According to a BBC One report, salespeople at some Carphone Warehouse stores are misleading customers about insurance on the iPhone, and what might happen if they were to lose the device. Some customers reported that they were told if they lost their iPhone, they would have to buy an entirely new 18 month contract – at a minimum cost of £630. This is untrue — the customer would need to purchase a new iPhone, but the contract would carry over. In three out five Carphone stores visited by the BBC, their researchers were told the same thing. At another store, researchers were told that insurance offered by O2 shops was not as complete as the insurance offered by Carphone Warehouse, which is also untrue.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Carphone Warehouse offers its employees commission on every handset and insurance plan they sell. The retailer says that while there may be “some element of confusion among an isolated number of sales consultants,” it does not believe that the “small number of complaints” were “a fair reflection of the experience of thousands of iPhone customers who have received insurance advice in our stores”. Last year, Carphone Warehouse was fined £245,000 by the Financial Services Authority for breaking rules related to the sale of insurance.
