Canada Computers ripoff 2nd user goods sold as 1st user and general awful customer service Toronto Ontario

Email sent to Canada Computers on Jan 23 2007, no reply to date.

Dear Sir

On the 14th of January 2007 I called the downtown Toronto branch of your company and asked if an item that was in stock at another store, yet not available at that time downtown, could be shipped to that store so that I might buy it. It was agreed that this was possible, my
phone number taken, and a promise to call me when the item was available, in three to five days, was made.

On the 23rd I still had not received such a call, however your website showed the item to be in stock at the store. I called and was asked to wait while the member of staff located the item in question to ensure
that it was indeed in stock. I am not in the least surprised by this as I have had problems in the past where items have claimed to be available on the website only to be not available in the actual store.

I was assured the item was available, and upon asking, that it would be put aside for me.

Having travelled all the way downtown, which considering I live in Etobecoke is no small feat, I arrived at the store and finally located a member of staff who was available to serve me.

This is a bugbear with your store. There are never enough customer service representatives for the customer base, and all the goods are locked away or hidden in the back of the store. This leads to very long wait times just to be dealt with. There is no cue, so even if you
have been waiting far longer than another member of the public you will not necessarily be seen first. You also seem to operate some kind of sales volume rewards system for your staff, which winds up with the staff working the registers asking for the name of the member of staff who you eventually managed to convince to help you. By the time you are at this point of the exercise, and I do mean exercise, of dealing with Canada Computers no customer is in the least interested in identifying who served them. This whole process ensures that any visit to your store is a headache. Unnecessarily so.

Back to the point at hand.

The member of staff I eventually located in this case indicated that there was no system in place for dealing with items put by for customers. I was informed that I would have to locate the member of staff who had done so, and that until this was achieved there was no possible satisfactory result, especially as they only had the one of the particular item in question in stock. The suggestion being that I should ask around the staff myself to locate this individual. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that the a forementioned rewards system was foremost on the member of staff's mind, and that the sooner I was brushed off the sooner he could go about dealing with a customer who would help him work towards his sales volume reward levels. When I countered with the idea that he should in fact be helping me, that in fact the whole concept of me having to wander about waiting for each member of their staff to be free so I could ask them if they had put aside something for me was just untenable, he feigned misunderstanding.

It took three attempts before he managed to understand that I was not going to be convinced to interrogate the other staff for him and that he would have to engage himself to the task.

Thirty seconds later the member of staff turned out to be one working in the 'returns & repairs' section, someone whom I would not have been asking about the order anyway, so had I taken his suggestion I would never have located the item.

I wish I hadn't bothered.

The box for the DVD player I had asked for was battered beyond belief.

I was presented with this mangled, battered, holed, mauled, beaten and abused packaging. Immediately my suspicions were raised, and I insisted on opening the box, which was deceptively easy, there was no tape sealing the box. Inside the original bags the player, the manual and extras came in had been replaced, the cabling had clearly been used, it was loose, not in a separate bag shanked up and cable tied. The remote control was loose in the same bag as the manual, which was dog eared and mauled.

This was clearly either a customer return or a display model.

I informed the member of staff that this was clearly second user goods that were being offered to me as first user. I was informed that the player was in A1 working order and free from defects, that it was fully tested. Which served to completely confirm my assertion that it was second user kit being palmed off as new. I was offered a five percent discount on the item due to its condition. The standard discount for second user goods is 40-60% in my experience, and when informed of this the member of staff merely parroted that it was fully tested and free from defects. I told him that in no uncertain terms was I going to pay anywhere near full price under the circumstances, and I was told again that the item was free from defects.

The man did not understand what he was being told or, more likely, was deliberately avoiding the issue that you were, as a company, trying to charge me full price for something that was clearly at best second user.

This is absolutely unacceptable behaviour. I made the trip downtown to make a purchase from your store only to find out that Canada Computers knowingly was attempting to pass off second user goods as new.

This has cost me my time and travel costs, and yourself any further business from myself.

Merlin
Toronto, Ontario
Canada