The Customer Is Always Wrong!

It seems like a really cool idea. A company that takes in your old games and electronics, gives you some money and re-sells them for a profit. That way we all get to play with older retro stuff or else get a hold of that thing we could never afford as kids. Yes, I get the whole ‘pre-loved’ thing. There are epic technical issues involved as staff will perforce have to know a whole slew of technologies – in plural. Not just how audio and video works but also the whole morass of different kinds of computers and games platforms and their various iterations.

The outfit is Computer Exchange who use the acronym CeX and proudly pronounce that as ‘Sex’ when you phone their ‘go-to-blazes-this-is-a-recording’ line that basically just tells you to go away and then hangs up on you. It’s faintly hilarious, you can even hear the slight corporate irritation in the company person’s voice. Just a bit arch..”if you want to SPEAK…” and then says apply in writing! I dare you to call it and see if you agree!  0330 123 5986. It literally tells you that FB and Twitter are their idea of urgent and you are not to call the stores as these numbers are ‘unfortunately for internal use only’ is if it was bad luck and they can do nothing about that!

Anyway, why is Adam Rayner bothered? Well, it has to do with me once being a bit big in the game of audio journalism. I was in Las Vegas for my eleventh or 12th CES and by now, I was getting invited to the posh show-before-the-show thing they did for the press with a table top exhibition of a whole bunch of key stuff, labelled ‘CES Unveiled’. I had eaten all the huge prawns I could and was doing the rounds of these pre-exhibition exhibitors when I came upon the Marshall headphones stand.

I bragged to the dude about working in a rehearsal studio that had old marshall cabinets for hire, all with Jim Marshall’s actual signature in pencil inside. For at the end of the whole day’s production, Jim would go round and personally check the workmanship of every box, signing off all that passed. We had one with the jack-plug speaker socket shoved in, so I had to remove a speaker to fix it. That was when I found the autograph and my boss was gently deprecating when I got all excited, him explaining that they ALL had that.

Of course that was in the Eighties and long since, all Marshall stuff is made in parts elsewhere.. and these headphones were just an exercise in branding. One cool thing was how the headphone cord was an imitation of a guitar jack-plug wire…

That nice young man promptly gave me a set! I was chuffed and used them until they fell to bits around my head some years later. By then, I had come to like the light weight, comfy cushions and how I could wear them over just one ear. I really didn’t want to get involved in another thing I had to be a charge-slave to (my new apple has a cordless keyboard..sigh) so I was not keen on the next generation with Bluetooth.

When, as these things do, this pair also fell to bits after like five years I looked for new alternatives and found that the things were in Mk3 version and had gone Bluetooth. But I found an old corded pair in white and was happy as Larry. Even the iconic golden knurled Jack-plugs in 3.5mm looked cool with white wire.

Finally, these too died. I looked online and found a pair on CeX. I struggled with not wanting to buy from them for a while then gave in and purchased them. They duly arrived and I was thrilled, until I opened them. There was no headphone cord. Nothing, let alone that iconic guitar-lead plug set…

I emailed them and they said they would sort it out.. and added that I could return them and get a refund if I wanted. I said that I wanted the headphones AND the cord. I looked again online and found that there was a Chinese factory still selling these cords, made to fit the Marshall thing.. and clearly a copy. I didn’t mind. I risked the £5.83 and you know what? The cord arrived soon and was a perfect match.

But the cord does take some wear and tear and a spare would be cool.. I was going to order an extra one just in case, anyway. The point was, CeX had sold a product with crucial iconic design-led parts missing. After taking a bizarre amount of the time of the respondent at CeX who drew the short straw to deal with me, I felt that at some seven emails to and fro might count for them realising that it was costing them more than the £5.83 partial refund that I requested. But no.

Shortly after that, a packet arrived for me, containing a very short simple tip-ring-sleeve 3.5mm jack to jack that looked for all the world that it had been filched from another bit of stock like a camcorder. I did my pieces, e-mailed some more and used their free return service to return JUST the cord. This is at their cost. (POSTAGE COUNT = 2 one out to me and then back to them)

Then, it came back again, weeks later, same packet same stupid wire. (POSTAGE COUNT = 3)

This time, I went to the big mouth Click & Drop postbox nearest to me that I used during lockdown. I simply labelled it and plopped it into the box with NO postage. So that is (POSTAGE COUNT = 4) PLUS a penalty fee for CeX if they accepted it… at their Greycaines House, 21 Greycaines Road address, which is actually on Greycaine road in the singular. Yes, the postbox is over the road.

And that double sign typo not fifty yards from the two street name signs at the end of the road to use as reference, is the perfect revelation of the whole CeX corporate lackadaisical approach.

And get this… A box arrived today from CeX. Another Small Parcel Tracked 48! I have not opened it but it seems to be a HUGE box with little inside…because while a headphone cord could easily go in a Large Letter thick envelope and cost them less, this Small Parcel size seems to be their minimum. (POSTAGE COUNT = 5) and hilariously, now that I know they accept and pay for dodgy post, I am going to dump it back in the mail to them until they give up. (POSTAGE COUNT = 6) Tracked 48 sells retail for a £3.35 get-out-of-bed-fee by Click 7 Drop, and even with a serious company discount that has to be three quid a pop, no? Oh and the pound fee for the revenue protection charge for accepting post with not enough or NIL postage. I make that twelve quid, plus about nine emails of staff time.. and another quid for revenue protection and another four for this going back…again! So, no partial refunds huh? I am costing CeX over £20 so far..thrice the effort of doing something that could have been a social media win for them.

I really was just going to let it go, figuring I have had my money’s worth…but now this looks like something some aspie teat at the Greycaine(s) Road building may keep on doing… I go past there to fill up my car at the Dome roundabout in Watford. This is NIL extra cost to me..but may well keep building for them.

I do hope so. Meanwhile it turns out that the corporate style is so awful that CeX have a THRIVING community of haters, sharing how their faulty games are just put straight back on the shelves to try to con the next sap, in full knowledge it is broken! I guess they jut hope kids won’t complain… the mum who’s daughter spent £380.00 on a phone, bought while in her school uniform, was offered to be bought back three days later at £140.. the child had been lied to about the phone being set to work on her network. So they lie to cheat schoolchildren, rip off gamers and treat the customer frankly, as a cunt.