What do you do when you want to buy a new phone for your house line. You go to a store that’s specialized in phones. One of them is the KPN store. KPN is also a provider here but they do sell phones for other providers.

My mum and I went to the local KPN store and told them we wanted a simple house phone that had caller ID. We also stated we had a different provider than KPN and if that was a problem. After being assured it wouldn’t be a problem they sold us a phone that was approximately $95. Maybe a bit much for a phone but my parents wanted a decent phone that wouldn’t break down within a year or so. With that said mum also bought extra guarantee which brought the total to about $115.

The phone was bought on a Saturday afternoon. When we got to my parents house I went to install the phone. The battery had to be charged which is not abnormal for a new product so we left it in the charger, got rid of the protective plastic that was on the screen and put the cardboard box aside with the old paper to later be recycled. Mind you the box was put ASIDE, it wasn’t broken or ripped.

Over the weekend we noticed the caller ID wasn’t working, so on Monday I called our provider and told them the story of the new phone. They told me that KPN sold me the wrong phone; it used a different frequency for caller ID than our provider did. So back to the store we went with the box and everything that came with the phone.
The nice lady at the store admitted we probably got sold the wrong phone and went to see her boss in the back to see what she could do. The boss came out and immediately noticed it was indeed the wrong phone. However he continued by saying they weren’t going to take the phone back.

Excuse me? You’re what? Do you think we’re going to pay $115 for the wrong phone without you solving the damn problem?! I don’t think so. So after calmly telling him we wanted either our money back or a replacement he kept refusing and brought the lamest excuse up you could ever think of; The phone was in perfect state but the box looked old. OLD! The box was two days old, not ripped or torn but obviously opened (by the store clerk on Saturday to check if everything was in it!). Seeing as we weren’t going anywhere mum asked a refund on the extra guarantee, which she was going to get, but she also added she’d take the phone home and would take legal actions.

By mentioning legal actions everything changed; we could get another phone, however we had to pay a bit extra because the phone was more expensive and we wouldn’t have extra guarantee unless we purchased that. Mum never said she didn’t want to pay extra for a good phone so after 30 minutes of reasoning with the boss we had our other phone. And it works too, how wonderful is that.

So in a nutshell;

• Phone purchased on a Saturday; didn’t work as expected
• Phone returned on Monday
• The box looked to old so they wouldn’t take it back
• Mentioning legal actions changed everything
• My parents now their new phone and it works well, especially caller ID

Isn’t it ridiculous you have to mention legal actions to get what you deserve. They admitted more than once they sold us the wrong phone. A lame excuse about the box was the reason why they wouldn’t take it back while in fact the real reason was money. The boss told us he wasn’t able to sell the phone to someone else as the box looked opened. So they would lose out on money. Surely behaving the way described was going to lose them even more; customers. In the end we were told the only reason we got a different phone was because the store only recently opened and it was their way of showing ‘service’.
*Snorts* service, right. My opinion on it is that when legal actions were mentioned he realized he would have to replace it if it ever got to that so he made up yet another lame excuse (service!) to be able to replace it without losing his face.
Being the nice people we are we sort of thanked him for the service ( ) and left the store with the intention of not returning to make another purchase. That’s my intention anyway but I’m pretty sure my parents feel the same way.

All ends well though but KPN sure deserves Jem‘s Pants awards; if it was made for companies too instead of only websites.

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