ELECTRONIC CENTRE - BELFAST, CO

Customer goodwill in reverse? I recently changed my television box and the new one lacks the necessary scart socket to extend the television signal to other rooms in the house. Although I had already seen the necessary equipment I needed on Amazon in a flush of goodwill I decided to support our local business by taking the train into town to purchase the equipment from the Electronic Centre in Belfast. When making my purchase I pointed out that as a pensioner the proposed system needed to work as I could ill afford to waste £60. I was assured that I did not need to worry as they had sold hundreds of such units and that there would definitely not be a problem. The aerial wiring and previous box enabled the television signal to be sent round the house adequately but using the items purchased together with my new television box the sound and television signal proved to be untenable. I took the purchased items back to the Electronics Centre within a 24 hour period in their original condition. In fact the manager queried if I had even had the equipment out of the boxes. He then insisted on testing the equipment that he had sold me even though I pointed out that it did not matter to me whether they proved to defective or not as they did not work with my new box. He informed me that if he could show the items sold worked adequately in the shop he was not legally obliged to give me a refund. I pointed out that a credit note would be useless to me as there was no other equipment in his shop that I would want to purchase. Regardless, he refused to refund my money and I got stuck with a virtually worthless £60 credit note which he pointed out could only be redeemed by myself in person. If the goods had been purchased from Amazon or many of the large retailers they could have been returned without issue. After being treated like this I can fully understand why so many local businesses are facing bankruptcy as customers favour internet companies and large multinationals who value customer goodwill and act in a much more reasonable manner. The outcome for me is that in future not only will I discourage anyone from buying from the Electronic Centre in Belfast but if this is the standard of customer care that can be expected from local businesses I am afraid that neither I nor any of my family will ever contemplate going out of our way to support local enterprise again.