Comet insureance will give you no reasureance (Comet)

Member Name: nisbet74

Product:	Comet
Date:	26/08/09 (85 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of stock

Disadvantages: Customer service is shocking

If you had asked me two years ago what I thought of Comet I would probably said yes they are ok and maybe even rated them as a three or four star company. However in the last two years my opinion has fallen. I will get onto that shortly. First of all I'll tell you a bit about the shop and the staff.

The shops seem to be situated all over the UK at most retail parks and if they aren't there then their competitors are. Curry's, to me both shops look the same and aren't really that different. They offer mostly electrical goods washing machines, dishwashers, TV's, MP3 players, DVD players, games consoles, computes, cookers, kettles, microwaves and loads of items. You can't take it away from them they display a massive amount of stock and the stores look good and are well laid out. Like any big chain of shops the staff can be a hit or a miss but in general they are quite helpful on the day to day stuff. When buying almost anything in the shop they will always offer you insurance should the unexpected happen after the manufacturers warranty runs out. It even covers you for accidental damage. They must be targeted on selling the warranties because if you say no to the warranty they can be a bit pushy. Anyway thats why i have accidental damage on my home contents insureance. They even offer you various ways to pay, store card, cash credit card etc.

All sounds good so far but here's where it breaks down, the insurance that they offer doesn't appear to be what it's sold as. Two years ago I bought my son a Playstation 3 for his Christmas. I was offered an extra 3 years warranty for £49.99. Since my son was 11 at the time I thought this was a good idea. After he had used the machine for about 7 months the machine died and I took it to the shop for repair. They allegedly sent it away to their service department to have it sent on to Sony as it was still covered by their warranty. So far so good. I was warned that this could take a couple of weeks which was fine. They gave me a slip of paper and on it was a date when it would be returned to us at the latest. I called after a couple of weeks to be told it would be back to the shop in about a week's time. It didn't arrive and I was told it would be another week. This went on for a bit until I started getting really annoyed by it all.

It turned out that they had lost it! This was the point that I started banging on about the extra warranty and I am a really cool calm person but enough was enough. I actually went to the shop and told them I wouldn't leave until I got a refund or they gave me a replacement model. It didn't help that the service department told me that the last time I spoke to them it was the guy who takes in the deliveries at the back door that spoke to me and told me it was being returned. The manager refused to do anything without authority from higher up. I asked to speak to someone higher up which was a waste of time. But wait all was not lost because at the back of their booklet that the receipt was attached to was a picture of the Managing Director and his email address so if you had a complaint you could put it to him. BRILLIANT at last I would get a result. Strange though he never got in touch with me. What a waste of my time. After this going on for 6 weeks they finally agreed to give me a loan of another machine until they got mine back, which they had managed to locate.

As far as I could see the manager has no power and will not make a decision for himself. Maybe that's what they are told to do as company policy or maybe it was the local manager. Give him his due he remained calm when I threatened to walk out the shop with a laptop to the same value as the PS3 which at the time they couldn't locate. It was sorted in the end but I can't understand why it has to get to such a stage that someone like me who never looses his temper unless really pushed finally cracks up. I felt with them it was the only way to get my result.

The worst thing is I am away on business tonight and my son has called to say it's away again. And so it begins again. Hopefully this time it will be better.

Summary: They only care about selling