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Saturday 26 July 2003

Phones 4 U R Scum [lurks]

Took the missus up the high-street this morning to get her a phone. We'd already decided what was best. A Nokia 8310 on T-Mobile Anyone 50 with 50 extra texts. Runs to £20.50 a month. Good little Nokia, has a radio in it but no colour screen and no wank. Up the high-street we go and I see that Phones 4 U is pretty quiet so we go in there instead of the Carphone Whorehouse further up which will doubtless be packed.
Wife takes a look at the phones, decides that I pegged it right with the 8310. We go to do the deal. They take ages and fuck around for zonks. Have to call T-Mobile credit check wise because someone else at address has a phone. They have the audacity to demand a £250 deposit to unlock the phone for roaming. Eh? I've been on T-Mobile for zonks. Well they aint getting that so decline that, she can use my phone.
Lots more fucking around. I mean really. Slow, fucking around. Then they say 'What price were you expecting'. I assumed it would be free with the contact because it is off T-Mobile's web site. Nope, they want £50. Well, we're pretty skint but either way we're not paying £50 for a mobile we could have just ordered off their web site. Seems this is standard practise, the web is dramatically cheaper than a shop. News to me!
So as we're basically stoked to stroll out, despite the half hour we've been in there at this stage - they start quoting other options. If we want to Anyone 100 (which I was umming and ahhing about anyway) and picked up insurance for 3 months (which I was also umming and ahhing), we could walk out with the phone for £20. I really just wanted to get it done and dusted so we went with that.
It didn't even end there! They decided that the wife's signature didn't look like the one on the back of her bank card. Even though it clearly did and even though we are clearly who we say we are on account of all our cards, bills, photo IDs and so on. Give it some about how the salesman is responsible rah rah, make her writing out signature many times all the time claiming it doesn't look like her card sig - fucking did to me!
I was getting the hump at this point and turning from my efforts of being cheery to saying 'You're really talking the piss now, how much harder and more expensive are you trying to be over a web order?'. At which point they reneged and then printed out all the forms again (thanks to wife's sig x 20 on one paper). Took ages longer. Then try to flog us loads of shit we don't want. Wouldn't give us the documentation of the number to cancel insurance etc until asked.
Meanwhile during this hour long marathon session, the manager (who weighed about 5 metric tons and barely fitted through their cellar stockroom door and at one stage tripped over a phone box, landed on the off foot and shook the entire shop so all the phones rattled!) was flogging a phone to some Canadian guy and was pretty much lying about the roaming capabilities of tri-band phones. Also I heard him say that the T68i for £80 with contract was a bargain as it was a reconditioned phone and for a bit more money he could get more features. My God. You could almost hear his thoughts 'Foreigner, better start scamming!'.
I don't feel too bad about what we achieved because wife is happy we sorted her out a phone on the day we said we would. However we ended up paying more, on a higher price plan with insurance we weren't going to buy and it was an hour of solid fucking around with truly dodgy fuckers.
It was, however, important to go to the shop because you have to pick up the phone you're going to have for a year and check it out. Next time I'll go into Phones 4 U and I'll look at all their phones, maybe get them to get some out of the box. Then I'll say thanks but no thanks and go home and order from the web.
Fucking unreal.

9 comments:

  1. Lurks - was this the Muswell Hill one or is their one in Crouch End? I was in the Mussy Hill one not so long ago, and had a similar experience, except they didn't get the sale as they wouldn't accept my passport as ID. Fools.
    I went to Carphone Warehouse instead. 2 doors away. They got everything sorted in less than 5 minutes and got the sale.

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  2. Thats completely mad, the robbing gits that nicked my creditcard out of the post a while back clearly didn't have the same level of difficulty since they managed to signup while only having the nicked creditcard.
    Phones 4 u saved the fussiness and hassles for me as it took the best part of a year for the cunts to fuck off and stop hassling me for phonebills that were nothing to do with me, they completely ignored stuff like the crime reference number and my bank telling them that the card had been stolen. In the end, they passed on the debt to a collection company who were less inept and accepted such proof as the crime reference number, it was just a shame that phones 4 u didn't initially believe their own collection company until the second time they had sent them out.

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  3. I was passing a Phone4u store in Feb saw a sign outside the store claiming to buy-out my existing phone contract, no matter how long left to run. WOW ! Could it be guenuine?? In I pop, how does it work say's I? As i've only got 3 months ( I told them ;-) )to run on my o2 contract (at 30 bucks a month) they'll give me cash, in the hand, and a free Sony Ericsson K700i and the same deal as o2. I walked out with £90 cash, 6 months 1/2 price rental, no evidence of existing contract required, o2 had been cancelled anyhow. Sold my K700i for £150 on E-bay and sticking with my 8310 or my Sharp GX30. Nice to fuck them over for a change!!

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  4. That is indeed a heart warming tale.

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  5. hi.

    just reading above comments. last week had phone call from p4u telling me i was due for an upgrade, so went into shop (guy who had phoned me was off that day!)another ejit came to help me, he looked at my current contracr with t mobile and noticed that i still had 6 months left on my 18 month contracr.,but not to worry he was certain that he could do something for me.I was quite keen to change networks as t mobile reception where i live is not great, he suggested orange or voda phone...they offerd me £90 to buy me out of current contract. so i picked a phone i liked and the monotonus paperwork began.. I had drivers licince and bank card with me for id, but this was not sufficiant, so had to go home to get passport (taxi was paid for by them!)they kept hold of my drivers licence which did not please me very much.

    back with passport, they credit checked and had some problems finding my address, by this point had been in shop for about 1 hour and was really pissed off, had to buy a birthday pressie and time was getting on. manager of shop told me to go shopping and come back and he would add the price of the pressie on to my buy out price!thus i did making it £150 !!

    to cut a long story short i left with new voda phone contract and new phone and £150 , phone to be connected in 24 hours.however, when i got home i checked new contract and was £50 a month instead of the aggreed £35,they had given me insurance(they didnt even ask me about it or mention it)and i couldn't transfere my number over (as i had insisted and they had said i would not be a problem).

    next day tried my phone and no network, day after the same, so phoned voda phone and they have no knowledge of me on contract, but after being passed on to a different department the found me and said that my application had been denied due to credit check and was on the day of getting the phone. they could not understand why p4u had given me a phone and a contract, i was advised go back into p4u and would need to do all paper work again, but as far as they are concerned i have no contract.thankfully i have not cancelled t mobile yet and will not do so and t mobile sim card works in new phone and i'm actually glad that new contract has not gone through. I will not be going to p4u again to check out mistake or to renew any contract in 6 months time.they are a bunch of idiots (but did get a new phone and £150 cash out of the experience!)




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  6. Four duplicate posts?

    BeejTech for the fucking WIN! ;)

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  7. ha ha i know

    sorry got a bit finger crazy i think! whoops

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  8. About Phones4U: they pay peanuts, so they get monkeys. Horrible places, staffed by dimwits. Now you know what they are like, never go there again. Next time go online, or go direct to 3/Voda/O2.

    About the duplicates: not your fault, it was the synchronous blog syndication. This has now been disabled as it can't easily be asynchronously threaded. Have now coded a hash check on comments, so it shouldn't be possible for double posting to happen at all now.

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  9. dont worry, will never go back unless they realise thier mistake and make me bring my phone and cash back!i have learned my lesson.

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