Currys www.currys.co.uk Review

Overall Rating

I bought a washing machine from Currys Cambridge Retail Park store on the Thursday of a week off work - I had seen their signs saying 'Next day delivery' but was told the delivery were booked up until the next Tuesday! I was told I could choose an early morning (7-10) slot, so I agreed. So far so average. I was told by the salesperson that the item would be unpackaged on arrival - and my paperwork confirmed this. The delivery people 'helpfully' positioned the washer by the gap it was was intended for at the far end of my narrow galley kitchen, but then rushed off. I was so pleased that they had lifted it over the most narrow part of the kitchen (between my cooker and the radiator) that I didn't insist on the unpacking. Big mistake! After they'd gone I realised it was SIDEWAYS to the hole it was meant to go in. Had the machine been unpacked prior to this, then this problem would have been immediately apparent (or would not have happened in the first place).

When I called the number for deliveries they completely denied part of the deal was to unpack the machine - unless I'd paid extra to have it connected. They refused point blank to ask the delivery people to return and reposition the machine ... so I was left with a pretty-much insurmountable problem of an extremely heavy item plonked sideways in a narrow space in my kitchen - preventing me from even gaining access to my sink!

I rang Currys Customer Service, who said the only thing they would be prepared to do was refund the £24.43 cost of delivery (BTW, nowhere in the store does it tell you that delivery isn't free), and I should turn up in person at Currys Cambridge Retail Park to get this refund.

So much for 'Customer Service'- the branch was closed for refurbishments! I was told by a builder that if it was just a refund I was after, then their other branch in Cambridge Lion Yard (town centre) would do it for me.

Sure enough, they did - and the management was very angry about the delivery company not having unpacked the washing machine. They said if I'd started the machine with them still in it would have bunny-hopped across the kitchen, tearing up the floor and ruining itself in the process! He claimed he was going to bring this up at an auditing meeting that very week.

I still had a washing machine blocking half my kitchen, though.

Colleagues from work kindly offered to help lift the washing machine out of where it was (literally!) boxed in. But it quickly became apparent that it was impossible to lift such a heavy item to hip-height to extract it for unpacking and repositioning (washing machines have concrete at their base for stability). I even doubt that the two burly deliverers could have completed this feat. It is one thing to lower such a bulky item into a tight space, but quite another to extricate it. Even if there had been space enough to do the lifting, the health and safety implications for myself and my colleagues could have been grim.

The upshot is that I was obliged to remove the oven and grill doors from my cooker so that the washing machine could be shuffled out of the kitchen without leaving the ground.

Unfortunately, when it came to reattaching the doors the oven door proved impossible to put back due to metal screw plates behind the facia having slipped down, resulting in the screws not having anything to screw into other than the outer, looser holes which have no thread.

On contacting the helpline for my cooker (bought less than a month ago) they quoted me a £99 call-out charge and possibly even more to pay if replacement parts were required on top of this.

Less the refunded delivery charge, this means I will be at least £74.57 out-of-pocket if I ever want to use my now open-plan oven again! I don't have that kind of money right now as I moved from a furnished flat to unfurnished accommodation just over a month ago, with all the expense this entails.

I have put all of the above - and more - in writing to the management of the Currys Lion Yard Store. I suggested that as their deliverers caused me so many problems through their 'dereliction of duty' (or, more likely, because Currys didn't make it clear to them what their deliveries are suppposed to entail) - that they should as a good will gesture stump up at least the £74.57 so I do lose out monetarily. Or maybe they could send an engineer of their own to re-attach my oven door?

That was over a week ago and I have not heard anything back. Yesterday I also emailed a copy of the text to their Customer Services - also no reply as yet. I had hoped to read on this site that Curry were 'good guys', but it seems not!

Funnnily enough, when I was asking a Cambridge friend where she'd recommend going in town to buy a washing machine, she warned me off Currys because she said their after-sales care was non-existent. If only I'd checked this site or taken her advice and gone to John Lewis!!