"Aldi Warranty and After Sales Service"

A review of Aldi by ILOVEALDIPRODUCTS written on Tuesday 20th of March 2007

After noting the request for Aldi Head Office telephone number (which I see has been duly supplied), the buyer who had problems with a Tevion branded item should have been able to resolve same with Aldi's own web site pages, which gives direct email and website links to the individual after sales support teams of the various manufacturers. I wish him luck.. Meanwhile, for those of you that have taken up the offer of the Evesham Nav-Cam 6400 portable GPS unit, (on sale from 15th March 2007)featuring AA Navigator 2007 software, may not be so lucky.. Sure enough, there is a contact number and web site listed for Evesham but you will be hard pressed to get a response from the National Rate number (0870) provided. It took me 3 days to get somebody to answer and inbetween that, an email that as yet, has not been responded to.. The problem?? Those that paid about £120 for this well presented but not overly keen priced item (similar if not better build quality can be obtained, new, from many suppliers, discount warehouses, cash n carry and even off of your favourite auction web sites) have unfortunately, purchased something that does not do what is says on the can ( to coin a phrase ). The packaging, the support material, including that of the content of the box, clearly states that it has "precise door to door navigation" and other supplied material mentions that you can locate your precise address by entry of the "house number". Unfortunately, this is not true of this item and never was. The "nav-cam" is not capable of the entry of a house number in its current hardware set up and more ironically, the "AA Navigator" mapping software that is bundled with this offer has never been capable of accepting a house number as part of its "precise door to door" navigation system. A road and postcode is the very best you will currently obtain as a result from this latest offering. Not very helpful when one of the longest roads in the UK is the Watling Street. i.e. Your Nav-Cam 6400 is perfectly capable of telling you that "you have reached your destination", albeit you could be up to 1/2 a mile from where you actually need to be. Naturally, I have since contacted both Evesham's support team and that of the AA navigator's development team. Very pleasant people on both phones but obviously naieve of the problem,, or,, wish to appear to be.. Evesham say they were not aware of the problem but they had to agree, with an on line test to show the deficiency of their claims, there was indeed, an issue but not of their doing. Equally, AA report that they had no prior knowledge of the claims that appear on all of the packaged material (although of course, SOMEBODY must have agreed the "proofing" of the wording before the packaging and support material went into production) but were the first to agree that NONE of their current NAVIGATOR software was capable of operating to the standards that is claimed within and on, all the material that was used to advertise this product. The nearest they could get to the house number feature was on certain selected roads in the UK which, in their opinion, were excessively long. In this scenario, you would be offered parameters of blocks between house numbers 1 to 100 as an example. (Pity they missed out the most obvious roads, such as the Watling Street? It only runs from the borders of Scotland, down to London) ;-) The natural question posed to each was, OK, what is the resolve? Evesham did not have one to hand but you can be re-assured that the only way to support their current advertised claims, is to issue every existing buyer of this unit, with alternative software. Something along the lines of "Navman" , "Mapsource" etc. may be their only solution before Trading Standards take issue with the item.. AA on the other hand, have no resolve, as they do not yet produce any mapping software that invloves the use of a house number to pinpoint a required location and according to their development team, who are working on a project to be released onto the market place around May 2007, are highly sceptical that such a provision will be made, even to the new product.. That said, there is one consolation with this current package. That IS of course, if you have a current breakdown membership of the AA. The system has a one touch button to facilitate the bringing up of, onto the screen, your exact current co-ordinates in terms of lattitude and longditide, thus being able to advise the AA breakdown service of your current position. They, in response, are equipped with similar equipment that can take them, directly to you, without the need for road names and err,, house numbers, which of course, the latter would be, errr, futile. ;-) Consumers resolve? Well, there appears to be one other avenue and that is,, take the item back to the Aldi store you purchased it from and request a full refund (subject to the terms and conditions of their returns policy) and go buy yourself a product that does, exactly, what it says it does.. You can bet, in the next few weeks, there is a buyer in the Aldi group who will be taking extended leave from his position. :) TOO RIGHT!.

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