Comments on: Swedish chain El-Giganten tricks their customers

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:48:56 +0000

You guys are a bunch of goddamn crybabys!
I am a employee at Elgiganten in Denmark.
- Think about how many costumers who come in and out every single day of a store, and the reason why it goes wrong isnt that the personel doesnt burn for their jobs it’s simply because of such people like you!
1: Exploit the “price-guarantuee”
2: Calls our Service Center for stupid questions like “Do you have that in stock?”! The service Center emails the floor personel in the shops, and ask us to call the them and tell them if we have in stock, MOVE YOUR ASSES AND CHECK FOR YOURSELFS!
3: All the salespersonel is responsibel for all their sales, if I sell 10 tv’s a day, it’s my job to keep track of them, and that can sometimes be hard if I want to have a normal life after job, so have a little patience with us! We are people to!
4: To the guy at the top with the DVD Player! Get your finger out of your a**hole and do it yourself! It’s the same as going down to your car repairman and ask him to check the oil and then expect he is doing it for free!
5: QUIT complaining and send in ideas on how we can make it better for YOU! All you’re doing with this site is making people not trusting Elgiganten and it’s PERSONEL! Help us, help you!

By: damo

damo — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 09:25:50 +0000

just adding to the elgiganten story .. i’ve just had my TV it back after a second time away and its still not fixed. the store say they tested it when they got it back and couldn’t see anything wrong ..

i’ve told them before that its not on every channle or every external device. the delviery guy who actually brought it back also left the invoice for elgiganten - on the invoice it says THEY DID NOTHING …

elgiganten are now saying i should call panasonic and its panasonic that say i should call the store!

you should only use elgiganten if you are after something specific and elgiganten are the only store that have it and you’re willing to accept poor service.

or, of you want to buy something and want the thrill of it breaking down and then you haveing to dela with possibly the worst company in sweden in terms of customer service - then by all means buy it at elgiganten

i’ll not be buying at elgiganten anymore and i’ll be telling people not to buy from them .. poor service, poor support and no respect for customers

By: bensam

bensam — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:05:13 +0000

You are right El Giganten is the worst electronic store ever they do not help you after you buy something.

By: Fyaniko

Fyaniko — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 21:36:34 +0000

El-Giganten or banks or whatever aside, if you are in Sweden, pray to the Almighty that you don’t ever become ill! I wish I told you my story, but I think it is outside the subject matter under discussion.

By: Super Knight

Super Knight — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:53:43 +0000

I have been to several countries. And am now in Sweden. There is a lot of business potential in the country, but a lot has to be done to give customers a special touch. One in fact told me that to be a customer in Sweden one has to persevere a lot. Am also told that you can still get good service from selected few other shops in the country.

Right now I am very bitter with Nodea bank. It keeps sending me communication in Swedish despite my written indication to them that I do not understand the language. Their website too has no option for other languages. Yet it claims to be an international bank!

Electronic shops, banks and others (especially in Sweden), pliz put your customers at heart, before you lose out!

By: damian

damian — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:18:40 +0000

my elgiganten story is coming to an end now …

they were supposed to have my tv for 2 weeks to fix a purple snake issue and when they told me this i demanded a tv while they did this; simply because it is elgiganten and i just new it wouldn’t be two weeks …

anyway, it’s over a month now and i demanded to know when i’d have my tv. the guy emailed me and said december 1st or i can have my money back - (over Kr20,000 when i bought the TV over a year ago) … anyway; i go on holiday tomorrow and dont come back until december 9th …

they never phoned me or informed me that my tv wasn’t coming so i’m not informing them … although i have put it up on my site, i’m leaving at 6am tomorrow

i’m looking forward to getting the money and upgrading to a 50″ from another shop!

dont use elgiganten! they are easy to sell you something .. as demonstrated above, but as soon as it goes wrong, they dont want to know …

By: Frida

Frida — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 22:56:27 +0000

Hmmm… it saddens me to read these horror-stories of bad service from El-Giganten.
I myself am a cashier at El-Giganten on Kungsgatan in Stockholm and our motto has always been Kindness, Helpfulness and Effectivity.

To offer the best possible service is our nr one priority, we gladly compensate customers who have been forced to wait for a late delivery of a product and we never flinch to lower our price if we find another store with better prices than us.

For example, when MediaMarkt opened a store the other day in Jönköping, we had a Nokia mobile phone for 20sek (ca 2 euros at current rates) and a 32″ Philips HD-ready TV for 2990sek (ca 323 euros) among other things just to show our customers that we will allways keep the best prices, no matter what.

My wishes right now are that some of you who have been treated poorly by El-Giganten in the past will give us a second chanse and visit us again.
If you would, perhaps we’ll meet and I can even give you a special discount if you say that you read this comment! Just look for Frida at El-Giganten Kungsgatan, I am usually behind the cashiersdesk… Hope to see you soon!

By: damian

damian — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:43:10 +0000

i’m about to write something about el giganten on my personal site as i’ve just had enough of trying to deal with them

i spent just over Kr20,000 on a new plasma tv with them last year and when the guy came round to deliver and put the stand in he used the wrong screws in the back (the big ones instead of the small ones) and damaged the speakers … it took me about 6 months to get a new tv and after a serious amount of hassle

for the past 3 weeks i’ve been trying to contact this store about problems i’m having with the tv - no answer from my emails or even an acknowledgement that they’ve got it!

so i phone last week and get told someone will call me in 48 hours. do you think anyone called? hell no. so i chase again today and i’m feeling more an more let down

i told the lady i spoke to that if my tv doesn’t get fixed this week i’ll be taking the tv back to the store and demanding a full refund

will i shop at el giganten again? would you put your hand on a burning stove again?

service = very poor

By: Adrian Cook

Adrian Cook — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 10:42:35 +0000

I have not personally shopped at El Giganten, but their “over the counter” sales procedure for large items is very slow. My step-daughter bought her new TV from the Karlskrona branch and we had to go outside and wait by a side door for something like a quarter of an hour before it was brought out. Compare that to On- Off (practically next door), who produced my new TV on a trolley at the desk while the salesman was still writing the receipt and offered to wheel it to my car. Less than 5 minutes! I have always found their salesman to be knowledgeable, extremely helpful and honest in their recommendations - I have never had the most expensive item pushed at me.

By: Peter M

Peter M — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 18:11:14 +0000

Haha, sometimes you gotta love elgiganten for their “pris-garanti” Or price-guarantee. I once went to the store and decided to play around with them. I came up with some story that this washing machine costed 3000kr in another shop and in el-giganten it costed 4000kr. The guy went away for a while, perhaps did some research at the back, and came back to me saying that, “oh you’re right, we’ll sell it to you for 2500kr” So i said yes, and bought it. Pretty neat isnt it? And i bought a mobile phone for 25Ã¸re! Which is about 0.03 Euros or 0.04 US dollars.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 07:42:53 +0000

K.A.,

Thanks for sharing.

By: K.A.

K.A. — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 20:50:12 +0000

1) Had somewhat similar experience with ElkjÃ¸p (which I believe is part of the El-Giganten chain). I had to return a digicam (bought online for about NOK 1400) for a warranty service after literally only two or three shots taken. I got a reply from their service shop to the effect that the camera has been damaged (a tiny dent near viewfinder visible on a photo they kindly took for me when zoomed in to about 300%) and that I need to pay NOK 2500 for repair, OR NOK 389 for return without repair, OR NOK 188 for a “qualified technician” to scrap the damn thing. I tried to argue, but to no avail. I suggested that I could drive to their repair shop, pick up the camera and scrap it myself, but was told that I am not good enough for that. When I said, OK, I will keep it then as a memory of good experience with Elkjop, but that didn’t do the trick either. THe lady on the phone said that “the repair technician spent time looking into the problem”. What could I say in reply to that…
2) I recently bought a DVD burner from the same shop. It needed a gentle kick to open the tray. And you know what, I didn’t even bother calling ElkjÃ¸p. I fixed it myself.
In conclusion, I agree entirely with M (posted March 27th, 2006 at 22:56) - buy things in the shop, try and then return if you don’t like it or return and buy online 10-20% cheaper.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:58:12 +0000

Kico,

Most manufacturers deliver that information with their products to their resellers, and most stores in Sweden naturally then offer it for free as good service to their customers.

By: Kico

Kico — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 14:01:25 +0000

Well, if you are asking them to find out a area free code offcourse
you have to pay. thats not information that comes in manual so
a technic would had to find the info from the maker “lg” and then put the code in your DVD player.

this cant be free of charge? its alot of work thats isnt really theys to do. you can do it your selfe..

another thing would have been maybe if y would have needed maybe to know wich batteryes goes to the remote control.. thats free.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 08:14:59 +0000

KayDenmark,

Exactly, that’s how good customer should work!

Johanna,

Thanks for sharing! I’m gald that it all worked out in the end for you, but sorry to hear all the proelbems you had to go through.

Not sure about not being able to mess with the computer games; one never knows…

By: Johanna

Johanna — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 22:40:47 +0000

Hi, i’ve used El-Giganten aswell.
When i bought a new computer the graphic card lasted for about 1 and a half month/2 months. The screen were completly black when i turned on the computer. I went back with it, and 3 weeks later my aunt drove over to them, becuse we had heard NOTHING from them about it, and changing a graphic card is something i can do in 3 minuts, being a computer-geek. However i dident want to becuse if i would have to buy a new one i thought it would be better if they changed it for free. When my aunt came to the store the staff were unpleasent and said “We’ve had it here for 3 days” and they hadent called anyone of us. When i finally hooked my computer up and were over-joyd that it were finally back where its supose to be. To make my day even better i decied to listen to some music. What happends? NO MUSIC! Finally when the graphic card works, they have broken the sound card. This time, being so angry at the idiots i paid a 500 swedish kr. to a local computer store. They fixed the sound card in a day. They found out two things; they El-Giganten idiots had turn of the switch to the sound card and on top of that they knew the sound card were broken so instead of fixing it they just turned it off. Talk about idiots!! Now it finally all works. I’ll never buy any computers or anything from them again. Maybe some computer games, becuse they cant mess with that right?

By: KayDenmark

KayDenmark — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 08:25:52 +0000

I had a similar experience with the Fona electronics chain in Denmark a couple of years ago - they told me it would cost DK1300 to buy a device that would make my DVD player code-free.

I ended up buying a cheap-o DVD player at Fotex, the Danish equivlent to KMart, for at total price of DK450, and the Fotex staff gave me a lovely Xeroxed piece of paper that told me how I could make it code free. It worked, and I have used the DVD player without incident ever since.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 07:22:39 +0000

People,

Thanks for sharing!

I mean, business practices like this apply to any different kind of business, there’s a lot of people out there trying to make an easy buck and not care about their customers.

I think that in the web development world this phenomenon is seen more in the way of crappy inaccessible web sites than billing a lot of extra money (although both takes place from time to time).

By: Johan

Johan — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 03:43:13 +0000

> Press the 0 key seven times

I am 007, my name is Robert, Robert Nyman.

By: M

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 21:56:32 +0000

Wow, 295 kr is a hefty price for seven keypresses.

I only have good experience from shopping at Elgiganten though. A good thing with many of the bigger “offline” chains (here in Sweden at least) is that they tend to have rather liberal return policies. So you can buy, (carefully) try and then return it if you don’t like it. Or return it even if you like it and then buy it way cheaper online