service Call who, apparently are the people who can sort this.
Apparently not. The guy I spoke to there checks with his Supervisor and says “For mp3 players you have to deal with the store.”
This, as you might understand, is not what I wanted to hear. He then says, “Perhaps you should call Coverplan directly. It’s outside the 6 week period so they’ll deal with it.”
Fine. So I call Coverplan. Explain it all. And Rose from Team 6, who was brilliant, tells me to contact Microgenics and tell them to write off the player as it’s outside the 6 week period and that they’ll take it from there.
“Really?” I ask.
“Really,” she replies.
So there it stands. At some point in the next week to ten days I’ll get vouchers to spend in any Dixon Stores Group store for a brand new mp3 player.
Oh, joy. 
BigAl
