I purchased a Palm Pilot M130 from Circuit City with the protection plan from Circuit City over a year ago for my wife's birthday. After several months, we started having problems with the device. The battery dies very quickly, it won't charge for weeks on end, it automatically resets even between charges and more.
When this happened with Best Buy several years ago, I walked into the store with the Visor that was causing me problems and I walked out with a new one. I expected the same from the hassle-free warranty from Circuit City... Was I ever wrong. The first sign of problems was when I walked in and they said they'd changed our guarantee and I now had to call a toll-free number.
The person on the line wanted to "walk me through" the problem, unfortunately, since its an "intermittent" problem and an obviously faulty battery, I can't reproduce the problem by snapping my fingers. At this point, they said that I wouldn't be able to get a replacement until I could reproduce the problem... Call back when it is definately not working and then they would troubleshoot it.
At this point, things got worse. We got the manager on the line and we did the same dance.
I decided to file an email today instead to avoid having to deal with the personalities head to head. Obviously, the problem is not solved yet, so hopefully this will work out in the long run.
ONE curious thing that they said, they said that we were filing an INSURANCE claim. Is CityAdvantage essentially a third-party insurance company to which we file claims and get our claims "filled" (as opposed to a company that is looking out for the wellfare and the happiness of the consumer, the insurance company would look out for the financial well being of the company and their own insurance company).
At any rate, I love the circuit city store environment, it is clean and organized. Unfortunately, I think this is the last straw. I had a WORSE problem with my Tivo I purchased from Circuit City a few years ago. I ended up fixing it myself after they sent it away only to tell me "Oops, we don't have the parts and don't carry them anymore so you're on your own".
I'll drive the extra few miles to Best Buy, it is way worth it at this point. One doesn't have to look far to figure out why Circuit City is on the ropes...
0 comments