I’ve been screwed over by pixmania, and I feel like blogging about it.

In July I ordered something from pixmania.ie – a USB to SATA/IDE Converter Cable. Its a little thingie that connects SATA/IDE harddrives to your PC – like a disk enclosure without the enclosure part. It cost me €15 euro. A bargain I thought. How wrong I was.

The thing worked on arrival, but failed within 10 minutes of being used. I returned it straight away (end of July) at my own cost (they claimed they would refund postage costs if I sent them a receipt for postage, but I sent it and never received a refund). In September, I got an email back saying that I the item had arrived in the returns depot, and been ‘accepted’. In supplier speak this means it was merely delivered to the returns depot. By October I had still received no updates on the status of the return. Then in November I received a replacement unit, with no explanation or documentation. “Great” I thought to myself. “It took almost 4 months to process and replace this single, small item, but at least I now have a working one”.

A few weeks later, the replacement unit failed. It had been used approximately 3 times at this point (its not something one would use every day afterall). I tried to return this replaced unit only to discover that the item was still marked as ‘accepted’ by the returns depot. The item status was never updated. There was no way for me to return it.

Their customer service is a bad joke.

Trying to log in to www.pixmania.ie threw a password error, even after recovering the correct password through their own password recovery system. It was only possible to log into www.pixmania.CO.UK. No email addresses are listed on the site for direct email. Contact forms are hidden away and obfuscated under confusing category names (”for partners”, “suggestions?”, “join our team!” etc). When found, they only allow a maximum of 700 words, and despite filling in my complaint under several categories, I never got a reply. I have tried emailing fotovista (pixmania’s parent company), and the pixmania press department, also to no avail.

I logged in again a week or so later to discover that the original order is now marked as in ‘preparation’. Underneath this it says ‘Your package is ready to be sent’. Next to the USB/IDE cable, it now says ‘Discontinued Product’. Both items in the order also show 0 items waiting for delivery. This is further evidence that the side is designed to be misleading and confusing, to discourage users from attempting to avail of any kind of after sales service.

I tried complaining to the National Consumer Agency who told me :

The registered business address for www.pixmania.ie is in France and therefore where consumer complaints relate to companies located outside the Republic of Ireland but within the EU, the European Consumer Centre (ECC) in Dublin can most appropriately handle your query.

Fine. I contacted the ECC (www.eccireland.ie) who were very helpful, but informed me

[]…we depend on the willingness of a trader to co-operate to resolve complaints.

Obviously that’s not going to work, since they couldnt be bothered to answer my emails. At this point, I’ve spent too much effort trying to get a refund for something that only cost me €15 and I’d feel a bit of an eejit chasing it up. However, I’m sure I’m not alone in my experiences with pixmania, so I thought I’d tell my story to warn people away from this dishonest company.

So to sum up, Avoid Pixmania this christmas!