[wtjs]

Why do these companies alienate customers by deliberately obstructing complaints? On the Halfords Intercity Folder topic you can see that I was very complimentary about the bike. However, there is a fault on the rear tyre of a bike I collected only 5 days ago (photo to follow)- the sidewall had detached from the wire bead. I assume this would be a simple problem to solve as I have the photos. I then discovered that Halfords doesn’t publish an email address for Customer Services- they require you to use ‘Live Chat’ in which you contact people who don’t know anything about cycling and are probably in another country. The simple question I asked was ‘Please give me the email address of Customer Services’. 10 minutes followed with no reply, followed by this, from ‘Mehnaz’:

As we do not have any updated email id right now so what best I can do for you, I will marked an email on your register email address and you can revert back on that email and I will forward it to the team.

You will all appreciate that this is a brush-off designed to achieve nothing. Halfords Customer Services Live Chat is unable to provide an email address for Halfords Customer Services, but Mehnaz is apparently able to forward an email to them from me- except I have no address to send that email to!

Topic

[hawkinspeter]

wtjs wrote:

Worse to even worse.

6 days after the deadline for me to initiate the legal court money claim, I received a phone call from Blackpool. I did not answer this, as there’s no record of what was said. I then received an email from ‘Resolution Expert’ saying he was sure the problem could be solved and asking me to phone the dreaded Halfords number which is routed via South Africa where they have no idea what you’re talking about. I gave them the simple means to resolve the dispute 2 weeks ago- send two correct-size tyres (I gave them the ERTO specification, along with that of the incorrect tyres they gave me last time) to my address and I will take the incorrect ones to Halfords Lancaster next time I’m passing. I’m not interested in traipsing to Blackpool for a third time! They chose to ignore that request, so it has had to go to the courts- could take a long time, I know!

Are you using the small claims court for this?

[wtjs]

Worse to even worse.

Worse to even worse.

6 days after the deadline for me to initiate the legal court money claim, I received a phone call from Blackpool. I did not answer this, as there’s no record of what was said. I then received an email from ‘Resolution Expert’ saying he was sure the problem could be solved and asking me to phone the dreaded Halfords number which is routed via South Africa where they have no idea what you’re talking about. I gave them the simple means to resolve the dispute 2 weeks ago- send two correct-size tyres (I gave them the ERTO specification, along with that of the incorrect tyres they gave me last time) to my address and I will take the incorrect ones to Halfords Lancaster next time I’m passing. I’m not interested in traipsing to Blackpool for a third time! They chose to ignore that request, so it has had to go to the courts- could take a long time, I know!

[wtjs]

Still no reply from Halfords,

Still no reply from Halfords, so it may well be that I will be forced to reject the bike for the sake of Halfords refusing to provide 2 proper tyres. There was no point in me accepting their previous offer to provide a new bike, because that could well include duff tyres as well. I’m certainly not letting them force me into buying proper tyres myself!

[hawkinspeter]

David9694 wrote:

And so it was back in the ’80s when I worked there. Eg A Raleigh Burner BMX would come with red, yellow or blue tyres, but we had no stock of these. There were sets of rad pads, but they weren’t Raleigh. I still can hear Nigel the cycle floor manager saying “take one off another one, mate” – we often cannibalised. 

That seems extreme.

Oh, you meant the bikes

[wtjs]

they can’t help the actual

they can’t help the actual business staff (who still get contacted by unhappy customers who are now also extra unhappy after finding an escape route from live chat limbo)

You have not reckoned with the additional Halfords dodge: you can’t phone into the store direct. Presumably, there is a secret number which can be used, but the idea is to keep complainants out and occupy them on futile Live Chat with people in South Africa who know nothing. It looks like Halfords are trying to tough it out- there has been no reply to my email to Halfords ‘Resolution Expert’ of 4 days ago. This is an extremely foolish ploy, as I have all the evidence to take to the Small Claims Court- including the 2 useless ‘replacement’ tyres.

[bobrayner]

Those 3rd-party live chat

Those 3rd-party live chat services are awful. I don’t know who they’re supposed to support; they can’t help the unhappy customers (who just get extra frustrated after an hour spent with a timewaster who doesn’t know the product or the problem); they can’t help the actual business staff (who still get contacted by unhappy customers who are now also extra unhappy after finding an escape route from live chat limbo). Maybe some people just want a chat and don’t want their problem to be solved?

I spent ages going round in circles with the live chat for a travel agent after my flights were cancelled. It achieved nothing. But I attached some screenshots to a moneyclaim case, and *that* got my money back.

Sometimes the chat service works OK for simple and routine tasks, but those are the ones which customers should be able to self-serve (ie. cancelling an order). As soon as the issue gets more unusual, the chat nitwit just flails around randomly, they can’t help, it wastes everyone’s time.

[David9694]

And so it was back in the

And so it was back in the ’80s when I worked there. Eg A Raleigh Burner BMX would come with red, yellow or blue tyres, but we had no stock of these. There were sets of rad pads, but they weren’t Raleigh. I still can hear Nigel the cycle floor manager saying “take one off another one, mate” – we often cannibalised. 

[wtjs]

Front looks OK from the
Front looks OK from the outside, so I’m not about to damage a fragile tyre by taking it off. Best tyre is probably best kept on the front

[Sriracha]

wtjs wrote:

wtjs wrote:

he had the same bike and had experienced the same problem with the bead detaching.

Sounds like they should at the least be inspecting all these bikes’ tyres before delivery, if not issuing a recall. Have you checked the front tyre closely?

[wtjs]

They’re pleasant enough,
They’re pleasant enough, bearing up under the strain of not knowing much about bikes. The bloke ‘advised’ me to take the two tyres and replace both – he said he had the same bike and had experienced the same problem with the bead detaching. I would have preferred just one tyre- of the correct size. Having removed the faulty rear one again, I see that other sections of both wire beads are close to detaching from the tyre

[hawkinspeter]

Chrissakes! Now I know how

Chrissakes! Now I know how Halfords has got such a bad reputation.

[wtjs]

Bad to Worse!

Bad to Worse!

Halfords cocked it up again. I appeared at the shop to find the tyres (they said I should replace both) were labelled 20 x 1 3/8 and ERTO 37-438 rather than the 37-451 I was expecting. They said it was the correct size, and the tyres on the bike have no ERTO size printed on them- only 20 x 1 3/8 and ‘designed in the USA’, and the bike specifications on the website merely state ’20” ‘. As soon as I got home I could see the Schwalbe replacements were wrong- obviously too small. And so they proved! Halfords clearly doesn’t know the size of these wheels, but I now know that the correct BSD is definitely 451 and not 438 or 406. The unedifying saga continues!

[wtjs]

Well, I took it out this

Well, I took it out this afternoon for a good hilly ride to see if there were any problems in addition to the duff tyre that I should mention when I visit Blackpool Halfords tomorrow. There weren’t, but I discovered that the brakes were even better than expected now that the pads are ‘bedded in’. The braking is astounding- a real 1 finger job, or you’ll lock the rear wheel. I listened out on the quiet back roads of North Lancashire for disc brake noise (a la Chris Froome) but there wasn’t any. The tyre ‘repair’ is holding up well, but I can detect it coming downhill fast on a smooth road.

[wtjs]

I think I am now at The

I think I am now at The Beginning of the End. I received several apparently disconnected emails telling me that my new bike was ready, although I had already stated it was the tyre only I was claiming. Eventually, I received one on Monday afternoon stating that my bike was ‘ready to collect’ (even though it was actually at my house) :

Cycle Repair     Qty: 1

ExOrder0000122 2WS External Part S/O     Qty: 1

Schwalbe 20×1.1/8-1.3/8 PRESTA (SV7A)     Qty: 2

I then received various phone calls which I didn’t answer, resulting in voicemails asking me to call Halfords Blackpool. I waited a day and tried to call- you can’t phone direct and have to go through what sounds like South Africa. A couple of calls failed where I could hear them but they couldn’t hear me. Eventually South Africa allowed me to speak to a Scouser in Blackpool, and we agreed I would collect what I was asking for: a single tyre without inner tube . I think they should have posted it to me but it wasn’t worth the effort of trying to insist on that because I have to go into Blackpool on Thursday anyway. Here’s hoping it really is a tyre which fits: a genuine 20 x 1 3/8 or 37-451 and not something like a 20 x 1.5 or 35 (or 40) – 406. That would be annoying as I tried to sort it out on the phone, with no comprehension or success

 

[Simon_MacMichael]

Reminds me of going to a

Reminds me of going to a certain Shop that only sells Futons and associated accessories to get a new cover for the futon mattress I’d bought there four or five years previously … and they’d changed the mattress size, so no longer had a cover that would fit it. Grrr.

[Author]

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