I purchased a Olympus FE-190 digital camera from Best Buy in West Paterson, NJ on 12/18/06. I received a Best Buy Gift Card in the mail from my Citi Mastercard credit card company and wished to use it prior to having the card expire.
I purchased the camera for my wife for her birthday so we could take pictures of our first born daughter. When I gave her the camera on her birthday on February 8 we immediately noticed that the camera was defective. When she attempted to turn the camera on the LCD screen remained blue with a line across the screen.
I contacted Best Buy and as per our purchase contract or receipt they would not accept the return because it was past the return date. They advised me to contact Olympus and that they would accept the return and replace the product free of charge.
I then attempted to contact Olympus and realized that you need an afternoon and a lot of patience to deal with the longer than expected wait times. I then advised my wife to use the camera until I could rectify the issue with Olympus.
During this time, the camera would take pictures and you could download them to your computer, but you could not see the image that you took a picture of on the LCD Screen.
I finally had an afternoon to deal with Olympus and on May 1, I called Olympus and spoke to a female customer service representative. The female I spoke to was very cordial and apologized for this inconvenience and emailed me a form to complete and to return the camera and that the camera would be repaired after evaluating the defective camera. She also said that she would indicate in their records that the camera was purchased in this defective condition.
At this time, I was also advised that I would be responsible for returning the camera to their repair center at my own expense and that they do not have a policy for sending a pre-paid return label with a box. This was surprising and unacceptable in my opinion. I purchased a $200.00 defective camera and had to go through all this stress and aggrevation to return their defective product and had to bear the cost myself.
So my wife returned the product in the manner that they requested and at my own expense on 05/03/07.
On May 18 my wife received a phone call from Olympus reporting that they could only repair the product for an additional $111.00 and that they were also voiding my warranty because the camera was subjected to impact.
When I was advised of this, I made contact with Olympus on May 21 and spoke to a male customer service representative then a female supervisor and finally a male named Vince who reported to be both of the previous representative's supervisors.
While on the telephone with the first representative he had the audacity to tell me that the only thing other than repairing the product was for me to purchase a new FE-190 for $119.00 or to upgrade to another Olympus Camera for additional money through them. I again explained to them that I am not stupid and that I would not fall for their scams and extortion tactics.
I spoke to his supervisor and she would not allow me to explain my situation in detail because she continued to interrupt me and speak over me to explain over and over that they have a policy against repairing these types of claims. She then said that I should have opened my wife's birthday gift and placed the battery in it, charged the battery made sure that it functioned properly.
I also advised her that this was ludicrous and that I certainly would not get fingerprints and unseal the plastic that these components were in to check for proper operation and make it look like I purchased a used camera for my wife. That was not only an unrealistic expectation, but also further diversion from the issue that I purchased a defective product and only expect that they would repair it to working order.
Vince was very rude and condescending in our conversation and appeared to be attempting to appease me with his own horror stories of purchases he made at Best Buy.
His behavior on the telephone was not only offensive to me, but was also extremely unprofessional. After several moments on the telephone with him he said they would not stand behind their product and that I would have to pay for the repair out of my own pocket. Vince also was unable to say with certainty that the product was not dropped in their warehouse, broken during transport to Best Buy or damaged while being loaded onto a shelf in the warehouse at Best Buy.
Even after not being unable to say this with any certainty he still refused to repair or replace my defective product. When advised that I would be forced to seek legal advice he said do whatever you want, we have our own legal department as well in a threatening manner. I was merely attempting to explain to him that the cost of a legal battle over this would far exceed the cost of repairing their defective product that I am now stuck with. They are telling me that this is Best Buy's problem and Best Buy is telling me that it is Olympus' problem but neither party is able to say that the damage was not caused at one or both of their locations or businesses.
0 comments