Warning – Steer clear of CEX!

SUCCESS(ish) – Thanks to Bill’s comment making me aware of Richard’s little double negative hiccup We have managed to get him to agree to exchange the disk for us. The bad news, however, is that Craig had already gone and bought a new copy from GameStation at £12.99 so all we are going to be able to do with the CEX copy is sell it somewhere in hopes of making about £5 back from it! But, even though we are out-of-pocket, this was a matter of principle. The last email from We(don’t)care was rather interesting though. See for yourself:

“Can you pop back and see Kris – he’ll swap the game over for you. Make sure you’re happy with it before leaving, to avoid any further unpleasantness!”

Firstly, there has been no apology for causing us such inconvenience and, more worryingly, CEX like using terms such as incident and unpleasantness. Now what is worrying about this is that there was no ‘incident’ as he put it – when Craig tried to return the disk and couldn’t, he asked to speak to the manager and explained that he was less than happy about the situation. That is called a normal complaint, not an incident. Doesn’t this reply make you wonder what sort of ‘unpleasantness’ there may be if there is a problem with the disk they exchange it for? If you refer to a normal complaint from a customer who has received very substandard service as unpleasantness, doesn’t it imply that you should have never complained in the first place?
Even though – regardless of the outcome of our complaint to Richard – we would have never stepped foot inside CEX again, the way in which we have been treated by both staff and customer service means that I am going to be taking this further. No one deserves to have to be made to feel like a criminal and trouble maker by a shop that sells you damaged goods.

Things that other people have had to say about CEX:

http://www.trustpilot.co.uk/review/www.cex.co.uk

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Reviews/CEX_Shop__5613013/Start/15

UPDATE – We got a reply from Richard at the CEX We(don’t)care team:

“Thanks for emailing in.

I discussed this issue with the store manager shortly after the incident, and he was quite clear that it is highly unlikely that the disk was not sold in the condition it was returned in.

At this point, may I ask for the receipt order number, and your membership number?”

Is it just me or does a complaint normally get answered with at least the standard ‘we are sorry to hear you feel you have had a bad experience’ type comment?

Anyway, I have sent Richard our receipt number and my membership number (even though membership is for selling, not buying, and had nothing to do with this transaction) and we shall have to see what they have to say to my reply:

“However ‘unlikely’ the condition of the disk upon it being sold to us, we are quite clear that the fact still remains that it was sold to us in a damaged and non-working condition and we did not see Michael D check the disk. We are more than a little concerned over the reviews (which I am sure you are aware of) about CEX’s poor standard of returning faulty items and dealing with complaints.”

Wish us luck!!

18/06/2011

You’d be smart to avoid CEX like the plague.

Try to return a faulty item to the CEX store (Plymouth) and you may well be accused of trying to pull a fast one. How do I know? Because that’s exactly what happened to us.

Craig was looking forward to playing WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 2010 for the XBox 360, only to find that the disk he bought from CEX was cracked and didn’t work. The last thing that you expect to be told when you ask for an exchange on a £10 purchase is that you probably just replaced the disk with a cracked one with the intention of ripping them off. Apparently, there is no way for them to sell a physically damaged disk because all stock is checked for quality on the way in and out of the store (unless the assistant is so busy chatting to his colleague that he doesn’t even bother checking.)

Unfortunately for customers, the company has no contact telephone number so your choices are either to argue it out with the manager (no luck there) or email them via their website, which I did today. I don’t hold out too much hope, though, after reading about the experiences of numerous *ex* customers who also warn that CEX are not fans of returning faulty goods and do little, if anything, to resolve complaints.

I’ll post an update as to what fate has been decided for our £10 when I get a reply. I have always wanted to complain about something to Watchdog and perhaps, depending on the outcome, this will give me a good excuse!

Check out Bill Bennett‘s review of his online experience with CEX (Webuy.com). If you have had any bad experiences with CEX post them in the comments section below.