In my consumer relations with various retail outlets there comes a time in our negotiations to try and right the wrongs that I feel have been done to me, when I feel the need to silently hand over a small printed card with the following message on it: “I am middle class, literate and tenacious. Give up now while you still have some self respect, because you WILL NOT WIN.”
I hasten to assure you that I haven’t actually handed over such a card, let alone printed one out, but it would have saved my shop-related opponents a great deal of time and effort.
I remember watching one film about an evil insurance company (are there any other types?) where the default position to ANY claim made was, in the first instance, to refuse it. As insurance companies have impressive financial resources and equally striking headed notepaper for their official missives to the grasping customers who have the unheard of audacity to expect the companies to do what they were paid to do, i.e. pay up when loss is experienced, there is an element of intimidation used against the clients.
My father had dealings with one buildings’ insurance company when he claimed for storm damage to a chimney and part of the roof. The work to repair the faulty structure had to be carried out on an emergency basis and my father was claiming after the fact. He eventually received a letter informing him that his claim had been processed; a cheque was enclosed, and would be please sign and return the enclosed form.
Needless to say the cheque came nowhere near the amount claimed and my father rejected the proffered cheque with contempt and started a length letter battle with the company that eventually resulted in a meeting in which my father suggested an independent assessment and arbitration. He had no idea whether that sort of thing was covered under his policy but it seemed like a good idea and it was the sort of thing that he was teaching in his Liberal Studies lectures and classes (ah, there is a subject title from the brave new world of 60s education!) and it ought to exist. The difference in the meeting was immediate and it was admitted that he did indeed have recourse to such an approach, but “we needn’t let it get to that sort of level” moderated the previously intransigent attitude of the blood sucking vampiric officials and a mutually satisfactory solution to the problem was soon arrived at.
What lesson my father drew from his experience was not the quality of his letter writing, though he did regale Mum and me with some of the more lurid passages, but rather the underhand tactics of an unprincipled company. As he reasoned it, how many people would turn down an actual signed cheque? They would assume from the ‘official’ documentation accompanying it that the cheque was the end of the matter. Dad used to talk about the situation of some OAP living alone with little or no support system in place feeling obliged to accept the cheque and being grateful for it!
Having spurned the cheque it prompted my father into further and higher forms of letter writing, which, as I mentioned was, eventually successful in this particular circumstance and was generally successful whenever he put pen to paper in the interests of personal commercial justice!
I channel my father when I have contretemps with suppliers who don’t live up to their PAID promises and I OPEN A FILE – dread words indeed!
The foregoing is not a self-indulgent meandering, it has been prompted by my latest satisfactory outcome.
I dropped my mobile phone and the glass back of the thing shattered – so much for toughened glass etc. It shattered. It still worked and I continued to use it, but this was not a situation that seemed to me to have long-term viability, so I tried to get it repaired. This is a long story, a very long story, but I intend to cut to the chase.
The point is not that the shop failed to get the phone repaired, but that they also managed to ‘brick’ it, and told me (eventually) that the phone was beyond economic repair and they would, very kindly, refund the money that I had paid them to replace the back of the phone!
To be fair to the shop, the repairs were not carried out on the premises, but each shop in the chain sent them to a central technical station in a large Barcelona store. I was given contradictory, confusing information about what actually had been or had not been done to my phone and the weeks dragged on. From what they had said to me it seemed reasonable to assume that their attempts to repair had destroyed the phone. I wanted another.
The key questions remained (as the shop had my phone and it was not two minutes away from my house) did the thing charge and work. Yes, I knew the back was smashed, but did it actually work as it did when I handed it in to be repaired?
This (eventually) resulted in a brief email, which made me wonder if they were actually talking about my phone at all. They told me it was working, that they had replaced the screen as I had asked (I hadn’t and they hadn’t) but they would give me a new phone. Not, I might add, a replacement of my expensive phone, but a signally cheaper one, but by the same maker! And they would pay back any money I had given for work that they had not done.
I know that I could have held out for a duplicate, but I decided to cut my losses and retire with honour: full refund and spare phone. Result.
Because I have bought another phone. The attempts to repair this phone started months ago, I knew it was going to be a long slog and so I listened to advice from One Who Knows and paid less than a quarter of what I paid for the phone with the smashed back and it does as much and more than the other one did.
I also have the old phone. I am not convinced that it is ‘beyond economic repair’ – I think that the shop simply gave up and bought me off. As I have me new cheap phone and a newer cheaper one (courtesy of the store) I am sufficiently phoned-up to start a length campaign to get me old phone up and running. At the moment it is charging (just checked 99% charged) and when it is ready I will see what it is still able to do. If it appears to be serviceable then further steps will be taken to bring it back into full use.
This particular file is not yet closed! Not yet a while.
