CeX — Local services in Cambridge

We recently purchased a second-hand phone for our 12 year old son (the phone was purchased from your Cambridge store on Sunday 17th December). When we got home and tried to set it up it seemed faulty. The same day we returned to the store and after waiting 40 minutes we were told by the staff that the phone was fine. It was indeed working. The next morning, on Monday 18th the phone became completely unresponsive. My wife tried to return it to the store and she was told that she was entitled to a refund but that they needed my card. She left the phone in the store and I went in on Wednesday 20th to collect the refund. When I went with my card to collect the refund I was told that they couldn’t give it to me unless my wife was there. This was rather annoying, as getting into town isn’t particularly easy for us especially as we have young children. My wife and I have the same surname and I showed them several documents (including my wife’s English Heritage card which was in my wallet). They still wouldn’t give me a refund unless she was present. I paid my card, I went to collect the refund on my card, and I was told that my wife was needed for the transaction to happen. It seems as if your staff were going out of their way to make it difficult for me to get my refund. Your store was legally obligated to refund my money and your staff were refusing to do so unless my wife was present. This was absurd. When I challenged this, the store supervisor (Gary) became quite dismissive. He told me that the manager was not available and when I asked for his full name he refused to give it to me. When my wife eventually made it into town they then gave me a full refund (without even checking her ID). My main complaint is the way your staff treated me and my wife. Gary, walked away from me whilst I was speaking to him. I had to ask his colleagues to call him back several times. When my wife was there, I spoke to someone who claimed to be called Ashton (but didn’t have a name tag and refused to show us proof of their name) rudely asked my wife and I to leave the shop in front of our eight-year-old daughters because we were ‘pestering him’. I have never in my life been treated so rudely or dismissively. It was humiliating, degrading and your staff acted with a total lack of kindness or professionalism. We had to waste a lot of money on getting into town and parking, we were treated like garbage by your staff on multiple occasions, and when the process was over we were kicked out of your store. You sold us a faulty second-hand phone and then instead of being decent and refunding it as you were legally obligated to your staff made us jump through unnecessary hoops and wasted a ridiculous amount...

Went to trade in my iPhone for cash, the store accepted my phone and told me that they would call me within 3 hours if there was a problem. If there was no call then they would transfer me the money. I got a call 24 hours later saying my phone had a problem (which also did not exist before I handed them the phone) and that I had to pick it up within 2 weeks otherwise It would have been destroyed.

I understand they reserve the right to reject phones, however I was in Cambridge that day (I live in London) and had the phone on me so thought I would offload it. With them reassuring me that I would know within a few hours whether or not they would accept the phone.

So I returned a week later to pick up my phone, having spent nearly as much money to travel to Cambridge just to collect the phone as I would have got initially from them. I told the store about the situation and didn't get any compensation or even an apology for wasting my time, money and they told me that I was lying about a store worker who told me to wait 3 hours.

Unbelievably at the exact same moment a lady was selling her phone and the store told her to "wait 3 hours for any problems and if they didn't call within then, they would accept the phone for that price."

What sort of customer service is this where they lie to customers, don't believe them and offer no support for their own mistakes. All they did was downgrade the quality of the phone and offer me £70 less than the original offer.

I went next door to Game where they offered me the same price initially as CEX, said the fault that CEX picked up on was not even an issue and guess what, they called me within an hour to tell me that the phone was fine and I got my money.

In conclusion this is rubbish customer service, (I didn't even mention the 40 minute wait to speak to someone both times I went) and having used CEX for a number of years to trade in items, would not go back. Just use GAME, especially as it...

The products that I've bought there have worked fine, but I've only ever bought two i-phones from them. The only problem I have is with their customer service. It's almost non-existent. These days, everyone's talking about the fact that customer service in general has gone downhill, but these guys are at the forefront of this trend. Everyone who's visited the store knows about the long waiting time in the queue. The company will probably say that they are short staffed and there's nothing they can do about it, but when you're standing in the queue for 10+ minutes (this is normal), watching three staff members at the counter, when only one is serving customers, you just can't see the logic in it. I think the job requirements for working there are: a complete sense of apathy, a lack of enthusiasm and an indifference towards the paying customer. There is one guy who wears a cap. He's okay. He actually smiles when he serves you and is much more helpful than the rest. On the other hand, the one with the pony tail (not the one who wears glasses), actually makes you wait in the queue another two minutes after he's finished with the last customer. There's a complete disregard for the number of customers waiting in the queue and the length of time they have been waiting. I was in there a couple of weeks ago. I didn't need anything specific. I was just browsing, but I saw a DVD that I fancied. It was only £1.50, but after waiting in the queue around 8 minutes, and seeing the slow, lethargic attitude from the staff, I just put it back on the shelf and left. There was one person serving the customers, one behind the screen in their little workshop area and two others wandering around lethargically, while 7-8 customers waited in the queue. This set-up seems to be their company policy, but it doesn't benefit anyone, not the company and certainly the...