Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2013. It is news based on a Huffington Post UK report of 15 November 2013, and the outcome after the police investigation is not covered.
A father was arrested and accused of fraud after complaining to the multinational Tesco that he had spent around €554 on an iPad that turned out to be just a box with clay inside.
Colin Marsh, 47, bought the iPad at Tesco for his 10-year-old son. After discovering the surprise, he hurried back to the store to explain that the box contained nothing but a lump of clay.
Tesco told him they could neither refund his money nor exchange the product, because they had to open an investigation.
Colin Marsh told the Huffington Post that the next day he got a call from the police asking him to come to the station to answer some questions. At first he thought this was perfectly normal and assumed it was just a matter of giving his account of what had happened.
“I just thought they wanted to know what had happened, but before I knew it I was in a cell,” says Marsh, who was as surprised as he was outraged to be accused of attempting to defraud Tesco.
“It makes no sense. I’m a businessman who has run my own company successfully for 22 years, and my house is paid off. Why would I want to con Tesco out of £470 (€554)?”
He was released on bail until the police found that the tablet had been activated under a different name in Wales, which showed it could have been tampered with before it reached its destination.
Colin Marsh says the way he was treated was disgusting and that people cannot be treated like that, while a Tesco spokesperson has apologised for any trouble caused.
The truth is that, before acting this way, Tesco should have checked that this is not the first time something similar has happened with Apple products. In fact, in 2012, 10 Canadians received clay instead of an iPad.
What we can probably conclude is that this man will never set foot in a Tesco store again.
Featured image: Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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