I would like to thank the employee at the Carphone Warehouse, Evesham branch who denied me service. It has saved me from a world of pain by not getting involved with the retail company that tops the customer service league of shame according to the Lady Geek campaigning agency. A generous interpretation of what happened is that the employee did not want another hapless customer to fall victim to their over-priced and under-delivered service. My card failed what they call their 'internal security check' which is either fatally flawed or a mechanism where the sales assistant can activate the message to deny the customer service. I tend towards the latter as the sales assistant blatantly lied about the reason saying that it is usually because the card details do not match the address. This is not true because the credit check had already been approved. Companies can decline to offer a service but they cannot do it based on ethnicity. I do not claim that is what happened in this case but Carphone Warehouse appear to operate a system which is wide open to abuse.