Customer Service in France

[Brian]

Having read many threads on another forum (a rather whingy anglo-centric one) about how badly French companies deal with their customers when goods prove faulty, I've just had my first opportunity to put things to the test.

About 6 weeks ago, I bought a piece of woodworking equipment - a planer/thicknesser - from Leroy Merlin in Poitiers.
Last week, it started to misbehave, vibrating badly. I exchanged a few emails with the (German) manufacturer's (very helpful) technical support team, who decided it was faulty and it would be best if I took it back to the shop.

So this afternoon, I took it back to Leroy Merlin and would have been in and out of the store with a full refund in less than a minute - apart from the fact that the assistant (inevitably) had some paperwork to fill in. As a result, it took about 10 minutes.

They apologised that the machine had failed, and suggested I could either get another one from their store (they checked and had one in stock) or just have the refund.

I thought this was very good service. I'd have no hesitation buying from them again.
Brian

[Fred]

I'll second your praise for Leroy Merlin in Poitiers we have had excellent service from them in the past. The last time was a couple of electric radiators that kept making a slight ticking noise, after looking into it and finding a few other comments on their own website from others with the same problem we thought we would mention it to them whilst we were up there.

They checked when we purchased them and it was 15 months past and they said if we bring them back they will give a full refund, they did say it would help if we had the receipt but as we had one of their loyalty cards it wasn't important. They also questioned which ones we had the problem with as we had purchased two models, when we said the smaller ones they said we could also get a refund on the larger ones too if we wanted.

So we took the four back and was given a full refund. They gave us the choice of a refund to spend in the shop or cash refund on our bank card. We took the refund on the card as we thought we would look elsewhere for replacements, but we ended up buying replacements from Leroy Merlin in Poitiers as we couldn't find what we wanted elsewhere at a better price.

We have been using them for years and still do.