Disappointed in O2 Luton

[Zainie786]

Hi all,

So I went in and preordered 3 iPhone 15 pro maxes, and paid the £150 due.

I had the text and popped in on release day. I was served by an advisor who was, to put it politely, clueless. 
The first phone was a switch up for a 14 pro max. The advisor took a look at the phone, asked me to remove the screen protector and case and turn off the device. She then said she needed to speak to her manager as the device ‘was in really bad condition’ 

she disappeared for a couple of minutes then came back and said the manager said no. I asked to speak with the manager and she said he’s on lunch. This is at 1pm. 
we proceeded to start the second phone, which was a upgrade. No issue here. She couldn’t issue a eSIM, instead proceeding to not issue any sim or anything. After a reminder, she went back in caveating that the system may have a 24 hour hold. I confirmed that we need working devices. 
thankfully the sim was issued and problem resolved.

phone 3 was also a switch up, and a absolute repeat of the 1st. After she spoke again to the manager, he again refused the switch up. When I asked to speak again, he was still at lunch, now 2:20pm. 
At 2:30, the advisor seated behind us received a call, asking if we were still there. He confirmed that we were. We waited at the store until 3 when the manager came out the back, served a customer, then came over to us. 

He stated that the phones had deep grooves, deep scratches and that it affected the viewing of the screen. I asked him to show the grading criteria (available online) specifying deep grooves. He stated that they aren’t in resealable condition, and I asked for his justification on that, as devices aren’t required to be in new condition. He stated that they are.  

I confirmed that another store had seen both phones and confirmed there wasn’t any issue preventing a switch up. He replied that the store was ill informed and decided to send a Snapchat to the other stores manager, with a caption ‘apparently your lot said that this was in great condition’ with a laughing emoji.

Without finishing the conversation, he moved off to do something else, and then floated back after a few minutes. On his way back, he passed the colleague who got the phone call, and quite vocally said ‘you’ve got to be having a laugh, have you seen the phones!’

he came back and sat down the first advisor to process refunds for the pre orders. We then left. 

Now the icing on the cake - we were heading into slough, so decided to pop into the o2 shop there. Both phones were switched up to 15 pros without any issue, mention of scratches, grooves or anything else. 

O2 Luton were absolutely awful, with extremely poor service. The advisor had no idea how to deal with us and the manager was just awful. Really disappointed in Luton. 

meanwhile O2 Slough was brilliant. Despite coming in 15 minutes before close on a very busy release day Friday, they did the job and staff stayed on until 6:20 to finish dealing with us. 

[pgn]

Tagging the Forum Manager @Dave-O2 in to take your praise back to the Slough team and your boos to the Luton team - glad you got sorted. Also wonder if, like here, one of those is an O2 franchise (Slough?) vs a full O2 store (Luton) - the franchise shop here always trip over themselves to be helpful, the other treat you with mild disdain more often than not, @Zainie786. Well done on a successful Switch-Up!

[madasaf1sh]

@pgn 

Then Slough one will be an o2 store, and probably more on the ball due to the o2 HO, been there and been where they do tests on processes and services... The one in Luton has by the sounds of it more likely to be a franchise as they get penalised by o2 if anything goes wrong...  

I do wonder if the Luton store have been burnt by people doing switch up's on devices that have come back to haunt them, but no excuse for their behaviour to you as a customer.. 

I have never had any real issues in my local o2 store which is o2 owned... 

[Dave-O2]

Thanks for the tag @pgn 

@Zainie786 I'll follow up via PM shortly to get your comments passed on to each store.

I'm glad to hear you managed to get this sorted 👍