“I am truly at my wits’ end”, begins a mail from a reader by the name of Joanne, “dealing with a shocking case of consumer mishandling [and] administrative incompetence ... by Currys Ireland.”
She says that even though her brand-new American-style fridge-freezer stopped working within days of delivery, she was effectively cast adrift by the retailer and “left without a functional kitchen appliance for over two months”.
She also says she has been “subjected to false accusations of lying, mismatched customer files and blatant stonewalling”.
And, as if all this wasn’t bad enough – and at the outset it seems pretty bad to us – when she emailed Currys “outlining these facts, I just received an automated response stating that my case has been ‘closed and cannot be reopened, as it has been resolved for more than 10 days.’ Nothing has been resolved at all; they are simply using automated system closures to block customers from holding them accountable.”
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So, what are we talking about here?
Well, on July 3rd of this year Joanne had an American-style Beko fridge-freezer delivered to her home in the west of Ireland.
On July 16th, 13 days later, she “logged a formal complaint with Currys reporting a major fault”.
The problem, she says, was her fridge was not behaving as a fridge should. The main fridge section “completely failed to cool while the freezer section iced up, ruining all our food”, she writes.
She says that on August 4th, with still no working fridge in her home, because of “Currys’ failure to act promptly or take responsibility, I was forced to bypass their stonewalling and independently organise an engineer visit via the manufacturer’s guarantee. The authorised engineer inspected the unit, confirmed it was entirely faulty and issued an official uplift number, which was immediately handed over to Currys.”
Joanne thought she was making progress and was no doubt looking forward to having a working fridge again.
But a week later she heard from a Currys customer service agent. “They emailed to falsely claim the item was ‘outside of our returns policy’, attempting to shift blame for their own administrative delays. Furthermore, during phone follow-ups around this time, a customer service representative explicitly accused me of lying, claiming I had never phoned Currys previously despite multiple calls on different occasions.”
On August 23rd she got what she describes as “another bizarrely botched email addressed to Stella regarding the collection of a cooker”.
At the risk of stating the obvious here, we should recap that Joanne is our reader’s name, not Stella, and a fridge was the problem, not a cooker. Joanne suggests this highlights how the Currys “customer files were in complete chaos”.
We don’t know about that but they definitely did send her a mail clearly intended for someone else.
We can only hope that poor Stella has had her cooker problem sorted by now.
Anyway, back to the story. On September 10th, “following complete radio silence from Currys”, Joanne “checked their website and discovered that my exact model is now officially listed as ‘No Longer Available’.” She then received “their automated email closing the case under the false claim that it was resolved”.
She says: “Despite having an official engineer’s report and uplift number for a major defect reported well within my statutory rights, Currys has left me indefinitely without a fridge-freezer, offering no resolution while stock is unavailable, and locking me out of my case file. My original complaint was logged with the CCPC [Competition and Consumer Protection Commission], but I am at my absolute wits’ end and would be so grateful for any advice or intervention you can offer regarding how to hold major retailers accountable when they completely abandon their obligations under the Consumer Rights Act 2018.”
As well as hearing from Joanne, we heard from Jean, who was also having a terrible time with a kitchen appliance bought in Currys.
“I bought a Hisense double oven on November 21st, 2025, along with the Currys insurance care package,” she says.
The new cooker was delivered at the start of December but she did not get to use it in the early stages due to the death of a family member and a resultant trip to the UK.
Eventually she got to use her cooker.
“My previous oven was a gas oven [and] this one was electric so I wasn’t really sure if the noise and condensation was normal,” she says. “It was my friend who pointed out to me that it’s not normal. I eventually got around to reporting the issue on June 13th and was given a number to call on June 21st.”
Between summer holidays and all the rest she didn’t get round to making the call until August 18th.
She spoke to repair people who asked her to send videos and pictures of the problem.
“He said that someone from the service desk would be in touch within 24-48 hours. Nobody contacted me. By August 21st I emailed again saying nobody has contacted me but got no response. On August 27th I got a phone call from a UK number asking if I had been contacted by the engineer. I said no and he said he would get someone to call me.”
There was no follow-up call.
“I emailed again on August 31st and on September 1st I was told they were investigating the holdup. I called Hisense support and was told they would look into it further. By the end of the day on September 7th there was still no contact, so I emailed Hisense again but got no reply.”
Then, on September 9th, Jean went to the Blanchardstown store where she had bought the oven. “A very helpful staff member there called Hisense on my behalf and spoke with a lady who said she would follow up and either call or email me later that day with an update.”
The update she got said this:
“We just heard from the management of our service partner and they’ve advised us that they have been having issues with the engineer on their side as well. Essentially, they’re having a hard time getting a hold of him. We’re still on it, we’ll be rectifying this soon hopefully. Just wanted to let you know that both managements have been involved.
“Thank you for your patience so much, I’ll keep updating you as soon as there’s more. Hopefully we’ll have a proper date soon and you get a phone call from the engineer.”
Jean responded to say the situation was urgent as there was “excessive condensation dripping down my kitchen cabinet and under the oven”. She said that it was “a newly fitted kitchen and it will get destroyed if this continues”.
There was no response to that email.
She emailed again on September 10th “stating there is still no contact from anyone or update so I’m requesting a refund and collection be arranged. As yet there is no response to that email either. What can I do? The oven works technically but I can’t use it because of the water that just pours from it. I told Hisense this too, that we’re a family of eight and I really need a functioning oven.”
She says she paid €80 extra for the Currys care package “but because the oven isn’t broken or damaged they won’t do anything. The fault has to be rectified by Hisense but it is taking a ridiculous amount of time and effort to get a call from an engineer never mind date to call out”.
She went back to the Blanchardstown store on September 15th and once again the helpful staff member tried to contact Hisense.
Contact could not be made, so Currys in Blanchardstown “decided I should be refunded for the oven. I picked a different oven, which was the same price on the website but I bought the Hisense in November and it was €429.99 then. Now it is €549.99, same price as the AEG oven I picked. But as I bought at the lower price in November I needed to pay an extra €120 plus another €80 for product insurance.”
She says the helpful staff member “did organise free delivery and installation for me plus removal of the Hisense oven. The AEG oven is not in stock so I’ve to go back over on September 25th with my receipt to arrange a delivery date.”
By this time we had also contacted Currys.
But before we get into that it is worth pointing out that Jean’s contract was not with Hisense. It was with Currys. And therefore, the retailer had a legal obligation from the very start to resolve the issue. Jean was of course perfectly within her rights to make contact with the manufacturer but the bottom line is it was Currys’ problem to fix.
Anyway, after we contacted Currys about Jean’s story and after she had been in the store and paid the extra cash for her new oven, she heard directly from Currys in the UK. “They were asking about the issues and has the problem been resolved. I explained all of what the helpful staff member in the Blanchardstown branch did,” Jean said by way of a follow-up. “He then said as a goodwill gesture they will have someone from their finance department give me a call and arrange a refund for the €120 that I needed to pay for the replacement. He also expressed his apologies and [said] that is not the service they wish to provide their customers and they will be contacting Hisense about their level of customer service.”
We contacted Currys about both these issues.
“Currys has sincerely apologised to both customers for the frustration and inconvenience they experienced.
“We recognise that the service they received fell short of the standard we expect and we are very sorry that it took longer than it should have to resolve these issues. Our team has been in direct contact with both customers and are pleased that the matters have now been resolved.
“We are also reviewing the handling of both cases internally to understand what went wrong and ensure the issues raised are properly addressed.”
