I know to what you are reffering, but im sorry to say that you are wrong about a couple of things, let me clear up what it is. The insurance comapy we use exclusivley is P.A.S. ( policy admin services ) . Now bear with me if you will, when you take out a contract from phones for you we accually provide you with a letter warning customers about fraudulent insurance companies doing exactly what you have descibed. It tends to happen more ( but not soley ) with vodafone. The way the fraudsters works is as follows. When you purchase a phone , from voda if it's a new connection ie a new number you will be presented with a screen of which you can select a number. Now these numbers are produced numerically ( this is important, i shall explain why in a mo ) . So you choose your number , say for example you chose a number that ended 1234. What happens is these fraudulent companies buy a voda contract and ar allocated a number just like everyone else, the imporant thing is with this number they just inrease th numerical digits knowing that these numbers are all phones that are being recently connected , then what they do is phone the number up , knowing they are phoning a brand new connection and will claim to be either phones 4 u , pas, or the network and say something like " this is phones 4 u , we have checked our records and we can save you money on your insurance, if you could just confirm you bank details etc" They get all the infomation they need, and bam they take money out of your account . This in no way benefits phones 4 u, its costs the company money as customers are sometimes told to cancel the direct debit of their genuine insurance. Pas and the police have been involved in shutting these operations down, but it just tends to be a guy in an office, so they do tend to spring back up. It causes us trouble instore obviously because customers come in about it. When you buy a contract with us and if it has insurance , our contract automatically print out a letter purley about the problem, althouigh personally i think alot of people dont look at it. For my store personally i do point it out and tell customers to read it. However we have no other way to stop it from happening. One last thing, i have spoke to customers who have been called but whom have read the letter or been pre warned and they have told me that when they get a call, they have said to the fraudulent companies they have been pre warned against them , the people on the phone sometimes get very abusive , typical of the criminla scum they are.

To LS84, ive misread your post, you are acually saying the same points as i raised not in disagreement with me , sorry!!!! my bad

Had absolutely shocking service from phones4u
Sent my Sony Ericsson handset off for repairs (minor - the keys had cracked on the keypad) on 16th Novemeber 2007
It is now 28th April 2008 and I STILL have not recieved anything back
After numerous calls (for which they charge you - its not a free-phone number), I was told it would be sent out in the next two weeks. I never received it.
This happened at least 4 times before I wrote to them complaining and listing the cost of all my calls.
They offered me £20 for my troubles (NOT enough for going phone-less for over 5 months) and to refund the cost of my calls, and to send my phone again.
This was STILL not recieved, and I got my dad to phone them up to complain further,
After finally saying they would re-send the phone and cheque, I got a call three days later to say they didn't even have my phone model in stock, and didn't know when they would even get any in. They did offer me alternative models, but none were Sony Ericssons, and I didn't like any of them.
Despite being able to purchase the Sony model I wanted on their website, they insisted they could not send me one.
I asked if I could just cancel everything - cancel my contract and go somewhere else. They said no (I wasn't really expecting to be able to cancel my contract without paying up anyway) and I asked if there was anything they could do as I was sick of waiting, and 5 months is just appalling. They just offered me the handsets again, being very unhelpful and not offering any advice.
Eventually I cut my losses and took one of the handsets they were offering, despite having said many, many times to them that the Sony Ericsson I had before was the main reason for getting the contract. They refused to order one in for me, saying only that they had no idea when they'd next get a delivery of them.
Sick, sick, sick of being messed around by phones4u, never going there again!!

I work for Phones4U and am not "ignorant, unsympathetic, arrogant, annoying, unhelpful", sorry but just because you didn't get things going your way isnt our fault.

Do I agree with the phone repair procedure? No. Can I do anything about it? No.

Does it take along time? Yes. Do we produce phones at the back of the store with little elves and dwarves? No. We are the middle men, the network have a tight control with what we do.

The insurance, everything has an excess....its logic...your phone is likely to be stolen within the 4months of you buying it. I dont know about anyone else that works for phones4u but with PAYG phones, i give my customers free insurance to make up for the excess.

If you still want to flame on, then all i can say is, suck it up and dont be bitter and tell me if you get better service in the same scenario with another phone, i can gurantee you will have the same issue.