This complaint, is about service rather than the product.
We purchased a Samsung HL R4667W DLP HDTV from Best Buy for $3268.77plus $399.99 for a 4 year extended warranty=$3668.76 plus $100.00 for "professional" installation. We purchased the TV Sunday, June 26th=To be delivered Tuesday, June 28th.
They called on the 28th. And said they couldn't come until the next day. It was delivered 1 day late.
We found out that Best Buy had a rewards program that would grant us $5.00 toward other purchases for
every $150.00 we spent. They conveniently forgot to tell us about that. We went back to BB 2 days after the
purchase, and after some haggling, finally got the Reward Card in the works. We would realize $122.00
off on any other purchase we made after that.
We were told to check their web site to know when the card had gone through, and was ready to use.
After checking, & checking, then calling, recalling, & recalling, getting promises that the card would show
up on the web site in a day or two, it finally did, a little over a month after the original purchase. Each telephone call throught this long story, involved a wait of from 25 min (min) to 40 min. (max)
We had purchased an installation package, that entailed "Professionals" coming from Best Buy to our house to hook every thing up. We had the TV, a DVD, a VCR, an HD cablevision box that contained a TIVO, and a wireless infrared earphone system to hook up, and I wanted to make sure that everything was done right. The installers were to come on Friday, at 2:00pm to install everything. The TV had been delivered on Wednesday, and had been sitting in the living room floor awaiting installation. Friday 2pm came and went with no installers, and no phone call to inform me that they had been held up.By 6pm I was livid with rage, because this was the third foul up by BB, and the TV wasn't even playing yet.
I called Best Buy and finally got the electronics manager at the store where we bought the TV, in Mobile Alabama. I must say, I got on this manager pretty good,
telling him of the incompetance of his workers. He apologized and said that he didn't know why the
installers weren't there, or why they hadn't called me. He said he would track them down and find out
what was going on. I told him that when he found them, he better send them to my house, I didn't
care what time it was. He said he would, even if it was midnight when he found them.
They arrived at 8PM, and it was just as I feared. The head honcho was a youngster who didn't look 18
years old. I'm not sure that his mother even knew he was out of the house, that late at night.
They hooked up the set, and got it playing, but couldnt make the cablevision remote do everything it was supposed to do. He told me that there was something wrong with the remote, which I found out later was not true. They left without hooking up the VCR, & when I tried the wireless headset, it did not work. We had planned on using the $122.00 that we had coming with the Reward Card, to buy a fancy schmancy remote, that BB sells for $149.95. It makes programing all the attachments to the TV simple. (1 button to work any one of the components.) When we called the store to complain about the crummy installation job we had gotten for our $100.00, we told the electronics manager, that we wanted
to wait until we got the remote, and familiarized ourself with it a little bit before the installers
came back to finish the job. We couldn't go get the remote just yet, because BB kept dragging their
feet on getting our name in their files for the Reward Card on their web site.
While we were waiting on the Reward Card, one day the TV just went black. No picture, no sound. Just deep, dark blackness. This happened on Wednesday, August 3rd.
We called BB's national service nr. On Thursday. We had an extended, 4 yr. Warranty that we had purchased. We were told that the technician would come to the house the following Monday, the 8th.in the interim, while fooling with the remote, I changed the channel on the cablevision box, while the TV was turned off. When I turned the TV on, it came on, and played great, and seemed to be fixed. When the technician called to
make sure we were home on Monday, I told him that I had gotten the TV playing, and it seemed to be alright, and that I thought my problem was with cablevision, not the TV. He was very nice, and said he would come anyway just to make sure. When he got there, he said, I'm going to replace the ballast in your set. I have had a few sets give trouble, because of the original equipment ballast. He changed it, on Monday Aug. 8th. And got the VCR, and the wireless headset to going, then left.
The man hadn't gotten two blocks away from the house, when the TV turned itself off. We hurried to
call BB, and try to have them turn the technician around, but they said it would be Wednesday before
he could come back. The TV would turn on and play great for about 3 minutes, then turn itself off.
When he called Wednesday, Aug 10th. To make sure we were home, I related the symptoms to him. He said he wanted to replace the "engine", whatever that is, but that they didn't have one in stock, and it would take a couple of days to get one, and that he would call us as soon as it came in.
Two days came and went. No call. Nine days later, I called BB, in a rage again as to why he hadn't
shown up, or at least called to explain why. The man from BB said he didn't know why he told me
two days, because most of the time, it took 10 days for parts to come in after they were ordered.
After calling him, and everyone that worked for BB a slovenly, incompetant idiot, I hung up. That was on
Friday Aug. 19th. Finally, on Tuesday, Aug. 23rd, BB called, and said the parts were in, and that the
technician would come the following Wednesday.
The technician came on Wednesday, Aug. 24th. And replaced the engine. I found out that the "engine" is
almost all of the components that make the TV, a TV. We turned the set on, and just like before. It
played great for 3 minutes, then turned itself off. The technician told me that there was only 3 other parts
in the TV that hadn't been replaced. They were, a circuit board for sound, a graphics board, and the
power supply. He said he suspected it was either the graphics board, or the power supply, and was
going to order both, so he knew he would be covered when he came back. He said he would call me when the parts came in, but also gave me his nr.in case I needed to call him. Twelve days later, we hadn't heard from him, so I called him, and got his answering machine. I left a message telling him that it had been 12 days, and we hadn't heard from BB yet, and would he please give me a call.
This call was made on Sunday, Sept. 5th.
Two days later, he still hadn't called, so we called BB to try to find out about our parts. They, at first,
said they had no records of parts ever being ordered. Finally they put someone else on the phone,
and that person searched, and finally said they had been ordered, and were in. She said that the
technician would call us within 4 hours, and set up an appointment to come to our house with the
parts. This was on Tue, Sept. 7th. He didn't call. The next day about 3:30pm, on Sept. 8th, we called
them, again, telling them that the technician hadn't called. BB said they would put in another call to him,
and that he would call us within four working hours. Once again, he didn't call. On Sept 9th about
3:30 pm, we called again for the 3rd time. I turned the call over to my grown daughter, who is very
adept at handling these kind of problems. I was so exasperated by now, that I didn't trust myself
to talk to those people.
By the way, I was told by the technician, on one of his earlier trips to my house that the only way
you could get parts for a Samsung HDTV, was to go through Best Buy, or some other big chain store that sold
Samsung. He said individuals, and even independant TV repair shops, could not get parts from Samsung.
They would just tell them they didn't have the part. If it wasn't for that, I would have long ago took
it to a shop, and bought the part, and paid them to fix the set.
My daughter asked to talk to the service department helps manager, and after some resistance
from them they agreed. She was put on hold for at least 15 minutes, when finally a man answered.
She related to him all the problems we had experienced, and stopped him when he started promising
that a tecnician would call us within 4 hours. "Been there, done that.", she told him."3 times already."
The date was Sept 8th, 10 days after Hurricane Katrina's eye came ashore around Waveland Mississippi.
The technician lived in Hammond Louisiana, which is 40 miles north of Baton Rouge. Baton Rouge
didn't get a lot of damage, but the man on the phone finally told my daughter that the technician
couldn't come because of Katrina. He didn't say why, just that he couldn't come because of the storm,
and that we would just have to wait until he came. We had been without the TV for 35 straight days
at this time.
My daughter told him that just wasn't acceptable, and that she thought the quickest way to resolve
the problem was to instruct the local store in Mobile, where we bought it, to replace it with another TV
He didn't go for that at all, and told her that acceptable or not, waiting for the repairman from Hammond
was the way it was going to go down. At that point, my daughter said she would like to talk to his
supervisor. She was told that he had two, both women, and that they were busy. He promised, after
some insistance by her, that he would have one of them call her within 24 hours.
The 24 hours came and went without their call. At that point we decided to go to the local store in Mobile, and try to get the electronics manager, whom I had chided so hard, to replace the set. We were going to go about Wednesday. On Tuesday, the 13th, on day 40 without a TV, the technician called, & left a message saying he was in Atlanta, and was wanting to know if we still had the TV. I called him back, and as usual got his answering machine. I told his machine, we still had it and were
waiting for him. He didn't call back.
On Thursday, Sept. 15th, we called BB, and told them once again, that the parts we in, and asked for the tecnician to come. We got the, by now famous, "A technician will call you within 4 hours." Wonder of wonders, someone did call, not a technician, but a woman from BB. She repeated the same song we had heard, 7 days before about the storm, keeping the technician from coming for another week. I told her we were working on day 42 without a TV, so she said she would call
the technician, and see what he said, putting me on hold. After a couple of minutes, she came
back, saying that he would call me in just a minute, that he had to look something up on his
laptop first. I said, "That will be terrific", and we parted company. I sat with the cell phone in my hand
for over an hour to make sure I got his call. He didn't call.
The next afternoon about 2: pm he finally called, and said BB had decided to replace the set, and
that I should take all my paperwork from the original sale, to the store, and they would make
arraingements to send another set out to my house. We gathered up all the paperwork and ran gleefully to the car, then I happened to remember that the electronic dept. Manager had been out of the store, several times before when we called on the phone. We decided to call to make sure he was there. A recording came on saying "We are sorry, but due to circumstances
beyond our control, the store is closed." The next day we called again, & got the same message.
We called another BB store that is new, & actually closer to our house to try to see what the
problem was with the Mobile store. The person answering the phone said that the electronic manager from the Mobile store was coming to the new store later on that day, and that he would have him call us. He didn't call. On Tuesday, Sept 20th, (day 47) when we couldn't get through to either store, we went to the new store which is in Malbis Alabama. We found out that hurricane Katrina had damaged their building in Mobile, and the city safety engineer had shut them down, until they
repaired it.
We found our manager at the Malbis store. He had been transferred from the Mobile store, to this new store, since the Mobile store was destined to be shut down for an extended period. This was the same manager that I had blew up at, concerning the set up crew
.
He was very nice, and helpful. We told him our long sad story, and he went to work verifying
that the technician had said they would replace the set. It took a long, long..., long time, but
finally, (2 1/2 hrs) he came back and said that they had one set at the store like ours, and they
would deliver it, and pick our old one up on Saturday, Sept. 24th, and the "Professional" setup
team would come the same day. The set came as promised, but late in the afternoon, then the setup team called and backed out on us. They said they couldn't come until Tuesday the 27th. They finally came on Tuesday, and did their thing. The setup team couldn't make the wireless
infrared earphones work, while the speakers on the TV were on. They would only work when the
TV speakers were turned off, which made the earphones useless when my wife wanted to watch TV at the same time I was watching.
So, we now finally have a TV on day 49, that will play longer then 3 minutes at a time. If someone
had told me before I bought it that this would have happened, I would not have believed it possible.
I know this review has been long, and boring, but not nearly as long and boring as the actual events that took place. I leave you now, with this thought in mind. I will die, and go STRAIGHT... To... H*L, before Best Buy ever gets another dime of my money.
We have now had the new set for about 5 months. (3/7/06) So far, it is super. We are praying that we never have to call Best Buy for anything else.
Jerry
Fairhope, Alabama
U.S.A.
0 comments