yonmei

yonmei @ 08:10 pm: 3 are bastards: review please
Thursday 13th March 2008

To outline the situation again from the beginning:

22nd December 2007: I buy a phone from the 3 shop on Princes Street. There is an outline of 3 TOS pinned to the wall next to the desk where I sit while I am buying the phone, which I read, which informs me that 3 has a 14-day returns policy.

22nd – 30th December 2007: I attempt to get the phone to work, making at least one phone call from my landline to a 3 technical support centre, but am unable to do so. On my second visit to the 3 shop, on 30th December, while attempting to return the phone and cancel the contract, a 3 shop employee tells me she has successfully made a call from the phone. I am still unable to get the phone to work.

1st/2nd January: the 3 shop is closed.

3rd January 2008: This is the last day of my 14 days, and I attempt to return the phone to the 3 shop where I bought it, notifying the manager that I am returning it under the 14-day rule. The manager refuses to accept it, and claims to have made a call from the phone which proves to her that the phone is working. I tell the manager that if she will not accept the phone, I’ll post it back to the 3 office, and leave a letter with her notifying her that I am cancelling the contract and returning the phone. I post the phone back to the 3 office in Glasgow, registered delivery, with a copy of the letter I left with the manager. I have never made a call from the phone, and do not lay hands on the handset itself after it is returned to its box in the 3 shop in Princes Street on 3rd January.

January 2008: A few days later, I remember to cancel the direct debit, in case 3 has not yet processed my cancellation.

18th January 2008: I receive the 3 handset by registered delivery, and return it the same way without opening the box, with a letter pointing out that the handset is not mine: I have cancelled the contract and my direct debit.

22nd February 2008: I receive a demand for £20.50 from 3’s “Credit Management” office, which I return to them with a copy of a letter to 3’s “Customer Service” office pointing out that I cancelled the contract with 3 in January.

1st March 2008: I get a phone call from a telecom debt collection agency employed by 3 (my notes indicate this is the second such phone call – my recollection is that the first was on the 23rd) and I explain to them that I have, in fact, cancelled the contract and am in communication with 3 trying to get you to accept this. They agree to put a hold on the account.

7th March 2008: In a phone call with a 3 employee, I am informed that 3’s bureaucracy requires that the boxed handset should be returned to the shop where I bought it, that the returns policy does not apply because the phone had been activated and had been cancelled on 1st December anyway.

I point out that the phone was not activated by me: the only two phone calls that 3 claims are listed on the phone records were made in a 3 shop by a 3 member of staff: and that information about the returns policy was available in the 3 shop at the time I bought it: the full current TOS were in a sealed box which was not opened in the shop.

The 3 employee, and the supervisor I asked to speak to, repeat that it is impossible for me to return the phone by posting it back to 3 and that I must go to the shop and pay a cancellation fee.

I offered to facilitate this – it was a one-off no-prejudice offer which I do not feel inclined to repeat – by paying a cancellation fee equivalent to a one-month line rental charge (£15) representing the 2 weeks the phone was actually in my possession. This offer was rejected.

However, the facts are these: I made a good faith effort to cancel the contract according to those requirements on 3rd January, after several previous visits during which the staff of the shop were made well aware that I could not get the phone to work. I failed to do so due to the intransigence of the manager. If 3 bureaucracy now has a problem processing the cancellation of the contract, that is a problem created by the manager of the 3 shop in Princes Street, and not by me.

I was informed by the 3 supervisor I spoke to on 7th March that no one at 3 had the ability to make any decision making any changes in 3 policy, and that 3 policy did not permit 3 to accept that I had cancelled my contract with them. While I am therefore posting copies of this letter to Customer Services as well as to the CEO and the Sales Director, I am also notifying Hutchison Whampoa, the company which owns 3 and which presumably – if the supervisor I spoke to was correct - make all 3’s policy decisions, down to whether or not to honour a customer’s cancellation of contract.

3 Customer services, Hutchison 3G UK Ltd, PO Box 333, Glasgow, G2 9AG

cc: Kevin Russell, CEO 3UK, Hutchison 3G UK Limited, Star House, 20 Grenfell Road, Maidenhead, SL6 1EH
cc: Marc Allera, Sales Director 3UK, Hutchison 3G UK Limited, Star House, 20 Grenfell Road, Maidenhead, SL6 1EH

And to 3’s “roaming partner” T-Mobile:
cc: Jim Hyde, Chief Executive, T-Mobile UK, Hatfield Business Park, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, AL10 9BW
cc: Hamid Akhavan, Chairman of the Board of Management, T-Mobile International AG, Landgrabenweg 151, 53227 Bonn, Germany

And also to 3 and T-Mobile’s owner:

cc: Li Ka-shing, Chairman, Hutchison Whampoa Limited, Hutchison House, 22/F, 10 Harcourt Rd., Central Hong Kong, Hong Kong

A copy has also been sent to Consumer Direct Online and to Anna Tims at the Guardian.