Maplins CD-Rs/ Office of Director of Consumer Affairs

dod

Below the text of a letter I sent today to the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs on a batch of bad CD-Rs I got from Maplins in Jervis Street recently. Some formatting is obviously lost here.

---

Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs
4 Harcourt Road
Dublin 2
(by email)

<my name and address removed/>

September 8 2003

Re: Maplin Electronics Ltd., Units 1-4 The Smyths Building, Jervis St., Dublin 1

Copies:
Dermot Jewell, The Consumer Association of Ireland (by email)
Maplin Customer Services (by email)
Boards.ie Technology Forum

Dear Sir or Madam,

On August 8th last I purchased a pack of 100 CD-Rs for €61.99 from Maplins Electronics. Their purpose was to permit the ongoing backup of substantial work from my PC.

Out of the first ten CD-Rs from the pack of 100, eight were faulty- the data, once copied to the CD-R could not subsequently be accessed. Once the first CD failed, I incrementally adjusted a number of the variables that might affect the copy quality :
· the PC was rebooted lest there were any conflicting applications
· the copying speed was reduced (from 12x to 1x)
· different copying software was used (Roxio and Nero)
· the backup was conducted from another PC lest there were a hardware problem

Out of ten CD-Rs, only two resulted in copies whose data could subsequently be accessed. I believe that I had done everything that I could reasonably be expected to do in order to confirm that the problem was with the CD-Rs as opposed to some other problem. I believe that eight out of ten CDs was an excessive failure rate under any circumstances, and certainly unacceptable given the critical nature of the backups for which they were to be engaged.

This morning (September 8th) I returned to the store with the remaining CD-Rs from the batch of 100 and with my receipt. I explained the problem as above, and asked for a refund. Quite reasonably, the manager, an Arthur Moore, took the CD-Rs upstairs to examine them and returned announcing that the CD-Rs were fine as he had copied some information onto one of them. Having already explained the problem, I asked if he thought that a failure rate of eight out of ten was acceptable, and he said that he could not give me a refund as there were too many variables that could affect the outcome of the copying process. I patiently explained to him that, as a technology literate professional, I was aware of this fact and had done everything reasonable to confirm that it was the CD-Rs that were at fault. He repeated that he could not give me a refund as there were too many variables that could affect the outcome of the copying process.

Whilst I appreciate that there may well be store policies and so forth in place, I had to leave the store without any satisfaction. I am clearly not going to entrust my backups to a set of flawed CD-Rs, and it would appear that Maplins are unwilling to give me any satisfaction for the problematic goods.

I am most unhappy about this situation, and at the very least, I will not be shopping in Maplins again.

Yours Faithfully,


<my name removed/>

tman

what brand of cdr were they?
if you're backing up important data you should only really use something in the league as verbatim datalife plus

ixoy

Just to let you know, it happened to me as well. I bought a cake wheel - TDK I think. A number in a row were corrupted and I brought them back to Maplin. Had tried other things but no, it didn't work. They also went up, came back and said they could write and read to and from the disc so, y'know, could I go away. I kinda asked for a replacement set because wasn't believing them and they wouldn't on the grounds it would disrupt their stock :mad:

Anyway, the rest of the batch had a few more faulty ones but I struggled through them. I clearly didn't learn my lesson because I bought my next batch from there but they seem pretty fine for now...

daveg

Next time buy from SVP communications (UK). If you buy a faulty disc they will arrange collection/refund postage (thats right even for 1 faulty disc).

I recently bought a 50 pack of DVD-R's. A good few were faulty (could have been my burner). They posted out a selection (3) of DVD-R's (One of them was TDK which costs £5.00) FOR FREE to check my burner was ok. They then arranged a currier to pick up faulty discs and posted out a different brand (of my choice but of equal value).

Just goes to show the difference between Irish rip off merchants and UK/On line companies.

dudara

that's excellent customer service, in a way it doesn't matter how much things cost, if you get that level of customer care.

A friend of mine swears by blankshop.com, but I don't know any more.

DMT

ODCA will no doubt prove useless. A trip to the small claims court would do you better. Give them a fiver* and they'll sort everything out for ye.



* It used to be a fiver a few years ago before the euro - don't know how much it is now....

dod

OK to bring you up to date, I got my money back from Maplins today after a little to-ing and fro-ing. I am going to post the correspondence here lest anyone else benefit from what I learnt.

If anyone is interested in the sites and email addresses, they are:

Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs: http://www.odca.ie , Email: odca@entemp.ie

Consumers Association of Ireland: http://www.consumerassociation.ie, Email: dermott.jewell@consumerassociation.ie

dod

Date: 09/09/03
Subject: reply from consumer affairs
From: fiona_t_gallagher@entemp.ie

Dear <my name removed>,

Thank you for your e-mail, concerning CD-R's you bought from Maplin's
Electronic's Ltd.

The role of the office of Consumer Affairs (ODCA) is to give information
and guidance to consumers on their statutory rights. ODCA does not
intervene or become involved in individual issues or disputes between
consumers and sellers of goods or services providers.

I wish to advise that the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act, 1980
gives various rights to consumers, in particular, that:

· Goods should be of merchantable quality, that is fit for their
purpose and reasonably durable quality.

Where these conditions are not met, you may be entitled to a repair,
replacement or refund.

I would point out that disputes involving the quality of goods and
services are matters of civil law, and, as such, must be resolved by the
parties themselves, if necessary by recourse to the courts.

In this regard, the small claims procedure is a special mechanism for
dealing with small claims within the District Court structure and is
designed to handle consumer claims speedily, cheaply and informally
without involving a solicitor. Claims involving amounts up to €1,269.74
may be dealt with through this procedure and details of the District
Court offices and Small Claims Registrars are given in the telephone
book. Applications forms can be downloaded from the Courts Service
website www.courts.ie


For more information on your rights as a consumer all our publications
can be viewed on our website at www.odca.ie

I hope that you find this information helpful.

Yours sincerely,

Fiona Gallagher,
Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs.

dod

Having sent the original letter to the ODCA and copied it to maplins customer service on Sept 8th, I had received only a reply from the ODCA by Sept 16th. I followed up with the email below to Maplins Customer Service:

Subject: Maplin Electronics Dublin CD-R problem - Court Action
Date: 16/09/2003 08:16
To: customer.services@maplin.co.uk


Dear Sir or Madam,

On September 8th I copied to you (at this address, customer.services@maplin.co.uk) a letter which I sent to the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs in Ireland in respect of a batch of problematic CD-Rs which I had bought in Maplins Electronics Dublin. I once again attach a copy of this letter for your reference.

As I have subsequently had no response from Maplins in respect of my complaint, I feel it is appropriate to inform you that, in the absence of a satisfactory response from you prior to Monday 22nd September 2003, it is my intention to initiate a case to secure a full reimbursement of the cost of these CD-Rs (€61.99) in the Small Claims Court in Dublin.


Yours Faithfully,
<my name removed>

dod

Subsequent to this email to Maplins Customer Service, I got a call from Jayne Aitken in the UK On Friday September 19th asking me to explain the sequence of events. I basically repeated them as they were in the original letter (the first post above). She asked if I would give her the time to investigate it from her side and that she would get back to me on Monday September 22nd. No problem at all, I said.

Up until this morning, Thursday 25th September, I heard nothing. Then I sent her this email:

Subject: Re: Maplin Electronics - Dublin
Date: 25/09/03
To: Jayne.Aitken@maplin.co.uk

Dear Jayne,

You were going to ring me on Monday and let me know how things stood on the issue concerning my purchase of CD-Rs from Maplins in Dublin. Perhaps when you have a moment you would phone or email me that we might bring this matter to a conclusion.

Regards,
<my name removed>

---

This reply came through this afternoon:

Subject: RE: Maplin Electronics - Dublin
Date: 25/09/03
From: Jayne.Aitken@maplin.co.uk

Dear <my name removed>

I have been in contact with our Dublin Store and they advised they would
deal with the matter direct, please advise when they have contacted and I
hope the situation we will be resolved to a satisfactory conclusion.

Regards

Jayne Aitken
Call Centre Sales Manager

dod

Finally, I got a call this afternoon from Arthur Moore of the Dublin Maplin store (he with whom I had had the initial confrontation) asking me to come in and they would exchange the batch of CDs. I explained that I had arranged with Jayne for a refund to be made, to which arrangement he immediately acquiesced. Could I come into the store and bring the receipt and the remaining CDs please?

So I brought the remaining CDs in, they took them and the receipt. He asked for my Credit Card (with which I had originally paid for the CDs) and refunded the full €61.99 back to it.

I was entirely satisfied with this. Perhaps it did take a little longer than it should have, but it was worth going through the ODCA and Maplins Customer Service department and getting a satisfactory resolution rather than accepting extremely poor customer service.

So don't put up with bad service - there is an alternative!

STaN

Nice going dod, it only took a few weeks.

I had a similar experience with those spindal CDR's. But i got them for €20 on special offer so wasn't too pushed that now and again some didnt work.

Maplin staff don't have a clue imo

CombatCow

Thats a good outcome,btw peats have 100 cd spindal of verbatim cd-r's( excellent ) for only 39.99,if your intrested.;)

CombatCow

unkel

Originally posted by dod
Perhaps it did take a little longer than it should have, but it was worth going through the ODCA

The letter to the ODCA seems to have triggered Maplins reaction to refund you. Will remember that in case something like that happens to me

Nice one dod