The following letter was sent to the New Millennium Super Stores:

A few months ago I took my monitor to be repaired at the New Millennium Super Stores. After a few weeks I was told that my monitor could not be fixed as they had no parts. I was also told that I could not collect it as the shop it was taken to had gone out of business and they had to collect the stuff themselves.

After several weeks of checking, I was told that it was finally 'ready' and that the fault was traced to the transformer. I asked the technician to double-check whether it was the same one. He came back with my phone number as confirmation. When I went to collect it I asked whether it would be a good idea to switch it on to see if it was really fixed. I was told that it was not necessary.

I paid the Lm10 I was billed, took my monitor and receipt, and left. As I was about to drive off the salesman came out and shouted that there was a mistake and that the monitor was not fixed. I went in and was told that it could not be repaired as it was not "financially feasible" and that the Lm10 were a "minimum charge".

I protested that in all these months of waiting no one had mentioned a minimum charge; that the technician had confirmed the monitor was fixed and that the receipt was for "repairs". I also noted that I had never been told what the parts cost and that it was they who had decided that "it was not financially feasible".

What this means is that the New Millennium Super Stores are accepting items for repair for which they know they have no parts. They are then billing a minimum charge after declaring them 'not repairable' precisely because they have no parts.

I feel that it is totally unfair and deceitful to accept items for repairs knowing that you have no parts and to blame this on their supposedly excessive cost. It is even more deceitful to charge a minimum fee under such conditions, especially when this was never mentioned nor printed on repair tickets.

Most deceitful of all is going through this whole charade pretending to have fixed the item in order to make the client hand over the money thinking he is paying for "repairs". This is even worse when these same people are the ones I had bought the computer system from, worth some Lm700, and the same people from whom I bought a scanner worth Lm50 on the same day I took my monitor in for repairs! (Anton Busuttil, October 10, 2002)

On October 22 I asked the New Millennium Superstores for their side of the case, to no avail. On December 3 we sent them another copy of the letter yet again asking for their comments, still to no avail.

At this point I ask the New Millennium Super Stores yet again for their side of the case.