A disabled Fife man has lambasted leading electrical retailer BrightHouse after they sold his laptop instead of repairing it.
Customer Ronald MacKenzie from Inverkeithing was assured by the company, which is the UK’s largest weekly payment retailer, that his faulty laptop would be fixed and returned within 14 days.
When there was still no sign of it a fortnight later he contacted the customer service department to be informed there had been a “mix up” and that his laptop had been refurbished and sold on.
Mr MacKenzie told The Courier: “They told me there was no way I would get it back. I couldn’t believe it. I had my whole life on that laptop hundreds of irreplaceable photographs of myself, my wife and our children and our pets as well as special photographs of our wedding day which took place just last June.
“I also had a lot of personal files on it that I’ve now lost forever and will result in a lot of inconvenience.
“I made my feelings clear to the customer service department that I was highly dissatisfied but nobody I spoke to was sympathetic at all.”
To compound matters, Ronald was sent a laptop belonging to a woman in England.
The father-of-five, who cannot work because of severe nerve damage in his hands and feet, said: “It was definitely a laptop that had been sent in for repair, like mine had been, as it had post-it notes stuck on it with the woman’s details and address which is obviously a serious breach of confidentiality.
“The company has since been in touch to tell me they will compensate me with a new laptop but I don’t think that’s good enough and I felt I had to speak out about this in the hope that it might stop it happening to someone else in the future.”
BrightHouse’s divisional director for Scotland Stephen Bewick said: “BrightHouse takes great pride in our high standard of service and always aims to put our customers first, but in this situation we fell well below our usual high standards.
“We apologise to Mr MacKenzie and have been speaking to him over recent days to find an acceptable way of compensating him for his loss and are delighted that we have reached an acceptable resolution with him.”