I am sure you are all waiting with bated breath to find out how the water cooler saga was concluded. Well let me put you out of your misery and tell you how it ended.
Stu and I carted the bloody thing back to Sharaf for the third (and in our minds final) time, and Stu calmly told the “customer service” representative that they now had two options, either give us a refund or give us a new unit. After much too-ing (“oh please sir let us take it for another 3 days and try and repair it”) and fro-ing (“no, either give me my money back or give me a replacement unit”) we demanded to see the manager, or someone who at least had some authority to make a decision. After keeping us waiting another 10 minutes we were finally attended to by someone who looked semi-officious (well he WAS wearing a tie at least). I won’t bore you with the details of the argument that ensued, nor the shouting (me) and swearing (still me) and excuse making (all them) BUT he eventually agreed to compromise and made an exception for us. He then told us he would give us 80% of the original amount we spent (he had to deduct a 20% restocking fee!!?) as a voucher, which annoyingly meant we had no choice but to purchase another cooler from them. Some compromise! We did however purchase a different brand, here’s hoping this one will be a little better.
