Carrefour Product and Service Quality
We bought jogging shoes from Carrefour that broke in one week. Carrefour refused take responsibility.
Carrefour states the following at the their website:
Quality is one of our main source of competitive differentiation and is part of the fundamental policies defining the implementation of the Group’s strategy. It always corresponds to what the customer explicitly or implicitly wants and must be clearly perceived as such. The value for money must be the best.
We bought last week a pair of no brand jogging shoes from Carrefour. After one week they broke down. Yesterday we went to exchange the shoes and the reaction was unpleasant and rather unexpected.
The lady in the customer service booth explained that jogging shoes only have a warranty for textile parts, not for sole. So because there was a hole in the sole of both shoes, nothing could be done. We asked her kindly to provide us proof that we had talked with her about the issue. This would have been necessary for filing a consumer complaint against Carrefour, but she refused without explanation.
Next we asked her name so that we could at least refer to the incident in the complaint, but she refused again. Instead she lost her temper. Our next question was to speak with her superior. She showed a photo of the store manager in a poster hanging on the wall, but added that the manager would be too busy to talk with us anyway. So our only option for having a proof was to take her photo so that she could be identified later if necessary.
At this point the lady got really mad and asked the guards to take our camera. The photos were erased, but the guards agreed to ask some kind of boss to help us. The boss came, yelled at us something in French and ran away. That was their understanding of the quality of service as one of our main source of competitive differentiation.
The shoes cost us 8.90 € and they lasted for less than one week. Our expectation was one year or more, so the annual price of the shoes would have been 462,80 €. According to Carrefour policy quality always corresponds to what the customer explicitly or implicitly wants and must be clearly perceived as such. The value for money must be the best. What do you think, is 462,80€ for jogging shoes the best value for the money?
One can only speculate what will happen when a customer discovers something dangerous in Carrefour food products or children toys. Perhaps someone will have to die before Carrefour shows respect to customers and follows the rules of responsible commerce. Do you dare to use Carrefour?
Keywords: Carrefour, product, safety, service, quality, responsible commerce, boycott, group, strategy, customer service, food product safety, dangerous, problem, trouble, concern.
Comments
Carrefour (well, all major "it must be cheap" stores) sell dead-cheap no-brand clothing and a multitude of articles made under often horrifying conditions in China.
The carrefour statement showed they kept their promise:
"the Group’s strategy always corresponds to what the customer explicitly or implicitly wants":
cheap merchandise.
If you buy 8 euro shoes you can only expect to get "junk, made in China". Let's face it, 8 euro shoes...
If you were expecting anything more for 8 euros, remember the rule of responsible commerce:
don't buy junk :-)
However, our point is that all of these shoes should last more than a week. Another main issue also remains: how does the shoe seller handle responsibility and what is the quality of their customer service. Without proper customer service it's all the same what you buy and where. So, everything in Carrefour is junk according to that logic as you cannot trust them.
I'm basically stunned by the way Carrefour handled your legitimate complaint.
No matter the price, shoes that fall apart after one week with a "no sole guarantee" is obviously in breach of EU laws protecting the customer.
But they treated you like trash, not like customers, and I was shocked reviewing your account again.
I suppose avoiding Carrefour for non-food items (or altogether) may indeed be a wise choice.
I know they have a centralized customer service, the store should have kindly asked you to contact them to get yr money back or you can write directly to carrefour.fr
referred to is "lay 23/2003 de 10 de Julio " in case you guys need to use it. it can be ontained from european union website.
Hope that cheated people will start more and more to share their experiences and stop using Carrefour. That is probably the only way to fix things.
All the best and good luck with your case.
I bought two suite cases from Carrefour in Aleppo, Syria in July 2010. Both had digital locks that were set for 000. We travelled abroad and guess what, the two cases would not open on 000 or any other combination, so we had to break the locks of both suitcases and throw away both suite cases. It is indeed very surprising for a large hypermarket chain like Carrefour. Clearly, quality is not on their top priority. We cannot go back to them as we are outside Syria, but it has given us a very bad idea about Carrefour.
thanks for your comment and sorry to hear about your problems.
Happy travels,
Päivi & Santeri