The idiocy of 'customer service' in Belfast baffles me, as readers of my reviews will know only too well. Into Cex I go to buy some stuff. I'm standing in the queue. There are two signs above the counter. One sign indicated that that particular counter with two tills is for people selling stuff. The other counter with two (or more) tills is for people buying stuff. I queue in the buying line, and quickly realise that all four tills are being used for people selling stuff. This is a process that takes time. The gadgets have to be hooked up, tested, examined, etc., so it's particularly stupid to have zero tills available for people to actually buy stuff. Then I see a customer who, upon observing that all four tills are being used to sell stuff, seems to presume that it must just be a free-for-all, and that all tills are available for buying and selling. This is not an unreasonable presumption, since no rational person could see the logic in a shop which is not selling anything, but only buying things. He, therefore, opts for the shorter queue, which is leading up to the tills which are officially marked for selling. Almost 15 minutes pass before I get served (there were no customers in front of me, by the way, other than the two sellers whose items were being tested). Ordinarily, I would have left, but I wanted to see how long it took, and I wanted to see if I was right about the unfortunate customer who joined the other queue. Yep, after waiting almost 15 minutes and finally getting to a till, the girl tells him that that till is for selling only. Marvellous. On top of this, there was a staff member standing near a vacant till in the 'buying' side the entire time. Did he, upon realising the folly of having a queue of customers with four staff buying and none selling, jump on the vacant till and seek to alleviate the unnecessary wait of the customers laden with products to buy? Did he think, 'If I were a customer waiting in the buying queue where people were selling things, would I want to wait unnecessarily?' Nope, he continued what he was doing. Wrapping. Masking tape, duct tape, bubble wrap...the guy just stood there wrapping the entire time. Maybe the staff here aren't privy to the business model of the company. Now, I haven't been to any Cex franchise meetings; I'm not Facebook friends with Paul Farrington; and I've never received a Snapchat request from Robert Dudani. But I know for a fact that an integral part of the Cex business model is to sell things. Maybe they should mention that in staff training? read more

I just don't understand this place. Maybe its because I'm not a gamer, I'm only looking at it from the point of view of the hardware. As other reviewers have pointed out, the checking process is the staff having a bit of an albeit structured 'play about' with the hardware with arbitrary conclusions drawn as to its value. What gets me is that quite often you se tablets/phones/laptops/consoles on sale here for high enough prices that if you put an extra £20 into your purchase you could buy a brand new machine from the manufacturer or, if getting it for the lowest price possible, eBay is going to deliver a much more competitive shopping experience....... I just don't get it. read more

My brother was waiting at the til area for about 20 minutes before he was served in here today. The guy serving at the till had walked off to be signed out because his shift had finished but no other staff member took over. He had to approach another member of staff on the shop floor and ask to be served. The staff member who eventually served him tried to offer him a store card which was rejected immediately! Ridiculous customer service - we will certainly not be back here again. read more

Up till now, I don't think I've ever been so disappointed with the customer experience in a shop that I felt compelled to look them up and write a review online, but it really was abysmal. It wasn't the prices; even though they were pretty bad, you pretty much know what to expect when you're going in. It wasn't the staff's manners either; everyone I interacted with was quite friendly and helpful, if a little slow to move given the length of the queues. No, the biggest problem was the entirely opaque trade-in process, and the seemingly arbitrary nature of the hardware testing by anonymous, and seemingly incompetent operators. I left a few gadgets in to be appraised, and was quoted roughly what I expected, and was happy to let them go, but I was handed one back; a phone. I was told "they couldn't get it to boot up". This concerned me, because I knew the phone was in good working order before I left it in, so I was worried they'd broken it somehow. I brought it home, charged it up, and it turned right on. Apparently charging the phone wasn't on the troubleshooting sheet in "CEX". The next day I went back to the store, waited in another fantastically slow queue, and eventually got to explain the situation to the clerk who booked my phone in for another test; only 30 minutes this time. Great. I went for a coffee and came back only to be told the phone had failed the test again. This time it was the volume buttons they couldn't get working. The clerk handed me my phone, which I immediately unlocked and tested in front of him. Lo, and behold, the volume buttons worked absolutely perfectly. I looked at the checkout guy confused: "I think he said they were too stiff; like we can't offer a 2-year warranty if the buttons are hard". I just maintained eye-contact and kept turning the volume up and down, because I genuinely didn't know how to respond. I don't know what you, the hypothetical reader, would personally describe as a "normal" amount of pressure when referring to the amount of force required to actuate a phone volume rocker, but this, to me, seemed normal. Certainly not perceptually better or worse than my current phone. Needless to say, nobody in the shop was able to clarify exactly what the metric for measuring "phone button pressure" was, nor how many units of said metric were considered to be above the threshold of what is considered operable by the average human hand, so I too my phone and left the shop for a second time. Oh, did I mention they binned the box and charger for my phone before giving it back to me? Yeah, that was a nice bonus. I'm obviously being a smart-arse here, but It's a true story, and one I consider to be instructively disappointing. Will stick to eBay in future. *copied from my own review on Google* read more

This store is so crammed with stock and rarities, that you could easily lose half an hour in there just browsing. With a large selection of games, even for older systems such as Xbox and Gamecube, you WILL find value for money here. And the pricing seems to differ from the CEX stores in Dublin and Wexford (10p vs. € 2, draw your own conclusions). I advise you to get there early, as this store gets busy quickly. Which brings me to the only negative aspect of this store, which is the queueing system. At one end of the counter is a queue for people buying, and at the other is a queue for sellers. Unfortunately, the locals seem to just join whatever queue they feel like, and try their best to cut in front of you. In fairness though, I guess the large red sign with a big arrow that says, "SELL HERE" is hard for them to understand. read more