| Editorial October 2005
A Sad Tale
I recently heard tell of someone who
bought a Mitsubishi widescreen television from a large national retail electronics chain.
The set came with a one-year warranty. During the first year of use the television
malfunctioned -- just stopped working -- and had to be taken in for service. When the
owner got to the store where she’d purchased the set, she was told that she would
have to contact Mitsubishi directly and deal with them about the warranty work. She was
also told that had she purchased -- at additional cost -- the store’s extended
warranty, she would have had replacement privileges. As it was, the store could not help
her (though they did give her Mitsubishi’s phone number).
This is so infuriating that I don’t know where to
begin. Let’s start with that "one-year warranty." The store seems to
understand the manufacturer’s warranty as being completely separate from their own
services. The retailer would not send the set back to the manufacturer, would not call
Mitsubishi, would not look at the set themselves. It seems they washed their hands of this
customer as soon as she bought the set. The apparent reason for this, in my eyes, is to
"teach the customer a lesson" -- that she should have listened when the extended
warranty was offered at the point of sale. But why have an original warranty if, when the
damn thing breaks, it’s essentially useless to the customer?
Is this logical? If you bought a Toyota Camry and it
malfunctioned, would it be acceptable if the dealer said, "Oh, you’ll have to
take your car to Toyota, over in Japan, and have them look at it. If you’d bought the
extended warranty we could have helped you, but Toyota’s warranty is no good
here."
It’s an understatement to say that this store treated
this customer in an unfair and unethical manner. I wonder if Mitsubishi knows that one of
their dealers is offering this lack of support with their products. If they do, then shame
on them, too. I wish I could march into that store on behalf of this lady and give them a
piece of my mind. They deserve a tongue-lashing.
Better yet, how ’bout a call from consumers of their
goods to shop for the same products over the Internet? Look at price only, because if you
need to get it fixed during the warranty period, you’ll have to pay for that out of your
pocket. Is it any wonder that so many folks are buying electronics online these days? With
service like what I’ve described, why would anyone buy mass-market electronics from a
retailer?
Thankfully, not all retailers are like this. I do know of
some good stores in my area that know how to treat their customers -- and you don’t
have to pay above the retail cost of the goods for the "extended warranty."
Heck, what you get with these extended warranties should really just be common courtesy
for buying the product from them in the first place. Some of these companies forget that
good customer service is good business.
I wish I’d concocted the above tale for the sake of
this editorial. Unfortunately, it’s how more and more big chains work these days, and
it seems to be becoming common practice. Watch out for it.
...Jeff Fritz
editor@hometheatersound.com |
