I’ve come to the conclusion that to survive in Brown’s Britain you have to be a liar, a thief have no conscience.
Many of us work damned hard for a living in order to live a comfortable life with a nice home and holidays, but in Brown’s broken Britain we struggle at every turn we take.
My gripe today is with television repair companies.
A problem arose immediately with the TV with it occasionally switching from EXT1 (SKY scart) to DVD mode for no apparent reason, even when no DVD was inserted - rather annoying I'd imagine if you are watching a movie. As time progressed the problem increased until eventually it happened every time the TV was in use.
The usual procedures were followed and the company from where the TV was purchased arranged for a Telefaults (Stoke-on-Trent) TV engineer to check it out.
My friend waited in all day, the engineer arrived at 4:40pm, but he didn’t look at it, he took it off the wall saying it was going into the workshop.
Upon my friend ringing the company to find out when the TV would be returned she was told they didn’t know, possibly in a fortnight. Two weeks to look at a TV? And even worse, they said they couldn’t find any fault.
In two weeks time the years warranty would have run out, so my friend rang the company she bought it from – Argos. They have asked her to get in an independent repairer and they will cover the cost. (More to follow...)
After checking the TV repairer’s website – telefaults – I found the following statement:
A small non refundable deposit is charged on all items brought into our workshops, to cover initial inspection and fault diagnosis cost. The charge is deducted from the final invoice.
Nothing wrong there I hear you say, but yes there is, because it reminded me of another friend’s story.
My friend lives in Lincolnshire. He bought a 42” plasma TV which, just out of warranty, developed a fault.
He took the TV in to MTV Services in Lincoln and of course he had to pay a deposit which would be taken off the final bill.
When my friend went in to pick up his TV he was told the problem was the voltage. They told him they had adjusted the voltage and charged him £180. There was no guarantee on how long it would work but he could have a ‘new part’ which would cost an extra £400.
Total = £580
The TV lasted one week before giving up the ghost and my friend believes to this day that no work was done to the TV. He declined their offer of a ‘new part’ and bought a new TV.
My problem here is that he wasn’t given the option of having the £180 work done, it was forced upon him. And apart from that, they informed him that the ‘deposit’ was in case he didn’t want to pay the £180 and left the TV with them.
That tells me that this is common practise for this company.
In my opinion, BOTH companies are rip-off merchants.
But TV repair companies aren’t the only ones. Ripping off the public is common practise in this day and age...
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