I’m not sure who to bring this serious issue to as it is clear that the customer service people at store # 20 in on Thunderbird Road in Phoenix are only dedicated towards preserving their own self interest and are not at all customer service oriented. I would like to hope that there is someone within the Fry’s Electronics Corporate system actually cares about their customers but I’ve not yet found one. As such, it is with regret that I and my associates will never be shopping at Fry’s Electronics for computer components ever again. Any potential savings on such purchases is simply not worth the loss of dignity experienced for what should have been a simple merchandise return.
I tried to return 2 items on 6-11-08 that I had purchased on 6-10-08 and from the moment I was received by the customer service staff, the entire experience turned negative going from questionable to completely inappropriate for anyone dealing with customers. I know that this is only my word against someone else’s but I have no reason to fabricate or embellish the facts here as this is not my way I am a very busy person who does not have time to be dealing with defective computer components.
The events are as follows: (It should be noted for the record that I’ve been building personal computers for approximately 8 years and am very seasoned in such matters so the following hardware issues that transpired are not a result of any wrongdoing on my part.)
On 6-8-08 I picked out a computer box from store # 20 in Phoenix and asked the sales staff in that part of the store to help me with picking an appropriate compatible motherboard, CPU, fan with heat sink and memory. The gentlemen who picked all these components for me was very polite and extremely helpful in providing me with the needed components. That evening, I successfully installed the CPU chip to the motherboard, locked it down and installed the fan / heat sink to the CPU chip. The following morning when I proceeded to install the motherboard into the computer box, I discovered that the motherboard with the installed CPU and fan would not fit into the box because the fan was too large and would not clear the PC box’s power supply. The more I examined this, the more I realized the incompatibilities were beyond my control with the components that had been picked out for me by the Fry’s sales staff.
Since I wanted to keep the particular PC Box (for spatial reasons), I decided to return the motherboard, CPU and fan and start over by purchasing more compatible components for it. This should have been simple enough when I reached the service counter at the store but it became clear right away that the staff was going to be resistant to that and their behavior towards me and their conduct regarding the matter was completely inappropriate. The entire time I was at the service desk I was kept in the dark as to what was going on while the staff was talking about me right in front of me while I was within hearing distance.
The store employee personally took the chip off of the mother board right in front of me without properly releasing it from the board. The release mechanism had never been used when she pulled the CPU chip off of the board. She then proceeded to claim that they would not accept the chip back because of bent pins on the chip. I properly installed that CPU chip the night before without incident or complication. I could see where this was going as I was being set up to not be able to return merchandise that I had not damaged to begin with. I would have had a hard time believing that something like this could really happen to a customer if it had not been happening to me on this occasion.
At this point, my concern level rose as they also refused to accept the motherboard back on a ridiculous technicality because of a so called missing I/O plate. When I had opened the box at home the night before, the only items in that box were a motherboard, a documentation manual, a chipset support DVD, some IDE cables and a couple of SATA cables. As far as I was concerned, that was everything that was supposed to be in the box and I did not know any different. When I told them that the box did not have an I/O plate in it when I opened it, they only further protected their self interest by opening another motherboard box to show me it’s contents. The only thing this proves is that the box they opened had an I/O plate and they were further setting me up to not be able to return the merchandise. At this point, I realized that insulting the customer is standard operating procedure at this store and that they avoid servicing the customer at all cost in such matters.
When I demanded to see the store manager, things only got worse as the only thing he did was to back up his employee in the matter and tell me that I had signed a legal binding contract indicating that everything was intact and undamaged upon purchase the night before. This is ridiculous as no such inspection takes place at the check stand when the clerk presents customers with a multipage document to sign indicating that nothing was damaged at the time of purchase. The motherboard box is sealed and tied shut at the time of purchase and the customer would not be in a position to examine it till they get it home and open it. The fact that it was missing an I/O plate when I got home is not something that I would have caught and the store’s refusal to take the product back on the basis of that plate means that your return policy is not worth the paper you force your customers to sign when they make a purchase.
As such, I’ve been fleeced for $85.00 for a processor chip that one of your customer service employees most likely damaged as a result of her incorrect de-installation and $74.99 for a motherboard simply because it never had an I/O plate to begin with. As a consumer, I am appalled that I was treated so rudely and inappropriately by the customer service staff. When I originally made the purchases, the sales clerk was clear about telling me that I had so many days time to return the merchandise. That is the most that is explained to Fry’s customers by the sales clerks. However, I had no clue that Fry’s plays such games with its customers to avoid product returns. I will not make the mistake of throwing away hard earned money at Fry’s Electronics ever again. This extremely negative experience has taught me that the store’s staff at this location is interested only in preserving their personal self interests over the needs of the customer no matter what the cost to the companies’ integrity.
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