Digiland - You've let me down!
I've bought from Digiland as a standalone customer many times and always had a really good experience, so when my employer wanted a bulk order of Samsung mobiles to be distributed to staff for work purposes, I immediately suggested Digiland since I've known for a long time that Digiland are very happy to work with businesses. Purchasing a bulk order of phones was simple and the price quoted was very good so it was agreed by management that we would proceed with the purchase. Due to the value of the order, I had to collect the phones in person on behalf of my employer - something recommended by Digiland, and something I also agreed to do. Everything seemed fine on collection, until we got to the stage of unboxing the phones back at the office and powering them up, realising that many of them were already locked to other users profiles (PIN on lock screen, personal photos as wallpaper etc) and they had clearly not been checked correctly prior to being provided to us which mean't that the devices would have to be returned. The collection was also missing one of the handsets that we had paid for. My employer instructed me to return the locked/faulty handsets, which was easy enough to do and I was told that Digiland would be able to resolve all these problems quickly by running them through their Samsung software. I personally dropped them off, and having been told that the handsets would be available to collect quickly, I returned again 3 days later, assuming this would be ample time given the assurance that the fix wouldn't take very long. When I arrived, I was then told that the devices were still locked as Digiland hadn't got the permissions to unlock the devices due to their original place of origin being South America and not Europe. Surely this is something a company like Digiland has come across before, being a Samsung licensed Service Centre of 20 years, and something they should have been aware of??? If not, why are Digiland handling Samsung goods from continents that they don't have full permissions to manage? Firstly, that was a completely wasted journey for me both in time and travel costs and could have been avoided had someone actually bothered to contact me to say that the devices wouldn't be ready - Digiland had my business email and phone number, yet no one attempted to reach out. So we're now in a state of limbo waiting to see how long it will be before the devices we've purchased can be put right. We also haven't been provided a replacement for the missing device although I'm told we will receive one once the other phones have actually been sorted out (no timeframe for that though). It's a very good job that we're not in desperate need for the handsets given the fact that my employer has paid several thousands of pounds for these phones, and at the moment, we're minus 9 devices (over £2000 worth) - not like Digiland has considered that though knowing we bought the phones for business use. On top of that, I will have had to make 4 consecutive journeys to Digiland to get this resolved - which is time that would have been better spent focused on the job I'm actually employed to do - something which we don't feel has been taken into account by Digiland and this 'mistake' just appears to have been treated as though it's not a big deal. I'm not a courier - Digiland is not next door to where I live and not even in the same county as my employers offices so each journey costs me and my employer time and money. The devices should have been thoroughly checked prior to being allowed on sale. It also wasn't made clear to us prior to purchase that the model of phones we were purchasing were from Samsung South America (Mexico), and not European or international models. Yes, they work fine in the UK, but their origin should have been made very clear when we were offered to purchase the devices in the first instance, especially as many of the phones which we've got working come with a South American telecomms network bootloader included, and by default come with several pre-installed 'network specific' Spanish-language apps (some can't be uninstalled) along with default keyboard and language settings set to Spanish, which will each have to be removed or updated prior to being given to staff across all of the devices we purchased. It's really not difficult to be transparent. Overall, the experience has knocked my confidence in Digiland. I recommended Digiland personally to my employer on the basis that I believed they were excellent seller of new and reconditioned Samsung products and they've let me down considerably and the response so far doesn't seem as though anyone at Digiland is really that concerned. They've certainly knocked the confidence of my employer who will not be keen to purchase through Digiland again. You've definitely let me down this time.
