Last Friday I queued up with all the other early adopting Apple fan boys to collect my new 3g iphone on launch day. I took photos of it. I hyped it. I even taught my two year old to say "daddy gotted iPhone" in anticipation of my shiny new toy. As of a short time ago, I no longer have that iPhone and have a ruined credit rating to boot. Here's what happened...
I'd pre-ordered from Carphone Warehouse which, when 02 ran out of stock prior to the launch, still had a few of the 16gb version available. I ordered it and got a confirmation that I'd passed the credit check. Then I got another email, saying they'd run out of stock. A day later, I got yet another email saying that I did in fact manage to secure an iphone and it would be delivered to the branch of Carphone Warehouse at London Bridge Station, as I'd specified.
So on Friday I came in to London early and joined the queue at the shop only to be turned away an hour later when staff told us it was unlikely any of us would be leaving with an iPhone because their system was down.
I went back after lunch and collected my iPhone. They didn't check my ID, ask for me to sign, look at a receipt or anything. I just walked in, told them my name and was handed an iPhone. I took it back to the office and showed it to my envious colleagues. Then I tried to sync it with iTunes which, as those who tried to do the same on Friday know, took many attempts - in my case, several an hour for around 12 hours. Eventually it worked. I registered. I put some of my music from itunes onto the iPhone. I waited patiently for my iPhone to register on 02, the network provider chosen by Apple in the UK.
I waited. And I waited until Sunday when I could wait no more and went into my local branch of Carphone Warehouse where I bought a nice case for my iPhone and asked when it would be online. The member of staff there laughed and said it could be another day or two, such had the problems been on launch day.
On Tuesday, a fully 96 hours after I'd collected my phone, I began to get a bit upset. It still wasn't on the network. I phoned the Carphone Warehouse helpline. The friendly person on the other end asked me my details and found my order but said that, as far as she could tell, it was still open.
I hadn't, from what she could see, collected or paid for my phone.
I explained that I did in fact have it. She phoned someone in their web sales department, then another in their IT department, trying to close the order so that I could get connected to the network. After a while she asked if I'd prefer for her to phone me back. I said yes but, two hours later, still hadn't heard from her and went home for the day.
On Wednesday I phoned again. They tried to do the same as the previous helpline employee and also encountered difficulties. They suggested I take my iPhone to the shop where I'd bought it which, at the end of the day, I did despite realising that I could probably have simply kept the thing without ever paying for it.
On Wednesday evening I spent an hour in Carphone Warehouse at London Bridge Station. The staff were genuinely helpful and here's what they found out:
1. I'd ordered my phone and asked for it to be delivered to one of two Carphone Warehouse outlets at London Bridge listed on the website.
2. That London Bridge shop had actually been closed... more than 3 years ago.
3. The City Link courier knew that the other shop was closed so delivered, as it was on his daily round, my iPhone to the store where I collected it.
4. Only the store that no longer existed could close the order.
The guy in the shop tried to sort it out over the phone and, after an hour, got the store helpline people to cancel my original order. I then went home so it could go through the system.
Today I spoke to the manager. He had the phone transfered into his system, reopened the order, and set everything up so that at lunch all I'd need to do is pop in and confirm my identity using a chip and pin credit card. I did this but it wasn't at all straight forward and what happened next is totally unbelievable.
I could see on his screen that I had passed the credit check done originally. I could also see that there had been a subsequent check made, also passed. I'd asked the manager earlier, and had been assured that, no subsequent credit check would be made on me. For those who aren't familiar with the system, each credit check undertaken actually reduces your credit rating, particularly if you happen to get declined.
I wasn't pleased, but the excitement of my iPhone finally getting onto the phone network - after 6 days - kept me from getting upset.
Then there was some sort of problem with the system so I was asked to do the chip and pin check again, which I did. Again this was fine. He hit some buttons and told me I'd have to have a new sim card. I selected a number from the screen, he put it in the system and hit some buttons. Suddenly there was a problem. He could see the results of the two previous credit checks on screen but the system was telling him to contact Carphone Warehouse because another credit check had been run and I'd failed.
The manager explained this and calmly called the store support line who he spoke with for around half an hour. It transpires that they'd actually run as many as five credit checks on me (he wasn't entirely sure) and that although I'd passed the earlier ones, I'd failed the last one - precisely because they kept running them and, perhaps, because they'd authorised, deauthorised, then authorised my setting up of a new account with 02.
After hanging up the phone, the manager told me that I could, if I want to, go to the Carphone Warehouse and immediately order an iPhone and, because I'd already passed the credit check there, they wouldn't run another one.
Yeah, right.
Then he told me that the phone - the iPhone I'd queued up for and, as far as I knew, had paid for, installed stuff on, put music on, personalised, etc - was in his store's stock. He was very sorry, but he couldn't let me leave the shop with the iPhone because it belonged to Carphone Warehouse, not me.
So I handed it over.
Because of the incompetence of Carphone Warehouse I was given a phone, after quite a long time waiting in queues, that I never should have been given. And because of Apple's incompetence in planning for the sale of millions of the new iPhones, I had to spend hours trying to sync that iPhone. I spent hours then switching the phone on and off hoping that would trigger the network ping from 02 needed to activate it. I moved music, some of it purchased from the iTunes store and thus with DRM which limits the number of devices I can install that content on, over to the iPhone. I spent hours configuring bits and pieces of software, downloading apps (over wifi) and getting to know my new phone. I spent several hours at the Carphone Warehouse store and on the phone trying to sort it out.
Up to that point I didn't have a working phone but at least my credit rating was in tact. Now, because I was honest and took a phone that had been given to me with NO attempt to verify my identity, acquire my signature, or anything else - making it totally untraceable - back to the store beacause I just wanted it to work, I've now come home with NO IPHONE and a RUINED CREDIT RATING.
So thanks Steve for the new iPhone and for choosing as your partners a company that has demonstrated to me over several days and several ways that they are totally and utterly incompetent.
When I finally succumbed to the Apple marketing machine and decided to order an iPhone, there's no way I could have foreseen the 11 day battle against Carphone Warehouse's corporate ineptitude that was to come...
I ordered the iPhone (16Gb in white) through the Carphone Warehouse website on Thursday lunchtime on the 27th November. I decided to request delivery to my local store (Eden Centre in High Wycombe) as I wasn't sure if anyone would be a home when it arrived. I paid the extra £58 for the 16Gb version on my American Express card, the transaction went through and I received a confirmation via email.
So far so good.
4 days later (Monday) I received an email, telling me that the phone would be available for collection from my local store on Tuesday 2nd December. On Tuesday lunchtime I headed off to the store (with my Amex card as per the instructions in the confirmation email) and told the sales guy that I was there to collect an iPhone I ordered online. He took my name, disappeared into the back of the store for a few seconds and when he reappeared, handed me a sealed black plastic bag, branded with the Apple logo. I asked if he needed any ID and he said 'No, just take it away and have fun!'
I got home, unwrapped the phone, popped in the SIM that was in the bag and turned on the phone. It asked me to connect to iTunes and activate the phone. I did that and the phone came up with the message 'Awaiting Activation'.
After a couple of hours I thought I'd call O2 to make sure that I wasn't waiting for something that was never going to happen. They refused to speak to me about any account information because they had no record of my existence. The nice lady did tell me that I shouldn't have been given the phone without going through an identity check and signing an O2 contract.
I headed back into town and into the Carphone Warehouse store. I dealt with another sales guy 'Matt' this time who told me that I needed to complete some 'proofs' on their system to confirm that I was who I claimed to be. The first 'proof' demanded by the system was a £1.00 transaction on the card I used for the original order.
One small problem. I only ever use my Amex card for online transaction and therefore, don't have a PIN for it. We tried a number of different cards but the system demands that the customer uses the card they ordered with. I'm annoyed that the confirmation email only told me to take the card with me to the store and didn't mention that it would be used for a chip & PIN transaction - after all, I've already paid. I head home with an unusable iPhone to order a PIN from Amex.
On Friday lunchtime, I find a voicemail on my home phone from the 'Matt' at the Carphone Warehouse store, telling me that his manager has figured out a way to bypass the system so that I can use a different card and associated PIN. Once again, I drive into town and go back to the store. Same process as before but this time a few more keypresses on the computer and the manager 'Rob' has to enter an authorisation code into the system. Still no good. It's still demanding that I use my Amex card and PIN. The store manager calls his store support line and then speaks to IT for half an hour. Apparently, there's nothing anyone can do if I don't have the PIN. I head home again.
A nice surprise in the post from Amex on Saturday morning - a new PIN! Into town yet again and this time, I'm feeling more optimistic. We go through the 'proofs' process again and this time, when it asks for my card & PIN, I'm ready. Amex card in the slot and a message appears on the display 'please use mag strip reader'. A brief conversation among the store staff and someone remarks that 'Carphone Warehouse stores can't do chip & PIN on American Express'. Great. A phonecall to store support confirms this fact - Carphone Warehouse can't do chip and PIN transaction for American Express cards or cards issued by Nationwide Building Society.
This time, the guys in the store seem to have realised that they could be in serious trouble for giving me the phone without completing the ID checks and getting me to sign a contract so, the sales guys tells me that they'll be keeping the phone. Very politely I inform him that he is sadly mistaken and there's no way they're keeping the phone. Throughout this process the store staff have been telling me that part of the problem is that the phone isn't part of their store stock and I'm not about to give them a phone that they have no record of but for which I'm financially responsible. After a very pointed conversation with 'Rob' the store manager, I go home with the phone.
So, to recap: Carphone Warehouse allowed me to pay for an iPhone on their website, using an American Express card that I would need to use to confirm my identity at the sore using chip & PIN, despite the fact that Carphone Warehouse stores can't process chip & PIN transaction on American Express Cards, thereby making it physically impossible for me to complete the process.
To add insult to injury, they started sending me reminder emails, threatening to cancel the order if I didn't collect the phone within 7 days.
A phonecall to 'Harry' in the 'Tracking Team' at Carphone Warehouse didn't help a great deal - their suggestion was to cancel the transaction and 'do a new order in store'. I would have been more comfortable with that idea if the next phrase I heard wasn't 'But that might trigger a new credit check at O2 and they could well fail you for cancelling the original order'. Great.
I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to get an iPhone (or one that was connected to a mobile network at least) so I decided to take a chance and cancel the order. Off to the store again.
This time things go better. The order is cancelled and 'Rob' the store Manager manages to have the phone transferred to store stock and generates a new order. The original credit check still comes up as valid and the order is accepted. Hooray! I complete the 'proofs' with my Maestro card and sign the O2 contract. 'Rob' tells me that he's 'picked out a nice number for me' and he's right - it's a memorable number printed right there on the contract. I go home with the iPhone and my copy of the contract. Things are looking better.
2 days and 2 phone calls later, the iPhone finally pops up a message saying that it has been activated. I call the number of the contract from my home phone to test it out. Straight to voicemail. Strange. I call my home number from the iPhone and the incoming number is definitely not the one printed on my contract. Another call to O2 and I'm told that the 'nice number' that 'Rob' picked out for me actually belongs to someone else and I've been issued with a different number.
I don't have the strength to argue.
Overall, my iPhone purchase with Carphone Warehouse has been the single most frustrating and disappointing customer experience of my entire life (and I've been with NTL for 7 years!) The whole process was fundamentally flawed from the beginning - it was absolutely impossible for me to successfully complete the original online order due to the complete disconnect between the capabilities of their web ordering system, the processes of their contract system and the deficiencies of their in-store card processing technology. That, along with the many human failures along that way, gives me much cause for concern now that I'm a Carphone Warehouse customer.
I fear the future.
Posted by: Tim Nicholls | 08 December 2008 at 04:31 PM