Atrocious, self-serving attitude to consumers returning faulty goods (Maplin)

Member Name: Paul

Product:	Maplin
Date:	07/11/07 (176 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great catalogue; fine customer service when buying products

Disadvantages: Appalling attitude to service when returning a defective one

I can understand the gushing enthusiasm for Maplins from those who have never had to return a defective product.

There is no doubting the depth and breadth of the extensive product range as represented by the comprehensive and well-printed catalogue, which conjures up images of an electronics enthusiast’s Aladdin’s Cave, a whimsical place of difficult-to-find components and unique gadgetry.

I have bought many items from several Maplins stores over the years, from essential connectors and cabling, through planned large purchases to impulse buys from the bargains selections which have included some delightfully tempting offers.

When buying staff members have generally been polite and in some cases even genuinely interested in your purchase and plans for it. However, trying to return a faulty product offers an altogether more unpleasant experience. It is one I shall never repeat.

The entire culture that pervades seems to be best summed up as a haughty cry of “How dare you?!”. Maplins clearly consider that their customers are dishonest and untrustworthy, regardless of their purchase history: it seems a company policy to send an obviously defective unit to their engineers, who will take up to a month to verify it actually is faulty. If it’s something important, well, you’ll just have to buy another one in the meantime. All the while your money earns interest for their organisation.

The whole process has the appearance of having been crafted to hover near the very threshold of legality and to take every possible liberty to the detriment of customers. A request to contact their Head Office was flatly refused, as was a suggestion that simply turning on the item would indicate it was not functioning correctly.

I can only suggest that an atmosphere of paranoia within the organisation has lead them to believe that customers would sabotage fully-functional goods and take them back, hoping for….. them to be replaced with another one? Perhaps they take the view that the procedure of plugging into a wall socket and operating a rocker switch is one fraught with difficulty and that the limited technical know-how of their customers is such that they may have made a mistake. One they can refuse a replacement for.

A manager entered the conversation and from her first sentence was unhelpful and exhibited a degree of rudeness I have never before encountered in any supposed customer service ‘professional’.

There comes to mind a well-known example of a powerful company with a significant market share adopting this type of “Maplin knows best” attitude: in 1994 Intel wanted customers to prove they were important enough to warrant a replacement Pentium CPU - this approach to consumer relations significantly contributed to the present situation in which if you look at the shiny processor sticker on the front of your PC for a moment there is a good chance it says “AMD”.


Ultimately it is entirely up to you whether you choose to risk buying from this organisation or not. If you get a bargain that works correctly for a good price, that’s great. If it doesn’t work you may well see for yourself the other face of Maplins approach to customers …..

Maplin’s offer catalogues now go straight into the bin here and I would suggest that unless you don’t mind this sort of appalling treatment, you follow suit. There are plenty of other online suppliers as well as small electronics businesses which I’m sure would be far more grateful for your custom and are likely to offer vastly superior customer service.

Summary: Easier not to shop at Maplin than endure returning a faulty item