customer service don't know the product. Help!

[etoile]

Would love some advice or tips for this petty problem.
Bought a cosmetics set (new cid 7 pieces, lip and eye). It includes two chubby lip pencils with the product housed in a very solid plastic barrel which I don't think could be sharpened and a twisty bit that I thought was the bit that twists to push the product up. It turns but the product doesn't move.
I am happy with the kit and really want to keep it as three eye products are great.
I phoned customer services and the woman I spoke to didn't know anything about the lip product and so she arranged a whole kit as replacement. She advised me just to switch over the lip pencils and return the untouched products from the new kit with my duff lip pencils.
I expressed a little concern as personally I don't want to receive packages of products like makeup that have been to other customers!
Anyway the replacement came and lo and behold the pencils are duff in the new set too.
Spoke to a man at customer services who doesn't know the product and so he kept me on hold to consult someone else and it turns out they are equally clueless and suggest if I can't twist it up it must be because it can be sharpened!
I have challenged this assumption (very politely of course), and asked them to speak to someone who actually knows the product to advise me what to do. I really don't want endless replacements but it looks like my only options are to keep a kit losing half the value as some doesn't work, OR return the lot and get a refund of my original p+p by badgering them.
Any other suggestions folk?
It really annoys me that they don't seem able or willing to replace just the faulty component and I have to send the lot back. Thats rubbish customer service, isn't it?

 

[donna255]

This is their own website.

http://www.newcidcosmetics.com/

Why not contact them and ask about the pencils, if they have to be sharpened or whined up?

 

[etoile]

Thanks Donna255. Much appreciated and have fired off an email. I do think QVC should take more responsibility for their stock and attempt to address these issues. But hey ho, did not expect they would.

 

[rainbowdottie]

QVC annoy me when you ring them to discuss a product with them as you have and they just read whats written on their site.

One of my Tiffany lights came a couple of Christmases ago and it didn't come with a light bulb,which I assumed it would.Always can hear Julian B in my mind saying "we supply everything..from light bulbs to batteries".Nor anywhere in the instructions did it say what bulb to buy.

Rang CS at QVC and they just fired off what I had read two mins earlier.I even went and bought a few bulbs which did fit and it ended up not working.Phone CS get a different operator and just fired off the internet description.(it was actually the fuse had gone) but they had not a clue!!

 

[etoile]

That's pretty shoddy rainbowdottie and with a higher value item. I've no chance of them bothering their bahoonies with something like then.

 

[iloveshopping]

I think QVC customer service is pretty good on the whole. Recently they advertised having 16000 products. You cannot expect them to have answers to all their customers' questions and believe you me some of those questions will be bizarre. Details that they are given from one supplier to another will vary alot. The warehouse may not be close to the call centre and even if it was they are probably not allowed to go down there and take out an item and look at it.

Some of the descriptions of items in the Argos online catalogue, Amazon or the John Lewis catalogue are often quite sketchy and I have to hunt around on other websites before I can decide if I have sufficient detail to buy it.

When I go into shops the staff often can't answer questions about the products that they sell.

 

[etoile]

No one in their right mind would expect anyone to have all that information to hand but it is reasonable to expect that a large company would have different department specialist even within customer services itself and part of the on going training should be familiarisation with current products. They should be anticipating queries and keeping up to date. I don't expect the first person I call to know anything necessarily but I do expect them to be able to refer to someone or thing that does.