"Have a read at this before you buy!"

A review of Electronic Centre Ltd by Anonymous written on Monday 21st of May 2018

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 the equipment had even been taken out of their boxes. He then insisted on testing the products which 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 (unless I wanted to start a disco Tec or become an electrician) . 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 presenting it 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.

If you wish to deal with people who, from my experience, are willing to do the minimum for their customers that they can legally get away with then be my guest! 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.

As an update - in order to derive some benefit out of the sixty pound credit note I ended up buying an electronic razor which appeared to be the only item in the shop that I could see that would be of any conceivable use to me. I subsequently discovered that the same item was nearly 40 % more expensive than on Amazon.

Additional to the above, in order to recover some of my remaining twenty five pounds a colleague recently agreed that I buy an SD card from the Electronic Centre and he would give me the going rate for the product. I first checked the price with the Electronic Centre and was informed that it was nineteen pounds 99p. I suggested that this seemed expensive and on checking it transpired that Amazon were selling the identical card for eleven pounds with free postage. This represents an addition by the Electronics Centre of nearly 82%! I subsequently queried this with Electronic Centre staff, they confirmed that the SD card was identical and informed me that they could not compete! I continue to ask myself why on earth I ever considered supporting these people in the first place!.

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