Tense tablet stand-off puts customer in a quandary | Consumer queries

Ronan Hughes turns 40 this month, and his wife and two children came up with the idea of getting him a tablet as a present. "I spent about six weeks researching the best tablet I could get in the price range we could afford," he writes. He decided on a Lenovo S8-50, selling for €179 on the Littlewoods Ireland website. "This was on sale and a good price for a good tablet."

In early April he set up a Littlewoods account and ordered the tablet. It arrived less than a week later. “However, when I tried to use it I discovered it was faulty. I phoned Lenovo directly, and their technical team confirmed it was faulty. I then contacted Littlewoods Ireland and their technical team confirmed it was faulty.”

Ronan spent a day on the phone to both teams but neither could get it working. “I was gutted.” So he emailed Littlewoods Ireland, outlined the problem and asked how to return the tablet and when he could expect to receive a replacement.

“I received a generic reply confirming they had received my email and telling me they’d get back to me. The next email I received said that because my mail was about a faulty item they would forward it to the technical team, who could take up to three days to reply. I outlined my unhappiness as I have already dealt with their technical department.”

Then he was told his mail would be sent to the customer service after-sales team, “who may take five days to reply”.

So Ronan called Littlewoods Ireland and was told it didn’t do replacements for faulty items. “And I would have to re-order the item and they would refund the original cost when they received the faulty item.

“I argued with them on this but there was no budging. I agreed to pay again and re-order. Then they told me the price had gone up to €209 and I would have to pay the increased price and ask for the difference to be refunded after I received the tablet. Under protest I agreed to do this.”

He was passed to the technical team, which arranged for the faulty tablet’s collection by courier on a certain day. “I waited all day but there was no collection of the faulty tablet. I rang Littlewoods Ireland again. The agent said the technical team did not fill out the form for the collection correctly and told me it would now be collected the following Wednesday.”

He waited again, and again there was no collection. So he called Littlewoods again and was told collection would now definitely take place the following Monday, and that the new tablet would arrive on the Friday before that. It didn’t, and when he rang he was told it would take 14 days.

The broken tablet was not collected on the Monday either. He spoke to the “Customer Excellence Team” in Bolton. They apologised and agreed to investigate the whereabouts of the courier and his new tablet.

Ronan was then told he had been refunded €179 for the faulty item and the merchandise team had been contacted to find out where his new order was.

Another week passed. Still no tablet. He was then told the tablet couldn’t be shipped to Ireland because of the attached battery.

“I replied that this was a load of rubbish as they have already sent me one (albeit faulty).”

Another week passed and he received the following mail: "I am emailing concerning the problems that you have experienced with your order from Littlewoodsireland.ie. Once again please accept my apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Further to my investigation, I can confirm that the item Lenovo S8-50 Intel Atom 2GB 16GB has been returned back to us, this due to a system error that we are experiencing at the moment."

Ronan was then told he would have to re-order it and pay for it a third time. At this point he contacted us.

We contacted Littlewoods Ireland. A spokeswoman said that an investigation into what had gone wrong has been launched at the highest level within the company, and we were assured that our reader’s experience was both “completely unacceptable” and a “one-off”. The spokeswoman said he would have his tablet delivered tomorrow.

Gotta get a ruler to the Gateaux cake

Fintan Farrell bought a Gateaux Pineapple Log recently and “was slightly shocked when I saw the amount of cake in the box when I opened it.”

He was so shocked, in fact, that he took out his ruler.

“The dimensions of the box were 22.5cm x 8.5cm x 6.5cm = 1,243cm3. The dimensions of the cake were 18cm x 6.5cm x 5cm = 585cm3. That means that there was 53 per cent fresh air in the box and 47 per cent cake. Is this a record?”

We contacted Gateaux to ask if it was misleading people with its big box and small cake. The company said the weight of its cake products “are consistent with the stated weight on the packaging, however, as a natural product and depending on how the cake rises during baking, the density of each sponge cake may vary ever so slightly, causing a change in size.

“To help ensure that each cake is as fresh as possible, it is first packed in a flow wrap film before being inserted into the box. This process traps some air in the flow wrap, forming a pillow effect. The box therefore needs to be big enough to accommodate the cake and its packaging. Over time, the air in the flow wrap will naturally dissipate. Once the box is opened, it can then appear bigger than it needs to be for the cake.”