Don't Think. Feel. (boxclever)

Member Name: SlyClone2k

Product:	boxclever
Date:	12/03/03 (1372 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good service, polite customer handling

Disadvantages: 18 month minimum contracts.

I'd been walking around a week saying, "Yeah I've got my TV from Box Fresh. They're really good." But, in fact far from providing TV sets, they actually produce men's apparel, that's mens clothing to you and I! So who was it, exactly, that I'd got my television from? Turns out it was Boxclever. Great name for a company, thought I after hunting them down and its here, at the end (well almost) my story begins.

It was many moons ago (as far as waxing and waning is concerned probably about 48 or 4 years) that I first required the rental of appliances for the purpose of exploitation. That is to say that I required a telly, video, fridge and washing machine as the flat I was about to move in to had none, and I, being the worlds poorest credit scorer, had no chance of getting them on hire purchase.

So there I was, all ready to hand over £55 a month for a 24" TV, video, fridge freezer and washing machine to ensure maximum necessity/luxury in my new apartment. I was well furbished, apart from not having any heating for a few weeks. Well furbished by a company previously known as Prince. Actually that, whilst being an extremely poor joke is also a lie. They were, in fact, known as DER. I guessed it was an acronym (I don?t think I live in a world where there enough acronyms, I'd like to set up the Campaign of Publicly Utilised Lively Acronym Titular Enjoyment. I'm sure that'd be a nice acronym in its own right, but since I have no idea how acronyms are formed I?m not going to try it). For Direct Electrical Rentals.

Anyway. I got my appliances and for a while everything was cool. The flat was cool. The appliances were cool. I was cool and my missus was, also, cool. Cool. But then things became less cool. The neighbours became increasingly noisy and our location became less desirable. So we vanished in to the night never to return. Or, that is to say, we simply moved to a new home. Other events meant

that we?d also collected white goods and needed t
o relinquish ourselves of the rentals. So instead of having a multitude of appliances I was left with a telly. A smallish TV it seemed when placed into the vast open space my new living room provided. So I upgraded my telly (still with the same firm; D.E.R) to a lovely 28" widescreen that say happily in the corner and provided viewing pleasure to me.

Now it was sometime later (just toward the end of last year) that the TV began to go on the blink, a problem with the tube meant a large portion of the left of the screen was an odd purple colour. Now this is exactly the reason I rent a television at all. They are so prone to going belly up.

It took some searching but eventually it turned out the company I had been renting from had been bought out or merged with Radio Rentals and Boxclever. Boxclever do thankfully have a website. A welcome addition as the old method of phoning and asking what they have. This did mean a horrible wait until the day to see if the appliance was right for you or not. Now a few simple clicks and you can choose your appliance as required.

An easy to navigate service allows you to choose between Product Type, Manufacturer and Price. The search results provide a clean easy way to determine what you want, with the product being profiled with a wonderful photo and a fully detailed specification. Boxclever can be used to obtain a variety of Audio-Visual equipment including DVD players (as little as £2.31 a week), video recorders (from £1.85 a week), Home Theatre systems (surround sound kits and television) and Sky systems.

After having to do a little searching for a number for D.E.R. (I can't remember how I found out about them to start with) I finally uncovered a number that led me to the company who now provide the service. Despite having called the wrong number, I actually spoke to their finance department who were all extremely polite, I fin
ally came
to the Boxclever customer support services number.

Although I have an existing contract with them I had no idea of my account number and rather than get abuse, as has been known with one particular firm (mentioning no British G's), they simply found my account via my post code. Confirmed what I had and asked me how they could help.

Now I was contemplating getting a larger TV. or looking at knocking a bit of the price of my existing one. As I said earlier I have a quite large widescreen TV for the extremely satisfying rate of £19.90 a month. A look at the website uncovered that this is extremely competitive, as my TV rental is set at £27.99. See why later.

Anyway, I arranged to get a new TV and despite being advised that no televisions were available and it might take a couple of weeks to locate one I would surely soon have a new television. Fortunately I wasn't in too great a hurry. However, later that day I received a call from the same customer representative (I do like continuity) and advised a new telly would be at my house on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning rolls around, and I, moving someone else from their home this time, wasn't available to take delivery. However Christine was. She describes the delivery man as a sweaty smelly lecherous man and his partner. They were, apparently, rather rude and not particularly helpful. Which caused Christine some consternation as the back of our television is a mass of wires and leads and she spent some time (me elsewhere) in a land without television. Oh the inhumanity! Now I have to say I would happily install my telly, but D.E.R used to INSIST on offering this service. Not only building the stand from scratch but also tuning the TV in (pre scart days!), and I would have expected Boxclever to do the same. Perhaps these two particular gentlemen were not the norm. It's difficult to know.

Anyway, we've had the television nearly a fortnight
and there appear to be a few teething problems.

One: We notice the television is not
new.
Two: A few technical faults. Delivery man breaks front cover of TV. AV2 (one of the important scart sockets) will only play a fuzzy image. Sound fluctuates between VERY LOUD and oh so quiet. TV case seems to give off the occasional CRACK sound.

I call customer services once again and say I'd like a new TV as I don?t think the one we have works correctly. I explain the first issue, TV not new. Well it seems Boxclever provide a service known as "Returns" where by you can rent a piece of kit for slightly less based on the fact that someone else once had it. So rather than pay £28 for a brand new box I pay £20 for a not so new one that looks as good as. I'm not sure if this feature is immediately available to a customer, or whether you have to wait until you've been with them for a bit.

The second issue(s), prompting a greater displeasure, made me believe I'd better request a new television. They are getting smart at Boxclever. It seems they now have engineers, and we had one booked out to come and see us. I'd expected it to be a few days, but in fact we could have had an engineer out that very afternoon had I wanted one, that's what I call service. As is often the case with these things we weren't going to be available until Saturday so had one booked for that morning. He arrived at 9:20 and had sorted out the issue with the AV2 socket by the time I'd got downstairs. He quickly spirited away the other issues, advising us not to use Auto-Volume and telling us the cracking was a sort of settlement noise. He also ordered us a new front cover that arrived in Tuesdays post. On the whole a very good service.

Boxclever have 150 stores across the country. I hadn't ever seen one (possibly as Radio Rentals, Granada and D.E.R are recent purchase by the big umbrella) but a store locater on the website
indicates my nearest shop is actua
lly Bletchley, and failing that Bedford. Not bad for a Milton Keynes man, but given that the phone support is so good I doubt I'd ever need to visit either.

It seems a shame that I can't acquire white goods anymore, but that might mean contacting a different part of Boxclever, called something hilarious like "Cwazy Woys Washers and Wifidegeration (though I don't suppose he'd refrigerate wives, and there in I suspect lies the false advertising claim for some poor put upon husband.)

Well I'm just rambling now so I'll wrap it up with Boxclever, great telephone service, not so great delivery-man service, great engineer service. Polite, prompt and something else that begins with p.

One moment of warning: 18 month minimum contract. Renewed with any piece of kit you obtain.

Summary: