Carphone Warehouse Everything That's Good About Customer Service

The Galaxy Tab is a nice piece of kit - great design, solid construction, functional software, real competition for the ubiquitous iPad.  But once the battery runs flat the Tab becomes a large format lump of plastic and glass which takes up space, is heavy to carry, and totally useless.

Such a problem is easily solved with a few hours plugged into the electricity mains, of course, unless the battery won't charge that is.

That's what happened in Chicago - 4,000 miles from the store it would have to be returned to for the warranty claim.  The wonderful toy, tool, file store, communication device, with all the travel notes, books, and music needed for the trip home became an inconvenient burden as soon as the battery wouldn't charge.

Naturally the Samsung support pages were as helpful as usual - not at all.  No mention of this technical problem and how to solve it. An Android forum seemed more promising.  Several people had posted on the same problem.  Unfortunately nobody had helped.  The closest to helpful response suggested resetting to factory standard - i.e. deleting everything, and taking it back to the store when that didn't work.  That's what Samsung support would say.

Samsung provides a chat support line, which eventually did precisely that - revert to factory settings, then book a service call.

The Tab had been sold by Carphone Warehouse, in replacement of a Motorola Xoom which locked up died.  The guys had been really helpful over that, refunding the full purchase price, including the price of the case.  Buying a Tab in the same store had been an easy decision.

A couple of months later the Nexus S phone died, with what seemed a very confused software update.  It had seen 18 months hard service, was worn and scratched and a corner to corner split in the screen.  With 6 months left on the contract, getting a quote for repair seemed sensible.  So it went back to the store.

The guys at Carphone Warehouse delighted in explaining the repair would be free of charge.  Everything sold by them came with a 2 year warranty.  Two weeks later the phone came back from the workshop, but it wasn't the original of course.  This was a brand new, shiny, gorgeous Nexus S.

Compliments on their customer service brought wide grins from the staff.  They explained the company treats them very well, and encourages them to help customers.  They liked their jobs, and wanted to do the best for the business.  That was easy when the boss understood how to get happy customers.

There wouldn't be a problem getting the Tab fixed, once it went back to the store.

It's a 4 hour drive from Edinburgh to Inverness on a Friday afternoon - a long way, after an hours flight from London, delayed by more than an hour, and even longer with the delayed flight had connected with an 8 hour flight from Chicago.  The question was whether we could get to the Carphone Warehouse store before it closed, so as to drop of the Tab for repair, to save a 2 hour drive the next day.

Luckily the store stays open late.

The guy at the desk plugged in the Tab and of course found it wasn't charging, but it didn't need to  go for repair - just a new USB connector.  The old one was loose.  Trying a new one proved the point.  The battery was happily charging now, with the new connector which the customer could keep, free of charge.  It was a spare one they had laying around.