Consumer Protection Department; City of BA
Learned something interesting the other day. Couple of months ago I had bought a new cell phone for my girlfriend because her older, simple model wouldn't hold a charge and I wanted to give her a little upgrade / present.
We took the old phone to CTI for service and they said the "board" was bad and for 80 pesos could be fixed. I wanted to give it to a relative of my GF so I paid the 80 plus 15 pesos to change the chip and phone number and handed it over and now it would work on calling cards as the monthly service plan was transferred over to the new phone. The relative said the phone never worked right and still wouldn't hold a charge so she went to CTI again (Florida and Paraguay) to get service. They sent it out to their service tech company and it came back with work order that the battery needed to be replaced. The relative said that's BS becuase it was the same problem as before and we paid 80 pesos for the repair. If it was a bad battery we didn't need a new board. She went to a supervisor who told her to pound sand. The relative went to 340 Esmeralda to file a complaint with the Consumer Protection Agency.
After three weeks we had a hearing (pretty darn quick) yesterday. CTI had a lawyer at the hearing and there was also a representative from the Service Company. Apparently businesses are required to respond to these complaints under penalty of fines and such. As well the cell phone companies are very popular at the hearings with a myriad of complaints! So the old guy from the Service Company says he doesn't know why he is there because they never got the phone for a service order! He said that happens alot and they don't even fix Motorola products! Kind of took the wind out of the CTI sails - even though they and we had copies of the work order explaining the problem of bad battery signed by some service tech. The lawyer for CTI (young, crossed eyed guy) offers a free battery and or repair up to 80 pesos and 20 pesos calling card. He had also offered 100 pesos discount on a new phone of our choice as long as we took out a service plan. I did not want the monthly expense - I preferred that the relative buy a card when she needed to use the phone. The Consumer Service Department representative types up the agreement, prints it and everyone signs.
We have to go back to CTI with the letter in one week (it takes that long for the paperwork to process to CTI)
Overall it was pretty seamless. Valuable info for those of us who live here and buy alot of consumer stuff. I kidded with my GFs' relative that I would recommend her to rep any english speakers who have problems with warranties or service complaints. But if you need the help, PM me.
