Ordering Experience - Don't buy Dyson products at Argos

My husband gifted me a Dyson hairdryer for my birthday in December. I was over the moon when I saw the white Dyson carton under the wrapping paper, however on removing the dryer box from inside the carton I was in for a bleak surprise: the product had been replaced with a cheap, old, used hairdryer 😱

Having bought from Argos, whom we thought being a reputable provider, and having collected the product from one of their Sainsbury’s stores, we were sure the issue would be resolved promptly and the missing item replaced. 

Boy were we wrong.

Customer service referred us to the store, claiming they’d give us a refund. The store manager refused to even look into the issue, accused us of fraud and kicked us out of the store. We went back to customer service and they claimed that since the item was picked up in store they cannot offer any support and we can only deal with the store manager directly. So basically if you order on Argos online for pickup in one of their stores you do not have access to their customer service. The manager refused to answer any of our further calls. After weeks of trying, and after arguing for over 1h with customer service, we finally get them to call the store since the manager is blatantly ignoring us. 

You think this is where it gets resolved, right? Think again.

The manager straight out lies to the customer service representative saying that we keep changing our story, first saying there was no product inside the box and then saying there was a wrong one. And despite the fact that there are chat records from when we first reached out to Argos, all saying the same thing and proving her wrong, the customer service representative refuses to even look at them and tells us to look for a lawyer because they won’t do anything further on the matter.

We contacted Citizens Advice and I went to hand-deliver a letter to the store to notify that they had 7 days to address the issue or we would take it to small claims court: the store kept ignoring us. 

But it gets even worse: I posted about this on social media and apparently there are tons of people in the same situation. Basically Argos has a very poor returns control process, and they resell returned items as new without properly checking. 

Beware if you want to buy from them!!