Fawlty Towers?
We've used Maplins for over 25 years and always had excellent service. So when we called in to the Exeter branch 4 days before my husbands birthday, to get a solar panel, I didn't think twice about buying an ION VCR2PC recorder that he liked the look of as a present.
Had we checked the reviews of the product, we woudn't have touched it, but we trusted Maplins so we bought it. My husband, a research scientist, opened his present on his birthday, and after about 2 hours of effort, established that it didn't work.
Very disapointed, we returned to the store which is a 40 minute drive away from our home. We explained that the machine was faulty, and demonstrated the fault using a BBC video of Basil Fawlty having a rant at his customers. The staff member was not only unamused but accused of us trying to break copyright law. He told us that he believed we had damaged the machine and that our only recourse was to let them have the machine back for testing and they would refund our money if their engineers found the machine was indeed faulty rather than damaged through misuse.
This gave us the impression that we were most unlikely to get a refund even if we were to give him the machine. We asked to speak to the manager. When the manager eventually arrived he made no effort to find a resolution that was acceptable to us. Instead he called security to have us removed from the store. When we refused to leave without a satisfactory resolution he called the police, who arrived with 7 officers in a van, and they threatened to arrest us for trespass if we didn't leave.
We left, and the store staff dumped the defective recorder outside, along with our kit. The staff evidently justified their action to the police by telling them that they believed we were breaking the copyright law, as we had to endure a lecture from a burly uniformed officer about his opinion that it was illegal for us to copy our own legitimately bought tape from VHS to digital media. Nevertheless another officer kindly retrieved our receipt which the store manager had retained, this at least allowed us to take the matter up elsewhere.
It is very surprising that a company with the reputation that Maplins had, is selling goods that have such a shockingly poor reputation. The casual way in which the staff assumed us to be the criminals when we sought redress is a much more serious matter.
Update: On the advice of Trading Standards I took the matter up with the credit card company (because under the law they are jointly liable with the supplier). Four months later, and after substantial efforts from ourselves and the credit card company, Maplins did take the product back, found it was faulty and replaced it free of all charges. read more
