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Pixmania

Discussion in 'Photography, Art & Design' started by Lord_A, 5 Jun 2007.

  1. Lord_A

    Lord_A Boom baby!

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    (this is a bit of a rant but worth reading if you are thinking of using pixmania so please bare with me)

    Has anyone (tried) to deal with their so called customer services before?
    I ask because I recently bought a camera for my mother from them as they were the cheapest according to the link on TrustedReviews review of the camera she ended up wanting.

    We went for one of the package bundle deals with the camera which adds a pixmania branded camera pouch, a 2gig SD card, and an additional 3'rd party battery. Ordering & paying went smoothly, and delivery time was good...however there was a problem with the camera...

    Well not the camera itself, but the battery supplied in the camera box from Casio did not work at all & refused to charge. Using the camera with the additional 3'rd party battery resulted in normal operation though, so the problem was identified as being down the battery supplied by Casio with the camera.

    I contacted pixmania & explained all this, and hoped that I could just return the battery for exchange, since my mom could still use the camera with the additional battery, and since the postage would be a lot cheaper) they said that was not possible & I'd have to return the complete camera with all it's accessories. (note, that, at least to me, means the accessories which come with the camera box itself, ie: docking station, charger, strap, etc)

    Already an inconvenience I posted the complete camera back to them via Special Delivery at a cost of £7.95 excluding packaging.

    It took them almost 3 weeks to register that they received the camera, their reason being that RMA requests get sent to their Coventry hub which then get forwarded onto France where they inspect all RMA items. This was their reply when I queried the RMA status about 2 weeks after posting the camera out to them:

    Thank you for your email.

    You sent the product back to the Parcel Force hub in Coventry where all of our UK returns are assembled and then directed to our after sales in France. Unfortunately it might sometimes take from two to three weeks until the parcel is registered in France.

    You will be notified by email once the item has been registered at our After Sales warehouse.

    Thank you for your patience.


    Already I was totally pissed since it meant my mother (who is leaving on holidays abroad very soon) may end up camera-less...

    When they did eventually receive the camera they sent the following email:

    product returned-EX-S770 silver
    report of product condition-Accepted by our department
    content details-missing : rechargeable Li

    We cannot deal with your returned goods due to the fact that some accessories are missing. Please send them on to us within 10 days; otherwise, we will have to return your product as is and refuse your request.


    A few observations here, firstly, why do they need the 3'rd party battery (I assume that is the one they're referring too since the Casio battery was sent in the camera box as it came supplied). Secondly, they want the items within 10 days, but it took just over 2 weeks for them to receive the camera I sent back (via RMSD) :duh:

    Anyway, I contacted them again to (try) and clarify the situation, explaining the whole story again. It fell on deaf ears as I received this reply today:

    As you can se in the terms and conditions and after sales do you have to send all the accessories back with the product before we can send the product to the manufacture.

    My problems with this reply are as follows:

    When raising an RMA request you are given an option of which parts of your order you want to return, naturally I selected the camera (which includes all the official accessories). So why include this selection process in the RMA procedure for customers at all? Also, after selecting which products you want to return, pixmania HAS TO AUTHORISE IT BEFORE RAISING THE RMA NUMBER!!! Hence they knew that I only selected the camera for return :wallbash:

    Also, their reason as mentioned above is that they want everything back to send to the manufacturer, perfect, the pixmania camera pouch, the SD card, and the EFORCE battery ARE NOT MANUFACTURED BY CASIO :wallbash:

    I've sent them another reply mentioning the above, and that if they just cannot sort it then they can just send the camera back & forget the whole f-ing RMA request. I will just pay for another battery (obviously from elsewhere) & never, ever, ever use them or recommend them to anybody ever again.

    My main concern is still how long this will take, whether they decide to replace the battery or if they choose to send it back as is...since my mom is leaving in about 2 weeks time, I do not want to end up buying another camera so that she may be able to take pictures of her holiday, and then having to keep it once this whole farce with pixmania is sorted out :grr:

    /end seriously long rant
     
  2. Hazardous

    Hazardous What's a Dremel?

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    You honestly thought it was worth sending the whole package back, just because of a duff battery :confused:
    The amount it cost you to return it, is about the same - or maybe a little less, than you'd have paid for a new compatible battery off eBay?

    Don't get me wrong. I agree with what you've said in your rant - on principle. You shouldn't have had to send the whole lot back in the first place, just because the battery was dead.
    But I personally wouldn't have been willing to send a complete package like that back, just for the sake of a replacement battery?
    I'd rather have bitten the bullet, and paid for a replacement/compatible battery myself?

    It's unlikely, I know... but it's possible the replacement battery could be dead as well [due to a bad batch]... then where will you be?

    None of that will be a concern, if the replacement package doesn't arrive in time of course :rolleyes: :wallbash:
     
  3. Lord_A

    Lord_A Boom baby!

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    If it was the 3'rd party battery which was at fault then yes, I would have just bought another one. But since it was the Casio one, I wanted to have it replaced since a genuine replacement costs more than the postage did.
    Also, pixmania do respond very fast to queries from their web forms, the first query I sent was late on a Friday evening, and they replied first thing Saturday morning, based on that quick response, I figured they'd send a replacement out pretty much straight away.

    However in hindsight...yeah, I would have gladly paid even £30 to bypass all this hassle.
     
  4. Da_Rude_Baboon

    Da_Rude_Baboon What the?

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    I bought a printer from Pixmania as it was the cheapest and it all turned into a bit of a nightmare. I cant exactly remember what happened but it came to the UK, they had not put a complete address on it so it could not be delivered. The printer then did a complete tour of western europe before eventually returning to Germany. All in it took over a month to arrive.

    There customer services were polite but quite inneffective in sorting the problem, and i think i spoke to someone in Germany, Holland and France.
     
  5. Lord_A

    Lord_A Boom baby!

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    Well the ordeal is finally over.
    They sent the camera back.

    I opened the box in my car immediately after leaving the Post Office & I could not find the Casio battery...it all made sense then, they were trying to tell me that the Casio battery was missing, this was never made clear in their emails though.
    More importantly, I *had* put the battery in, I was sure of it.

    So I went to my mom's place & started unpacking everything & connecting up the docking station etc. back on her PC when I FOUND the battery, it had slid underneath one of the cardboard separators!

    Several curse words later, I sent Pixmania yet another message, explaining this to them & asking why the warranty offices couldn't look properly through the box for the battery, especially since this episode lasted for almost a month. I also tried offering some constructive criticism, i.e.: messages sent to their UK base from their warranty support offices in France seem to get lost in translation, hence the confusion I believe with the whole battery thing (I had specifically told them I had sent it, in no email back to me did they say otherwise, they just kept asking for the camera accessories)
    I also suggested they increase the character limit (currently 700, incl. spaces) in their 'contact us' support page. You cannot just simply email them. I found this to be pretty limiting at times when trying to explain the situation.

    As a teaser, I also added the fact that my g/f was about to purchase a point & shoot camera from them, £200 or so, and I am going to be buying a new dSLR in the next 3 weeks or so, with a nice lens, memory cards, bags, etc. so £600 to £800 depending on my finances. All in all these purchases would be close to the grand mark, which they have now obviously lost.

    I pointed out that this has cost me £7-95 in postage, and I shall now have to purchase a replacement battery at my own expense. Plus all the hassle & stress this whole fiasco has caused over the last month.

    Their email reply back to me (the standard apology rubbish) shows that they couldn't be bothered about trying to rectify a mistake they made, even if it means receiving more orders afterwards.


    So, to summarise: Stay well away from Pixmania!!
     
  6. Mother-Goose

    Mother-Goose 5 o'clock somewhere

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    On the flip side I just ordered my Fuji S5700 from them with the rezo 10 lowepro case without any problems what so ever, it could have been packed a bit better but apart from that no issues. And over 2 months ago I ordered my Logitech Z5400 surround sound speakers from them without a hitch (and that was a huge box!).

    Whilst it most certainly is worth noting that there customer services seems awful, I haven't had to use it so far.
     
  7. Lord_A

    Lord_A Boom baby!

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    aye, it's like a few other online stores, excellent when there aren't any problems with your order.

    As mentioned in my first post (I think), they have excellent prices, good delivery times, & they do respond very quickly to queries raised through their support page.

    The reason I'm suggesting stay away from them is because when there is a problem, they turn out to be completely useless. From my experience anyway.

    Personally, I would not recommend them to my worst enemy anymore, what's worse is that even after all this hassle, I would have given them another chance had they offered me some discount on my next orders & had sent me a replacement battery. But they won't even admit that the fault lay with them, and they couldn't care less about repairing customer relations, even when it will cost them almost a grand of lost sales.

    EDIT: I've had the occasional problem with a few online stores but all of them have offered a refund on postage costs, a discount for future orders, a freebie, whatever. I know nobody is perfect & mistakes like these are bound to happen from time to time no matter how hard one tries, what counts is what the company does to rectify these mistakes. And that's where Pixmania falls very short of the mark.
     

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