Hi. I hope you don't mind me asking but was the Manager the Manager of the Phones4U shop, and did the other companies who checked the phone charge you for the service? My sister had a problem with the buttons on her Blackberry (as have other friends and family, apparently). She took it into Phones4U who sent it to Blackberry for repair. She checked with Phones 4U after it being with them for a few weeks, and they said it had come back in (never called her!), but it had water damage and therefore wasn't going to work properly anyway. Apparently, Blackberry had put a new screen on, but had retained her battery! No-one seems willing to listen to her, and although it is only 10 months old, they are making out as though it 'would have happened anyway'. As the phone hasn't been near water (just like yours), and I saw your message, I have a feeling Blackberry is trying to fob everyone off because of their shoddy workmanship on phones that are not 'fit for purpose'. My sister paid £150 for it with money she had for her birthday. She can't afford to just let it go but doesn't know what to do next. She asked to speak to the Manager at Phones4U but a 'supervisor' told her he wasn't there, and he would just tell her the same. I told her NOT to accept it - to go to another store to see if she can get it checked out, and to make a proper appointment with the Manager. Your posting has been most helpful and any other advice would be much appreciated. Unfortunately, I am 250 miles away from her so can't go into the shop or help in any other way other than trying to find out how to get a replacement phone for her.

I will sympathise with anyone who has a contract with phones4u I have a Blackberry the screen went off and it stopped working after 3 months on a 2 year contract, they sent it away for repair and 26 days later as it had to be outsourced to Blackberry it came back as unrepairable water/liquid damage. the phone had not been near any water, I argued the fact out with them in the shop and got nowhere even though I have another two contracts with them, they would not replace the phone, or cancel the contract or negotiate another deal, I went away and got a second opinion from 3 different companies each one of them said their was not any water damage and the phone was repairable. Apparently there are indicators in the phone which show whether the phone has been water damaged and these were fine. I went back with the advice of the other 3 phone companies and spoke to the Manager in the store he spoke to Phones4U customer service, the repair centre and Blackberry - Blackberry advised him that they had never seen the phone even though he had in front of him a repair letter from Blackberry stating the problem.

I must say that ultimately the Manager was in agreement with me and made one phone call to a director at a call centre and within 5 minutes they provided me with a new phone. He was very apologetic at all I had been through and couldn't apologise enough. If you deal with a manager and ask to speak to the Director at the Customer Service Centre hopefully everyone else will have some chance of getting their problems solved.

Hi
I can understand your anger with that company....they have terrible customer service!!!! I had an upgrade with them with i am trying to cancel it for the last 10 days. They totally misinformed me from the day 1 and while i am speaking with them all they can say is "i am sorry but there is nothing we can do". I do have only one advice to give you: Do not accept what they are saying to you and always ask to speak with a manager. Your rights as a customer is to have a proper service and a working mobile. If it is needed tell them that you will ask for legal advice. If i was your position i would go to the their store and i would ask them to call from there the customer service (those phone calls are being charged!! CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!!!). Do not hang up the phone unless you have a solution and don't forget to take the phone call reference number each time you speak with them. The secret is to ask for a manager. Even if they will say to you that the manager will advice you the same thing or that the manager is busy be insist on that. Is funny how after all my conversations they did what i wanted only after insisting speaking with their manager....
Good luck to you
Hope everything will short out soon.

I see im not the only thats having a problem with them. I bought my blackberry curve 8520 from Skegness back inAugust 2010 and a few weeks ago i was experiencing problems with recieving messages, calls and the phone kept freezing which then took a while to then reset and then it was fine for about 2 housr and then it would do it again.
So i went back to phones 4 u in the Mansfield store and they said they couldnt do anything with it and just gave me a number to ring. i told them what was wrong with it and the woman who spoke to me was really awful, saying its my fault and that. They treat the customers like crap!! They told me to ring orange up and talk to the customer service people. I thought that this would be pointless becuase none of them would actually get what was wrong with it. I went into the Orange shop in Mansfield again and they said the exactly same thing.
I just said to my friend whats the point i would get treated much better in Carphone Warehouse. I went into there and explain how unfairly treated i was in both shops and i explained to them what had happened with my phone and they took all my details and then asked me if i wanted my blackberry to be sent off for repair as it was still under the 2 year warranty point. So i got that sent off and i kept using the tracker service to see what had happened with it and yesterday it said on it that they couldnt fix it because of due to the nature of the fault on my device.
I went back into Carphone Warehouse yesterday with my reciept and asked if they coould log in to it and tell me whats wrong with it and they said that phones 4 u have completely blocked it on orange so they cant do anything until i have sorted it out with phones 4 u. Im actually scared of going back into them because i went into Carphone Warehouse just to get some help with it.

Can anyone give me any advice on maybe whats wrong with my phone or how to handle phones 4 u please ??
Im never going back to them ever again now they have messed me around this much

Finding out (a little too late) that Phones 4 U's customer service is about as useful as a mirrored ceiling in a vampire's knocking shop.

At the end of August went into P4U Durham branch (I live in Leicester but was visiting inlaws) to get an Iphone. The guy who i dealt with suggested that i should go with a samsung wave instead - largely the same spec as Iphone 4, but with benefit of upgradeable memory (useful as I have a lot of music). I was told that the app store was new, but that Samsung were adding apps at a rate of 400-500 a week.

Got phone (+ transferred over landline phone / broadband package) - was told that P4U would take care of contacting my existing provider to get this up and running.

Within 2 weeks handset failed (no sound) went in store to the Leicester branch (where i live) - it took them almost 2 hours to get authorisation code for a replacement.

About 2 weeks further down the line, the replacement fails (completely fails, could not be restarted / re-booted etc). Went back into the Leicester branch a bit cheesed off, and unhappy with the phone (only around 10 apps added a week - if lucky - many in foreign language only, GPS only reliable in wi-fi (kind of defeats the object), numerous errors and problems when trying to download apps).

When i asked the staff member to ask for an upgrade to a more stable model ( eg galaxy) she had a half-hearted attempt to ask for this, when their customer service replied no she passed the phone to me to try - the manager had legged it to the back of the store. My wife finally got him to make a call, and all he would say was that his hands were tied, and that they could only replace and not upgrade. Was promised a cheque to cover my costs coming back into the store twice (still hasn't arrived), and have been told that if the phone fails again and is proved to be faulty (ie sent away for failure analysis) then they will consider upgrade.

Have finally decided that the phone is not suitable as an iphone alt - not fit for purpose with only minimal amount of apps added per week + issues mentioned about- currently trying to get them to upgrade, but they are not interested. When i spoke to their customer service and said that their employer had offered this as iphone alt AND made comment about number of apps being added she said that this is the info given by the supplier and not down to them (despite the fact that they use this in their sales pitch).

Just to add insult to injury, received a bill from talktalk (my previous broadband supplier) for payment for October (which would have been after the swtichover that P4U arranged, and a bill from Sky for our new package that includes an additional £40 odd pound which cannot be explained. I now have to go back into the Leicester branch to try and get this sorted. Do not hold out much hope.

i did mention to Vodafone (who the phone contract's with) that P4U's customer service is pretty much non-existent, and their reply was that they had had a number of complaints about this. Not sure if they are doing anything about it.

If anyone has any hints or tips for a happy ending would greatly appreciate it.

what you have just mentioned is detailed in the contract you have signed and would be the same no matter where you got the contract from, be it phones 4 u , car phone or voda itself. To be fair it doesnt always happend, it depends on when you catch the networks billing cycle.

As someone who works in hospitality i know how difficult it can be dealing with customer complaints but god this company is bad. After being completely misled regarding the buyout from my old contract, being fobbed off by the sales consultant in the Reading branch about the T&C's of the company I have got to say this experience has taught me a lot about how much Phones4U value their repeat customers. Apparently although they are regulated by OFCOM due to them being an independent company they are not part of an ADR meaning if they decide a complaint is not worthy that’s the final decision so basically saying we are ok to take your money but tough luck if you have any problems!!!
After complaining to the customer services team within 4 hours of taking out the contract and phoning them repeatedly I was told I would receive a call from one of their management team, well that never happened. Instead they emailed me to say that they had “conducted a full investigation” into the matter and didn’t feel anything was wrong with the sale, surprise surprise!!! They even managed to spectacularly shoot themselves in the foot by saying they had spoken to the manager who was involved in the sale, but if they checked their in store cameras they would have found that I didn’t even deal with him and his elaborate cover up for incompetent staff was completely made up of hot air!!! Although OFCOM do not deal with individual cases I have reported this to them as such a high profile company should not be allowed to get away with ripping its customers off like they have done to me. BEWARE you have been warned!!!!!

i'll be unpopular when for saying is although its the truth in alot ( not all ) cases. The fact is alot of these problems can come from customers, simply not listerning to what we are telling them. ( yes i work for Phones 4 u) . A contract phone is far more complicated than people realise . If your getting overcharged by the network, that isnt phones 4 u. If you dont like the handset or change your mind, want a deal else where. you have NO legal right to bring it back ( unless its online in which case it's 7 days ) . No phone compnay , be it Phones 4 u , Jag, Carphone , Vodafone whatever ( only o2 have a limited returns policy ) will return a phone, it's an industry standard. If you were to return a phone it cannot be re sold, so it's essentially written off, a waste off £400 or similar. The wrong tariff, we recomend a tariff based on the infomation that you give us. The sad fact is that alot of people lie about their avenrage spend, as in they tell us it's lower than it really is , with the thought that, they dont want us to recomend a higher tariff. However 80% of people in the uk go over their tariff, but people insist they 'hardly use ' and want a lower tariff, and then go over it and complain when the bills are higher. Pro rota billing. If you get a contract part way through the month , you only pay part the month and you only get the relevant amount of usage ( eg if you get it a third of the way through the month, you'll only get the remainder of the month in useage ,2/3 ) the network will genrally add it on to the first full month, hence why the first bills are mostly higher. It dpesnt always happend, it depends on the networks billing cycle. Phone repairs, out of all electronic devicesin existence, phones gp wrong the most. However they are used and handled every day , alot of 'faulty ' phones are actually casued by the consumer, alot of the times unawares, but sometimes we get people trying to pull a fast one " oh, i left my phone downstairs and when i came down in the morning, the screen had magically cracked but no one had touched it " ive heard that many times. but the point is alot of the times, damage IS caused by the customer, so if we just swapped it out and sent it back to Nokia or who ever and they turn round and said, " nope, we are not refunding you this as it's water damaged" we would be out of pocket. So we have to send stuff to be looked at to determine what has casued the problem. The repair centre gets paid if it IS a manufacture issue , if it isnt they lose money on couriers, so its in there best interest to fix it. I know Phones 4 u isnt perfect, and some of the issues ive read seem like genuine poor service issues, but some dont, and there are thousands of people who are happy and return year after year

i'll be unpopular when for saying is although its the truth in alot ( not all ) cases. The fact is alot of these problems can come from customers, simply not listerning to what we are telling them. ( yes i work for Phones 4 u) . A contract phone is far more complicated than people realise . If your getting overcharged by the network, that isnt phones 4 u. If you dont like the handset or change your mind, want a deal else where. you have NO legal right to bring it back ( unless its online in which case it's 7 days ) . No phone compnay , be it Phones 4 u , Jag, Carphone , Vodafone whatever ( only o2 have a limited returns policy ) will return a phone, it's an industry standard. If you were to return a phone it cannot be re sold, so it's essentially written off, a waste off £400 or similar. The wrong tariff, we recomend a tariff based on the infomation that you give us. The sad fact is that alot of people lie about their avenrage spend, as in they tell us it's lower than it really is , with the thought that, they dont want us to recomend a higher tariff. However 80% of people in the uk go over their tariff, but people insist they 'hardly use ' and want a lower tariff, and then go over it and complain when the bills are higher. Pro rota billing. If you get a contract part way through the month , you only pay part the month and you only get the relevant amount of usage ( eg if you get it a third of the way through the month, you'll only get the remainder of the month in useage ,2/3 ) the network will genrally add it on to the first full month, hence why the first bills are mostly higher. It dpesnt always happend, it depends on the networks billing cycle. Phone repairs, out of all electronic devicesin existence, phones gp wrong the most. However they are used and handled every day , alot of 'faulty ' phones are actually casued by the consumer, alot of the times unawares, but sometimes we get people trying to pull a fast one " oh, i left my phone downstairs and when i came down in the morning, the screen had magically cracked but no one had touched it " ive heard that many times. but the point is alot of the times, damage IS caused by the customer, so if we just swapped it out and sent it back to Nokia or who ever and they turn round and said, " nope, we are not refunding you this as it's water damaged" we would be out of pocket. So we have to send stuff to be looked at to determine what has casued the problem. The repair centre gets paid if it IS a manufacture issue , if it isnt they lose money on couriers, so its in there best interest to fix it. I know Phones 4 u isnt perfect, and some of the issues ive read seem like genuine poor service issues, but some dont, and there are thousands of people who are happy and return year after year

not only are they all of these things but not all their staff are not honest....i purchased phones for myself and kids and set up contracts.. all good....it took forever but we got there in the end....when my bank statement arrived there was a direct debit for vodaphone that i had not set up ...i went straight to the bank to cancel it...only to be told that id had nearly 500 quid taken on direct debit from my account....how odd???....the only way these details could of been obtained is by someone at phones4u...the bank is now investigating this fraud ..as are vodaphone(they were very helpful)...i reported this to the store manager at phones4u as instructed by the bank he was not in the slightest bit interested...so ive written to their head office and watchdog....grrrrr

BEWARE.

Phones 4 U are con men. They convinced my daughter, who wanted a new phone, to change her old Vodaphone contract for a more expensive one. In under 24 hours she had decided that this was too expensive for her and asked P 4 U to cancel the new contract and she would continue with her existing one. The *** at P 4 U Head Office refused to do this, quoting contract small print of no exchange or refunds. Bottom line is, they are holding her to the new 24 month contract.

It appears that the instont your signature is on that contract there is no way out. My advice to anyone looking for a phone is to go to a service providers outlet(Vodafone, O2, Orange etc,) and not these middle(con)men. No customer care, they just want your money.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, DO NOT EVER GET INVOLVED WITH PHONES 4 U. YOU WILL REGRET IT! THEY ARE MONEY GRABBING LEECHES AND I CAN ONLY HOPE THE COMPANY GOES BELLY UP AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Hi

I too have been tricked by Phone4U. I have been with them for years and consider myself a loyal customer...

Anyway, I went into a store in February to upgrade my phone. I went from Vodafone to Orange. After half an hour or so I was ready to go. I was advised that everything was taken care of, I just needed to go home and use the phone!

Three months later I check my bank account and see that I am being charged for my Vodafone contract still. I immediately cancel the direct debit and go to a different Phones4U store. I explained that I had upgraded and I was still being charged for my old contract and the chap said I should come back with the Vodafone bills and copies of my bank statement just to prove it and if Vodafone won't pay me back then Phones4U definitely would.
I return a week or two later with the copies of my bank statement and bills only to be told that I should go to the Phones4U store where I originally took out the contract . . . So, thats where I go. I see the guy that actually served me the first time and he completely understood my problem and phoned up head office straight away. He said I should go home, wait for the final bill to come through then come back and Phones4U would pay for all of it. I did just that.

I went back there yesterday and spoke to a different guy (the one who was originally dealing with me had left - how convenient) and he also understood my problem. He had a young lady phone head office to explain my situation. She was fairly confident they would re-imburse me the £140. She was on the phone for a good half an hour, in the end I took the phone to speak to them myself. All the lady kept saying was "It is not Phones4U's responsibility," over and over again. I replied "Listen, I've been a customer with you for years, I have a few phones ongoing with you. Do you not value my custom? Does it not mean anything to you that I was ill advised in the first place?" And all she said was "No, I don't care."

HOW RUDE IS THAT?

I was so angry I wanted to hit someone. I ended up putting the phone down and storming out the shop. I went back in and the manager gave me a credit note for the next time I upgrade. As if I'll be upgrading with them again. I am disgusted with Phones4U and I hope members of their staff come on here and read it. YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES. And trust me, I will be telling everyone I know about my experience.

I won't even go into detail about how Vodafone are treating me now.

hey i wondering if u could help me please, just something small. just wondering how to make a insurance claim when i take a insurance from fones for u. :) thnx

tried that one & management are just as unhelpful! you go round in circles

I am sorry. This is nonsense. If the item is faulty it is the retailer of that item who is responsible to the purchaser. It is their legal obligation to provide the buyer with satisfaction and their job to deal with the manufacturer. I am all too aware that in store systems restrict the ability of in store staff to help and for this reason I would agree that there is little point in abusing hapless shop floor staff. HOWEVER the in store systems are not laws of nature or of the land. They are composed by the company so that people like you can say "We cant". Well somebody can. Somebody has authority. It amazes me that your company would, rather than provide a cheap replacement for a cheap and faulty phone , waste expensive man hours trying to wriggle out of responsibilities and generating the terrible publicity as terminally disgruntled customers like me will spread as widely as we can.