bad service from phonefinity

duke-of-bytes · 2019-03-29T13:44:19+00:00

On mother’s day i purchased a Samsung A30 from phonefinity and it was one bad experience: phonefinity was extremely nonchalant: the phone had very bad sound...

duke-of-bytes

Salloum wrote
duke-of-bytes wrote
Salloum wroteWhat you’re basically implying is that the store, who does nothing but stock the item, is liable to replace a device that the company itself won’t replace. How does that make sense, exactly?
if you got a your street supermarket , purchase a can of tuna and the tuna is bad .. wont they change it for you ?! they did not manufacture it , they just "stock the item"
This is a poor comparison for many reasons, but I don’t think we will convince each other so I’ll move on. Just some advice, your beef is with CTC and not the store you bought the phone from, so if I were you I would channel my efforts into convincing CTC your device is faulty. Trying to pin it on the “small man” (compared to a company like CTC) and leaving bad reviews everywhere isn’t decent. Good luck.

there is no small or big man .. there are only accountability and responsibility
my interaction was with phonefinity and i will deal only with phonefinity

bobo619

The way i see it is that the store in question should have been more open with the customer. I understand you were being thoughtful by directing M.Christina to CTC directly seeing that she works close by and save her the hassle to wait for the phone recollection and procedures etc.. (time saving) but the fact you told the customer that there is nothing i can do since CTC did not find the device defective you kind of blocked his options for an RMA as in deal with it i am not reliable. You should have replied as in a will take a closer look into it. When customers buy from retailers, resellers or so on like khoury home and have a defective problem it is the store responsibility to follow up with customers and act as a middle man. I am a regular customer at CTC dbayeh and i can tell you onw important thing "all the people that work there are tech illiterate" they are trained only to upsell. I once visited the store in the intentetion of buying a high end new tv (10 000+$)the guy was trying to convince me that Qled is far superior than Oled and it was the new technology/innovation of tvs. I then asked if they have a Full array local dimming tv in their line up and all the employees started scratching theirbheads and had to call a technicien from abroad to answer my questions. My point being is that i doubt they know to identify a defective product even if it is obvious. Note that i never had a problem with phonefinity before and find your products very intriguing as you supply a niche market in Lebanon(Oneplus, Xiaomi and so on) but then i am not the one with a bad experience and i believe this should be solved in a friendly manner and you being transparent like that increased my credibility towards you.

bobo619

I would like to add that the invoice was supplied upon demand and TVA evasion or not ( don't know the case) you can't blame someone in this country for doing so honestly. I like your products and what you offer keep it up and God bless

Salloum

duke-of-bytes wrote
Salloum wrote
duke-of-bytes wrote if you got a your street supermarket , purchase a can of tuna and the tuna is bad .. wont they change it for you ?! they did not manufacture it , they just "stock the item"
This is a poor comparison for many reasons, but I don’t think we will convince each other so I’ll move on. Just some advice, your beef is with CTC and not the store you bought the phone from, so if I were you I would channel my efforts into convincing CTC your device is faulty. Trying to pin it on the “small man” (compared to a company like CTC) and leaving bad reviews everywhere isn’t decent. Good luck.
there is no small or big man .. there are only accountability and responsibility
my interaction was with phonefinity and i will deal only with phonefinity

Suit yourself but I doubt you’ll get anywhere. If there really is a defect then CTC should exchange it and that’s that. Badak t7el meshkeltak aw badak trabbe el zalame? Up to you.

duke-of-bytes

Salloum wrote
duke-of-bytes wrote
Salloum wrote This is a poor comparison for many reasons, but I don’t think we will convince each other so I’ll move on. Just some advice, your beef is with CTC and not the store you bought the phone from, so if I were you I would channel my efforts into convincing CTC your device is faulty. Trying to pin it on the “small man” (compared to a company like CTC) and leaving bad reviews everywhere isn’t decent. Good luck.
there is no small or big man .. there are only accountability and responsibility
my interaction was with phonefinity and i will deal only with phonefinity
Suit yourself but I doubt you’ll get anywhere. If there really is a defect then CTC should exchange it and that’s that. Badak t7el meshkeltak aw badak trabbe el zalame? Up to you.

i dont care about the phone , i gave it to my driver , but i do not accept being treated like crap .
companies are closing , people are losing their jobs and yet some sellers can get away by treating their clients like shit

AVOlio

Aly wrote
Given that enough proof is provided, yes the supermarket will give you a new Tuna can, then the supermarket will followup with the official distributor and get that tuna can replaced as well which in this case the supermarket will not bare any charges or fees during this whole transaction.

Exactly Bro,
He went to the supermarket, and the supermarket then can deal with the supplier/manufacturer or whoever he wants.
He did not go to the supplier/manufacturer himself.
The supermarket should be liable in solving the issues of His customers.

Say you bought an Asus RTX 2080TI card from pcandparts.
The card you received is defective.
What would you expect pcandparts to tell you? Go to Asus and "dabber halak"?
No.
He should do that, and if he cant, he must replace the item.

And in this case, the shop should be liable in solving the case.(whatever way that he can, replacement, following up with ctc, refund, replacement for another item or store credit).

duke-of-bytes

AVOlio wrote
Aly wrote
Given that enough proof is provided, yes the supermarket will give you a new Tuna can, then the supermarket will followup with the official distributor and get that tuna can replaced as well which in this case the supermarket will not bare any charges or fees during this whole transaction.
Exactly Bro,
He went to the supermarket, and the supermarket then can deal with the supplier/manufacturer or whoever he wants.
He did not go to the supplier/manufacturer himself.
The supermarket should be liable in solving the issues of His customers.

Say you bought an Asus RTX 2080TI card from pcandparts.
The card you received is defective.
What would you expect pcandparts to tell you? Go to Asus and "dabber halak"?
No.
He should do that, and if he cant, he must replace the item.

And in this case, the shop should be liable in solving the case.(whatever way that he can, replacement, following up with ctc, refund, replacement for another item or store credit).

This is exactly what i meant!

Mhdskr

In the midst of the tuna controversy did anyone else notice this?

duke-of-bytes wrote
Joe wroteSo is the phone defective, or not?
CTC said the phone was not defective , but i saw opening marks on the device , i believe they changed the speaker

so did CTC already fix the phone? I wonder

AVOlio wroteI also think that The Seller (the place where i buy my products from, not the supplier or manufacturer or official dealer of the product here) should be responsible for every product i buy from him.
I would not even care if the product i am buying has an authorized service center here, or if it has an official warranty from the official dealer, i do not care about all those background details.
For me, all i know is i bought this from you, please fix it or solve it, if the item is defective.

AVOlio, based on my experience in this business and in this country I assure you that you are the rare exception, not the norm. when a customer calls to ask about a Samsung phone the first thing they ask about is whether it has CTC Warranty (by the way, Comtek, the name of the company that actually handles repairs, is owned and run by Samsung Korea, it's NOT a CTC subsidiary) and it's because of this warranty that they don't mind paying up to $100+ on a device compared to other sourced Samsung phones, and that's why, as I mentioned earlier, I state on my website the source of the warranty for each device. I'm being clear and transparent and I'm proud of it.

AVOlio wroteBut i think when you told him " إذا CTC ما لاقوا شي أنا شو بعملك" that triggered his alarms thinking you're a bad and careless Seller. (and i stress seller! not reseller or retailer or anything, because me as a customer i do not care of the status of your business whether seller/reseller/retailer. for me, you are my seller).

And in my point of view as well, if you really told him that sentence, it is wrong thing to do as a seller.

I have no choice but to repeat myself here: I didn't say that! I said "iza CTC 3am bi2oulo ma fi shi ghalat bil telephone, ya3ne ma fi shi ghalat bil telephone, shu fiyye a3mel ana" which, again, echoes what others have said and I quote mmk92 again:

mmk92 wrote[...] If the issue is obvious, it doesn't make sense for CTC not to honor the warranty; if it's as bad as you described, they cannot pretend that it's not faulty.

He misunderstood what I said and instead of trying to negotiate and reasonably counter my argument he chose to be disrespectful. I could have pulled some strings you know and helped him with his (at the time) very simple problem but he chose to be disrespectful so let him go solve his problem on his own.

Moving on to Tarek's examples:
Teletrade is the official reseller of HP in Lebanon, so you can compare them to CTC, not to a reseller like me. FYI, when they replace something for a customer they don't pay a penny of their pocket. Actually they make money out of it bcz all manufacturers pay their authorized service centers money for every part/device they service or replace.
I don't know anything about POS but it's probably like the tuna example, basically comparing apples to oranges
Sandisk offer warranty for life for memory cards and these things can't be repaired, only replaced. they make these by the tens of thousand a day and they only cost them pennies each. I can work on trust for such a loss. for example, a couple of weeks ago I replaced FOR FREE a screen protector for a customer because it was DOA.
The fridge example is actually relevant, coz Abed Tahan offers his own warranty and that's exactly how I handle things when a customer encounters a problem with one of the items I import or with one locally sourced when I don't trust the local source warranty. I lost a pretty penny in this kind of situations and I don't regret it. It's part of the business.

Aly wrote
duke-of-bytes wrote
Salloum wroteWhat you’re basically implying is that the store, who does nothing but stock the item, is liable to replace a device that the company itself won’t replace. How does that make sense, exactly?
if you got a your street supermarket , purchase a can of tuna and the tuna is bad .. wont they change it for you ?! they did not manufacture it , they just "stock the item"
Given that enough proof is provided, yes the supermarket will give you a new Tuna can, then the supermarket will followup with the official distributor and get that tuna can replaced as well which in this case the supermarket will not bare any charges or fees during this whole transaction.
But in your case the official distributor did not acknowledge your problem (due to no fault in the first place or they're just bad at troubleshooting) and then you want the seller to take this problem on his behalf, replace the phone for you and bare the charges ... it doesn't make any sense.

Thank you, Aly, well said. I second that

AVOlio wrote
Aly wrote
Given that enough proof is provided, yes the supermarket will give you a new Tuna can, then the supermarket will followup with the official distributor and get that tuna can replaced as well which in this case the supermarket will not bare any charges or fees during this whole transaction.
Exactly Bro,
He went to the supermarket, and the supermarket then can deal with the supplier/manufacturer or whoever he wants.
He did not go to the supplier/manufacturer himself.
The supermarket should be liable in solving the issues of His customers.

Say you bought an Asus RTX 2080TI card from pcandparts.
The card you received is defective.
What would you expect pcandparts to tell you? Go to Asus and "dabber halak"?
No.
He should do that, and if he cant, he must replace the item.

And in this case, the shop should be liable in solving the case.(whatever way that he can, replacement, following up with ctc, refund, replacement for another item or store credit).

I would have done that were he reasonable and respectful. After reading multiple interpretation of my sentence in this thread by multiple unbiased people, I can see now how my sentence could have been misunderstood but he really left no choice with his reaction.

DNA

I never read the whole thread so maybe someone mentioned what i am about to say, as much as a respect you and your transparency running your business it's a good business model than is rare these days, but you have no right to send the guy to CTC you should be responsible for the phone and you should take the phone from him and mail it to ctc yourself the customer bought from you and you should be responsible for warranty claims and RMA. for example i RMA'd a pc part awhile back a company after more than 1 year of owning it they never told me go ship it yourself to the manufacturer but instead the came and picked it up from me and even gave me a replacement till my card comes back this is a very good customer service and ill definitely buy again from them and recommend. if i buy a Samsung from you in which am thinking of soon i will not accept you to tell me go to ctc for warranty that is not right. other than than duke probably didn't like the phone it's so low end and he regretted it and wanted an replacement

nas93

Crazy how the owner of phoneinfinity could've avoided this whole fiasco by just quite simply, replacing the $200 phone. I'd eat the cost and move on if I were you.

duke-of-bytes

nas93 wroteCrazy how the owner of phoneinfinity could've avoided this whole fiasco by just quite simply, replacing the $200 phone. I'd eat the cost and move on if I were you.

a simple i'm sorry instead of "شو بعملك" wouldve done it for me

xazbrat

duke-of-bytes wrote
nas93 wroteCrazy how the owner of phoneinfinity could've avoided this whole fiasco by just quite simply, replacing the $200 phone. I'd eat the cost and move on if I were you.
a simple i'm sorry instead of "شو بعملك" wouldve done it for me

To quote Warren Buffett--"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it."

For a $200 phone, the owner should have offered a replacement or store credit for the purchase price and probably kept you as customer (hard to get money back, so this is next best thing)--he should easily be able to sell the other phone as used/refurbished and recover much of his cost and that is the end of the crisis. For a more expensive phone like the S10, it might be handled differently, but there shouldn't be this much of a problem over a budget phone, on BOTH sides. Deal with it and move on--save crisis mode for an actual crisis.

And fo complete the quote "If you think about that, you'll do things differently." Luckily for owner this is a somewhat small forum--if there were a larger audience, then the ramifications would have become more serious.

DNA

hold on but that is not a solution, the owner did nothing wrong except sending him to CTC, he should have taken the phone himself.
no he shouldn't eat the cost it's not USA where u can return items after opening it this is Lebanon so don't go to far on the store owner.
Mr tarek claims the phone is broken and CTC said it has nothing wrong so that's really not the owner's problem, that's a case of warranty fraud claim a phone is bad to get replacement even if its good.. if the the speaker by design is bad then you should have went to a showroom and tested before buying a cheap phone and expecting it to be perfect.
well i will buy a 100$ phone from him now and return it tomorrow claiming the camera is grainy and has noise and he will eat the cost so he don't lose a customer like me right even if the dealership said the phone is ok. that's wrong

elitism-guru

DNA wrotehold on but that is not a solution, the owner did nothing wrong except sending him to CTC, he should have taken the phone himself.
no he shouldn't eat the cost it's not USA where u can return items after opening it this is Lebanon so don't go to far on the store owner.
Mr tarek claims the phone is broken and CTC said it has nothing wrong so that's really not the owner's problem, that's a case of warranty fraud claim a phone is bad to get replacement even if its good.. if the the speaker by design is bad then you should have went to a showroom and tested before buying a cheap phone and expecting it to be perfect.
well i will buy a 100$ phone from him now and return it tomorrow claiming the camera is grainy and has noise and he will eat the cost so he don't lose a customer like me right even if the dealership said the phone is ok. that's wrong

This reminds me of a recent incident, sold a laptop over Olx in new condition, complained about fan noise (speed being aggressive), its still under warranty but he refused to deal with the company saying its much easier for you to deal with it.

kareem_nasser

I am not shocked how this thread has deteriorated....instead of helping in solving the issue we are making it worse........it would be great if the moderators just lock this thread as it will take us nowhere.

elitism-guru

kareem_nasser wroteI am not shocked how this thread has deteriorated....instead of helping in solving the issue we are making it worse........it would be great if the moderators just lock this thread as it will take us nowhere.

You mean this? :D

11. Discussions are banned

duke-of-bytes

kareem_nasser wroteI am not shocked how this thread has deteriorated....instead of helping in solving the issue we are making it worse........it would be great if the moderators just lock this thread as it will take us nowhere.

Do you know what a forum is ?

nas93

kareem_nasser wroteI am not shocked how this thread has deteriorated....instead of helping in solving the issue we are making it worse........it would be great if the moderators just lock this thread as it will take us nowhere.

Agreed, this is going nowhere.

NuclearVision

I second the guy who said that phonefinity should have dealt with ctc, if they wouldn't help just take the phone sell it used, lose 50$, you got yourself a repeat customer. Personally i would have done that.

Mhdskr

I appreciate everybody's input on the matter, but I'm still convinced I did nothing wrong.
Let me shed more light: see, I delivered the phone on March 19. Christina called me on Saturday, March 23 about the issue. Knowing that CTC's terms state that a hardware defect in the first 7 days of purchase entitles the customer for a replacement I asked her to take it to the service center (which is, again, only 200m away from her work place) on Monday, March 25 first thing in the morning (that's 6 days after purchase!) to guarantee a replacement. After Christina hang up, Tarek texted me on Whatsapp to affirm that he doesn't want the phone repaired, only replaced or returned. Return is not an option (whether for money, store credit, or even an upsell) since the phone's box was opened. As @DNA mentioned earlier, this is Lebanon not USA, you can't just return a phone, so I told him he's entitled for a replacement.

Since I'm being judged by the word, my first voice message transcribes as: "l telephone bda3et l wakil, iza fi 3otol 5ilel sabe3 tiyyem byibdlouh doghre, ma bisallouh. So nhar l tanen, please khoudouh 3ashen tla772o tdallo dimn l sabe3 tiyyem w yibdloulkon yeh badel".
Now, I ask all of you who believe I did the guy wrong referring him to -the 200m away service center- immediately, would you rather I postponed him till next week to pick it up and send it myself to the service? well, guess what? that would have definitely forfeited his chance for a replacement, coz as a dealer I don't just go through the front door when I have an RMA issue, I call Aramex to schedule a pickup and I can guarantee you it won't reach CTC in less than 3 days. They would have fixed the phone then, as they seemingly already did

duke-of-bytes wrote
Joe wroteSo is the phone defective, or not?
CTC said the phone was not defective , but i saw opening marks on the device , i believe they changed the speaker

and I would have been crucified anyway by you guys because I didn't replace it. So thanks, but no thanks!
I did what I did (sending them there directly) for his own benefit knowing the terms of CTC's warranty. I was convinced he'll get a replacement. When he told me the authorized service center found no defect, I said what I said, and he misunderstood me and acted disrespectfully, but then he said he believes they changed the speaker (am I the only one reading a contradiction in his talk?), so is your problem that they fixed it instead of replacing it? That's their wrong doing not mine, and if you explained it as such to me I would have tried to help.
@NuclearVision, you, and others, speak of "repeat customer", well, I don't want such a customer to be "repeat". He's a spiteful slanderer and the time I spent on this issue is worth way more than the 20$ I made out of that sale. Customers have standards, and dealers have too.

« Previous Page Next Page »