When it was announced that the schools were closing and children would all be home schooling, the Keith Covid -19 community volunteer group thought that they would like to help out any families who didn’t have the digital equipment at home to allow them to access the school online systems available to their peers.
With the help of the local Community Councils, the group set out to identify funding and contacted all the Head Teachers to ask them to identify the numbers involved.
Once they had the numbers required and the funding identified they tried to source the equipment.
This proved to be very challenging.
15 laptops and 15 tablets were required and they eventually got in touch with Curry’s.
Even then it wasn’t straight forward to even place the order due to the quantity required.
A business account had to be set up and this all took some time.
Eventually the 15 laptops, 15 tablets and cases, were ordered with a discount negotiated.
Once the payment was made to Curry’s the order should be dispatched.
Unfortunately, it took a few days to get the funds transferred but once that was done they hoped it would be all systems go.
No such luck.
It is now over three weeks since this process started and they are no closer to receiving the equipment.
On Thursday (30th April) a three-hour web chat, including being transferred to four different agents, resulted in being told the order was on hold awaiting stock, although they had been assured when ordering that there was ample stock.
Some hours later and a phone call from the sales team and it transpired that there is plenty stock but the order has been cancelled by the customer services and needs to be reinstated.
Once this was done they were told, no matter how much they pleaded, that the earliest the order could be delivered was Tuesday 5th May but Wednesday 6th May latest.
Having received no communication following that conversation on Thursday, e-mails and phone calls were made to Curry’s on a regular basis with no response.
On Thursday 7th May having received no delivery and having had no response to any of the phone calls, texts or e-mails they went back onto the web chat.
Another three hours wasted, an hour queuing then two hours trying to find out what’s happened to the order.
It would seem that the order has not been processed since last week.
The only progress achieved was an e-mail sent by the web chat advisor to the sales team and their manager.
No matter what was asked of him the advisor said he couldn’t progress it any further.
By the close of business on Thursday 7th May there had only been one e-mail response from the sales team passing the matter back to the original web chat advisor asking him to sort it out, he had already said he could do no more!!!
To add insult to injury Curry’s sent an email survey on Saturday 9th May asking for feedback on the recent purchase, which of course hasn’t been received.
Rhona Patterson from the Keith Covid group said:
“I completely understand that businesses are working under unprecedented challenging conditions with staff working from home.
“Curry’s (Dixons Carphone) have been paid over £6000 and have failed to deliver the goods.
“If they had kept up communication with me and told me what was happening I wouldn’t be so angry.
“I have spent hours upon hours trying to contact them unsuccessfully.
“When I do contact them, I’m given excuses that phones are broken or systems are down.
“It isn’t a good advert for the products if they don’t have a robust system for themselves.
“I am so frustrated.
“I wanted to help the kids in the area and I feel I have failed but it is Curry’s who have failed them”
