Greetings to all Ajarners. I hope you had a great Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year. Tazza had a great Chrimbo but today I'm going to play a little bit of Scrooge and share a sad tale with you.....

About two months ago, I decided to treat myself to a new Xbox360 games system. After checking a few stores, I decided to purchase my system from a shop inside The Mall Bang Khae. The name is PS BOX , you might want to make a note of that name and avoid the shop (read on!).

I emphasise this was an indoor shop near the IT section and not some dodgy, outdoor market outfit. Still, I should have sensed something was wrong when after taking my credit card, swiping and presenting me with the receipt, the man handed me another bill for 600 bhat said "This is the extra charge we add on to credit cards".

I explained I had only paid by card to avoid the two minute walk to the ATM, I insisted he reverse the transaction and allow me to pay by cash but alas, nobody in the shop knew how to reverse a basic transaction, my wife had to talk them through it.

But it was all forgotten when I got home and - like the overgrown kid I am - start to enjoy my new games. All was well for about a month, until my Xbox 360 started to freeze more and more often, until eventually it died completely. I was disappointed but I had read that it was a well known batch problem and had cost Microsoft one billion in repairs already. There is no Microsoft office in Thailand so I had to rely on the seller.

I took my system back to the shop and was surprised to discover they expected me to pay for the repair myself. "It's only a one month guarantee so it has expired" the man told me; "We'll call you when we know the repair cost".

Two days later I got a call telling me the cost would be 1,500 bhat. I couldn't be bothered to argue so I agreed to pay. "We'll send it to Chinatown for repair and call you when it's done" I was told.

So I waited......and waited.....and waited. I visited the shop three times, each time being told " Yang mai set". Finally, after six weeks of waiting I got my wife to call and get to the bottom of it, and that's when the lies really started to flow.

We were told that the repair was serious. It was not covered under any guarantee and a new part had been ordered. They had tried to call me several times to let me know. The new part would definitely arrive but it might take some time so I could come and pick up my system in the meantime.

We would eventually find out that not a single one of the things we had been told were true.

Sensing something amiss, I went to the store to pick up my system. The man in the shop (it was the same man we spoke to every time) actually told my wife "Your husband tried to use the system on the Internet and that's what caused the problem. The chip has melted". Anyone who knows anything about Xbox systems or computer systems will know how laughable that line was. We were also told that if we didn't want to wait for the new part to arrive, we could take the system to Sapham Lek and get it repaired ourselves. (So why didn't they take it themselves then?)

By now, I knew that we had been cheated and lied to. But as unsatisfied as I was, I also knew that if I could get it repaired myself it would save a lot of hassle. So, on my next day off, I took a little trip to Chinatown to hunt down a repair man in the Hong Kong style Sapham Lek Market, and sure enough I found one.

It took about thirty seconds for the repairman to open the system, look at the mainboard, laugh and tell me that someone had already tried to repair it and had burnt the ram insert to a crisp. A repair now would be impossible, my system was ruined. You can probably guess how I felt.

My wife asked around and found out the name of the storeman at the sales store in Bang Kahe and, usefully, the name of the owner. That same night we marched to the shop (my wife is so cool when she gets ticked off!) and demanded to speak the manager. After getting his number my wife made the call.

I already had my list of promises ready. If I didn't get a refund or replacement, I was going to write to every newspaper I knew, make leaflets and hand them out to people walking into the shop, and tell all my new friends in the Thai Police and the manager of The Mall shopping complex. I had the receipts from both the sale and repair of the system and they knew it.

To my relief though, the manager was a lot more helpful. He told us systems had a guarantee of six months from the shop and repairs were done through a contact at an electronics company in Chit Lom. When told that the storeman had mentioned a repair at Sapham Lek, there was concern. "Mr. Manager" promised to investigate and call us back.

Thirty minutes later the call came. Mr. Manager sounded worried. He confirmed that indeed my Xbox had been sent to Chinatown when it should not have been. The damage had been confirmed as serious but a replacement had not been ordered. Mr. Manager also apologised for the storeman suggesting I pick up the system and take it to be repaired myself. This should not have happened.

Obviously, Mr. storeman had let me wait six weeks while my system sat in his cupboard in the vain hope I would forget about my computer. When that failed he told me a bare faced lie about a replacement part on its way and when that lie failed too, he simply tried to get me to go away and deal with it myself.

Mr manager seemed apologetic and promised to meet my wife today. But the storeman was still not finished. Today my wife got at call saying "Sorry, the manager wanted to meet you today but he can't make it, can you cancel and come another day?". My wife agreed but, based on past experience, called Mr Manager to check. Surprise, surprise, Mr Manager knew nothing about the cancellation and was looking forward to meeting my wife as arranged!

And that's where we are now. But my question is this: just how stupid are some people?

Just how moronic is the storeman to think that telling us a whole string of shameless, bare faced lies was going to get him out of trouble? Did he really think that if he didn't call me I was eventually going to forget that he had my computer? Did he honestly believe that we are going to believe that I melted my Xbox's chip by "using it on the internet"? Did he really think that we wouldn't check about the "extra part order"?

I have become accustomed to Thai businesses having "laid back" ways of doing things and I am familiar with the concept of a "kind lie" in Thailand, but this is the only the second time I have been told an entire string of shameless lies to my face. It has never worked on me and it never will. All it does is make me lose any shred of respect and grows my contempt for the person telling them. What makes things harder is that as I in a foreign country it is a lot more difficult for me to use the usual methods of recourse I would use back home (contacting media, watchdog groups, etc.).

I'd be interested to hear from fellow farangs about any similar experiences in Thailand and how they were dealt with (if at all!) and any advice!

Tazza is a teacher with four years of experience. He loves Santa, because Santa bought him an iPod. Tazza can be contacted on redandwhitestripes@gmail.com and has a blog at www.reallifethailand.blogspot.com