It was a genius business idea, must be said...anyone complaining about the customer service by phone should accept that we are en Suisse, not the UK or US
I've bought many thousands of CHFs worth of stuff from them over the past 10 years - only ever had to return stuff twice and both under warranty - both were dealt with fine.
First time was a couple of SuperTalent SSDs which went bad - they were sent back to the manufacturer but were not fixable and those models no longer available so they credited me their original cost against new SSDs.
Second time was a QNAP NAS that also went bad - again was sent back to the manufacturer, again not fixable and model no longer available so they gave me the equivalent latest model.
Historically they had the best prices but I agree this is not always the case any more. I always check against toppreise.ch and recently they are sometimes not even in the top half of the list, but I'll usually still go with them if (a) the price difference is quite small and (b) if the cheaper options are with companies I have not dealt with nor heard of before - it also helps that they are near to my work place so easy to go collect stuff from them (or indeed take stuff back if needed !).
About 2 years ago I bought a cell phone from them, which came with 2-years warranty. Recently it started to have problems - it was slow to find signal, dropping calls and generally misbehaving. I called them and asked if it is covered by warranty, they replied that I can bring it to them and they would tell. That's what I did.
Now I get a reply from them, that it's not covered by warranty because the damage was a result of a downfall and therefore I have to pay them 40 francs for looking at it and also pay delivery costs!
The bottomline: when I tried to use their warranty, not only they didn't fix my problems, they caused extra troubles (w/o phone for 4 weeks) they also rip me of ~60 chf. Worst experience I ever had with any warranty so far!
In general, it's their right to refuse the warranty, but charging money for even asking them if it's covered by warranty is clearly over the top.
But you are right - unless the damage is obviously recent and significant enough to cause concern, I think they're just living up to their usual customer support reputation
Having decided on the Blu Ray player I wanted, Digitec were the cheapest.
I ordered online at 15.30 on December 3 . I was a little miffed that did not take Visa, only MasterCard, AmEx, invoice and bank. I opted for bank and they sent payment details. I arranged payment through online banking for the next day.
December 4 Digitec acknowledged payment, advised dispatch and sent of link to the Post delivery service. I could see it was dispatched from Bern at 17.40.
December 5 - a Saturday - the Post website showed the package was at the local depot at 03.39.
09.50, the door bell rang twice and the package was there!
I could not ask for more...
He ordered his phone on Friday morning, arranged payment with online banking the same day - and received his phone at 09.50 on Saturday (the next day)...
1. You ordered an item from Digitec.
2. They despatched it.
3. Swiss Post did a great job of delivering it quickly.
digitec. Our lackeys really know how to stick stuff in boxes.
Point is that with pages of doom Digitec, I was reluctant to buy from them, though I had in the past without problem...
As for customer service, when I took it back I was set on buying the higher-spec, higher-price version also from them, even though it was a good 80chf more expensive than Microspot, just on the convenience of being there. I tried to convince the rep to waive the 10% "return cost" on the wrong item, as they'd have made double that amount on my larger purchase, but he wasn't interested. A bit short-sighted, especially since the purchase was as a company which might have brought a lot more business in the future.
It's Migros now.
Do you think the cashier at your local Migros has any say in this kind of stuff?
Maybe if you'd have had a business account with them....but I doubt they take anybody serious who doesn't make a six-figure turnaround with them every month.
Goodbye Digitec, Hello Migros....