Friday, December 28, 2007

Thailand's BIGGEST LIAR: the saga continues

I refer readers to my first blog on this situation.

Since then, the manager who seemed helpful refused to return several calls as to the status of my Xbox 360. On Christmas Day, he finally returned our call. His news was this: we could either replace the melted chip at a cost of 5,000 bhat wit a guarantee of seven days or replace the entire board at a cost of 15,000 bhat.

Naturally, my response was "I am not paying a single bhat, you will cover the costs. In any case, your storeman told us the repair price was 1,500 baht"

The manager responded that his shop would not pay. We could pay for the new chip at a "discounted" price of 3,000 bhat (still double the original price quoted) or....wait for this.......we could sell the Xbox 360 back to the store for 7,000 bhat!!!!


Yes that's right. The system I bought for 25,000 bhat from the shop that worked for four weeks, they were now planning to buy back from me at a loss of just 18,000 baht!


My wife told them to go back and arrange a free fix for us. Today he rang again, and offered a fix for 2,500 bhat. My wife accepted on condition they provide a guarantee of far more than one week. He refused. My wife responded that we would go to the Thai equivalent of Trading Standards, he replied "Do what you want" and hung up.


And it still doesn't end. We managed to contact the repair company and were told that actually the repair charge for a chip was 3,000 bhat. The manager's quote of 5,000 was another con.

It's now been four months since my system worked. Since then I've been cheated and lied to and nothing else. Sadly, we will have to take this further.

The problem is, I've lost the original receipt. Probably it was destroyed by my son who loves to play with my wallet. I do have the repair receipt though.


I could use any advice here. In the UK, we have a watchdog group called "Trading Standards" that assist consumers in problems like this. I understand there is a similar group in Thailand but nobody can seem to translate the name. Can anyone help?

Any ideas for my next action? I'm planning to contact the police, the manager of The Mall Bang Khae , post a message on pantip.com and write to every newspaper. Perhaps my best tactic would be to hand out letters in Thai to customers in The Mall but of course then things could get nasty.

It's a real disappointment that this has happened but we either let these people get away with stealing 25,000 bhat from me or we fight it out.

Oh and by the way NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM PS BOX IN THE MALL BANG KHAE unless you want this to happen to you!

5 comments:

sooksiam said...

You can contact Office of the consumer Protection Board Here is its website:

http://www.ocpb.go.th/index.asp

and its contact telephone number is 1166 which is also available on the website.

I suggest trying to sort the issue out by contacting the manager of the Mall. Providing that you still have the receipt, your complaint about these deceitful people is totally justified and appropriate in this matter. I do not think the manager of the Mall will be pleased to know that there is a thief cheating people in his premises.

I hope you can sort this problem out soon.

Fonzi said...

You seem to have a lot of faith in the integrity and journalism standards of The Nation.

Why not ask your mates over there to do an expose on this guy?

Red and White said...

Cheers Fonzi. I actually have already contacted them and they've given me some help.

Red and White said...

Soksiam, thanks for this very useful feedback. I will contact these people.

Anonymous said...

i do hope you expose them over all the national newspapers. such lying, dishonest traders should never be let to get away with it.

cheers