In December my girlfriend bought me an RCA DRC8312N DVD recorder VHS combo as a Christmas present. She is not a technology-fluent person and figured that the combination of buying it from Target and the RCA brand name meant she could buy with confidence because these are large, well-known firms in the US.
Within the first week of use it was apparent that the unit had problems. If it hadn't been played in a few days, trying to get it to respond to either the remote or the buttons on the front panel were useless.
My girfriend tried to conceal this problem becuase she was sure that it was something she was, or wasn't doing correctly. She had a number of tricks for concealing the fact that she was unplugging the unit, then replugging the AC cord, which was the only way to get the buttons and remote to work. She would do this before came in to watch a DVD, so it took me a while to find this out.
What she couldn't conceal was the way the DVD player would "skip" entire chapters. This had the effect of shortening a movie, ut if you didn't know the story, it was so subtle that you might not even know that 2 or 3 scenes were missing.in addiion, sometimes the DVD unit would simply not recognize a DVD. It would show the volume (movie name) on the screen, but not allow you to select the menu or just play the DVD. These were DVDs from Netflix. I inspected the DVDs for dirt or scratches, and went as far as to run them in an upstairs DVD player to verify that there was nothing wrong with the discs.
By March it was clear that there was something wrong, and my girlfriend showed me how she had been unplugging and replugging the AC cord to make the unit respond to the buttons or the remote.in addition, the unit had begun simply freezing up while playing a DVD. It is a piece of junk, and I would point out that we never even got a chance to experience the horrible problems with recording a DVD that this unit is notorious for.
Since May 26th I have called the toll free customer support number twice a day at 10AM and 1PM PDST trying to reach someone. At 10AM the recording says "the estimated wait is 30 to 60 minutes. I can only stay on for usually 2 to 25 minutes because I am calling from work on a cell phone. At 1PM the rcording says "the estimated wait exceeds 60 minutes." You can not call after the close of business on the East coast, and they are not available on the weekends.
According to my cell bill, I wasted over 900 minutes in June. That does not include the over 200 minutes from May. I have reached some twice. Both times the representative was in a Philippines call center and could do nothing but record my compalint and "pass it on" to another group. Both times they promised to call "within 48 hours' No one calls. I have used their online customer support page over 40 times now. Not only do they not respond, you don't even get an acknowledgement that they received your submission.
It gets worse. I went to another Thomson factory authorized service facilty. They said they only handle Plasma screens and Big TVs, but the owner gave me an email address for a Thomson Filed Service Manager named Steve McNiel who he thought could help.
After receiving my account via email, Mr. McNiel said he was passing my problem over to the customer relations "VIP Group" who would contact me, but "he couldn't say when." He then wished me "good luck."
Over a week I contacted him again and pointed out that no one had contacted me. He responded by telling me he had personally walked the issue over to the escalation group and that someone should be contacting me. I did get a message on my home answering machine a week later leaving a message that they would send me an email, but that never happened.
Mr. McNiel no longer responds to any email. No one has called. Calling the 800 number no longer makes sense because the call center staff already have my issue, my complaints about bad service. I cannot get a California address to write to. I cannot get any address anywhere in the US, or any other phone number or email address to continue following up with.
By the way, the factory authorized service cnter that Thomsin directed me to is called "Walt's TV Service Center, 1031 MacArthur Blvd. San Leandro, CA. Their phone number is 510 638 5300 and their California Bureau of Repair license # is listed on the service ticket as 20788. This license was issued to the previous owner of Walt's. It expired several years ago. The current owners have no license. The new owner thought that a few problems with the unit didn't justify the trouble I was making by pursuing the matter with Thomson. She called me a "white trouble maker" and said she would "not give me the receipt back" for the unit because I insisted that she initial a sheet that showed the three problems I described had been tested for since after 10 days she left a phone message saying "Pickup up your DVD player, nothing wrong with it." If she had even plugged it in she would have seen that the panel buttons and remote didn't work. All the serice order said (despite a half hour spend describing the problems in detail) was "DVD no play.
THIS is factory authorized service ala Thomson.By the way, if you call their number for a nearby location of factory authorized service you STILL get referred to "Walt's TV" even though I have informed Thomson that Walt's has no license to perform repairs in CA.
This is not what "warranty" means to mst sane consumers. Thomson's philosophy seems to be "we have a great warranty, we just don't apply it to anyone."
Shame on this company. Seriously, if you buy an RCA Thomson product becuase you think they are a well know, reputable brand, you are kidding yourself. This is NOT your father's RCA, this is like some dishonest wbe-based business with no physical address, not phone number, and not way to reach them that actually works.
Rob
San Leandro, California
U.S.A.
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