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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Guardian An­gel

No stove, consumer gets $$ back

by

20140202

Each week, the Guardian An­gel col­umn high­lights com­plaints sent in by you, the con­sumer, and pro­vides so­lu­tions or di­rects you to the ap­pro­pri­ate re­source.Prob­lem: Dr Chan­dra Sinanan-Ma­habir, from San Fer­nan­do, said she need­ed to re­place her stove as the oven nev­er worked prop­er­ly and de­cid­ed to buy a new one from Courts, High Street, San Fer­nan­do, specif­i­cal­ly for the oven.

Dr Sinanan-Ma­habir said: "The sales clerk was very help­ful and very cour­te­ous. On con­clu­sion of my pur­chase of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $6,500 on De­cem­ber 13, 2013, I was asked for my con­tact num­bers, which I gave (house and cell), but em­pha­sised that I was leav­ing the coun­try on De­cem­ber 16 and that my house­keep­er would be han­dling the de­liv­ery and so her cell num­ber was not­ed.

"On De­cem­ber 19, I re­ceived a call in the USA from the dri­ver of the de­liv­ery van telling me he is about to de­liv­er the stove. I in­di­cat­ed to him I was abroad and that it was my house­keep­er's num­ber he ought to be call­ing."Be­fore I could give him her num­ber, in case he did not have it, he replied that it was on­ly two num­bers he was giv­en and he hung up!

"I im­me­di­ate­ly called Trinidad, and told my house­keep­er to con­tact Courts. She was told he was on his way to Tabaquite and af­ter that, back to the ware­house. She spoke to the su­per­vi­sor at Courts, who promised to speak with the ware­house su­per­vi­sor."Dr Sinanan-Ma­habir said her house­keep­er vis­it­ed the store from De­cem­ber 20 to 24, try­ing to get the stove de­liv­ered be­fore Christ­mas, as the on­ly rea­son for the new stove was to do the Christ­mas bak­ing.

She said when she re­turned to T&T, she vis­it­ed the store to find out what went wrong."I was told that all the stoves were sold out and my pur­chased item was no longer avail­able! I could ei­ther wait till the end of Jan­u­ary for new stock or get my mon­ey back."Of course, I opt­ed to re­trieve my mon­ey and will con­tin­ue pur­chas­ing abroad, as I have al­ways done, ex­cept for a cook­er."

So­lu­tion: Uni­com­er, the par­ent com­pa­ny of Courts, was con­tact­ed about Dr Sinanan-Ma­habir's com­plaint and said it was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the com­pa­ny's cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence man­ag­er. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Guardian An­gel was told that cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives are re­spon­si­ble for mak­ing sure that the item se­lect­ed by the cus­tomer is in stock be­fore com­plet­ing the sale and if the item falls be­low a cer­tain lev­el it should not be sold.

Even as you're en­cour­aged to take the ap­pro­pri­ate routes for ad­dress­ing your com­plaints, the Guardian An­gel is here to as­sist you. You can send the Guardian An­gel an e-mail about your prob­lem and what steps you took to deal with the mat­ter.The Guardian An­gel looks for­ward to hear­ing from you and bring­ing some re­lief to your prob­lems. E-mail her at an­gel@guardian.co.tt

Please in­clude your name, ad­dress and tele­phone num­ber as we'll need them to fol­low up with you.Un­for­tu­nate­ly, ow­ing to the vol­ume of e-mails and lim­it­ed space, it is im­pos­si­ble to ad­dress every com­plaint, no mat­ter how wor­thy, or ac­knowl­edge re­ceipt of every e-mail.


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