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Press Releases
Mobile phone recycling struggle
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An Abergele man's gargantuan effort to recycle 133 old mobile phones, exposing flaws in a Tesco Green Recycling scheme, will be revealed in BBC Wales's consumer programme X-Ray on Wednesday 20 June (7.30pm, BBC One Wales).
The scheme is intended to help customers go green. And rather than ending up in a land fill, with their highly toxic nickel cadmium batteries, mobile phones are collected and reconditioned – with many sent to developing countries.
Rob Sharpe collected special pre-paid envelopes in a Tesco supermarket that offered 500 Club Card points for every working phone he sent in and 100 points for every broken one.
Rob was collecting the points for the holiday of a lifetime and planned to convert in excess of 40,000 points he collected into holiday vouchers – increasing their value to over £1,600.
With nothing in the terms and conditions of the offer limiting the number of phones people could send in, Rob set himself up as Abergele's unofficial collection point for the area's unwanted mobiles.
After sending 133 phones in, he contacted Tesco and was told there was a limit of five phones per person on the offer.
After three months of sending in phones to the scheme only five had been credited to his Club Card account.
As time passed there was no sign of the points and despite repeated calls to Tesco he was still none the wiser:
"I rang three or four times over about two or three weeks and spoke to different people each time," he says. "I couldn't get a definitive answer as to how the system worked or how and when the points would go on the card. Nobody seemed to know the answer."
After X-Ray intervened Tesco investigated his story and acknowledged there was no limit on the number of phones. Having received 111 from him they credited his account with the points and have also agreed to search for the missing 22.
Tesco say there was a backlog of phones that needed to be processed through the recycling company, Greener Solutions.
And they say the scheme was never ever intended to be a commercial opportunity for people to collect large amounts of phones and exchange them for points.
"I certainly don't trade in phones," says Rob. "We're extremely good customers of Tesco and this was such a good opportunity."
Further interviews and pictures available.
X-Ray, Wednesday 20 June 2007, 7.30pm, BBC One Wales
BBC Wales Publicity
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