What happens to unclaimed electronics in Dubai stores?

We ’have heard a lot about unclaimed baggage at airports, where many passengers forget their suitcases or electronics.

But, the list of forgetful ones also extends to stores around the city.

Many of them give their products to stores for service – whether under or out of warranty – but fail to pick them up after repeated reminders by the store staff.

“I work in the customer care divisions and since the beginning of this year I’ve come across two such cases.

What was surprising was that they always picked up the phone when I called them up but never turned up to pick up their products,” said an executive at the call centre of a big electronics chain in the city on the condition of anonymity.

However, those in the industry believe that the number of such customers is not staggering and unclaimed items are those which cannot be considered valuable. 

“There are very few cases where products have been left for service and never collected.

“Generally, most products would be covered by warranty when returned to us so would be of value to the person who drops it off in our outlets. 

“For out of warranty cases, we may find occasional incidents when an item remains uncollected. 

“This is generally in cases where a customer is no longer reachable, for instance when a person is out of the country or in one case I remember when a person was in jail. 

“There is no specific category of products that remains uncollected,” Ashish Panjabi, COO of Jacky’s Electronics told Emirates 24|7.

If, however, such cases do happen, the rule is to announce these products publicly.

““The general procedure is that if a product is not collected and attempts to contact the customer are futile, we publicly announce that such products will no longer be our responsibility and where possible, we give the products away to companies that can responsibly recycle them or otherwise to scrap dealers if the product can't be recycled,” explained Panjabi.

(Image courtesy Shutterstock)

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