On Sunday, March 20th, I bought a 16 gigabyte microSD card from Fry's Electronics. I got home shortly after 7:00 pm and started to open everything up when I found that the packaging on the microSD card wasn't as sealed as I thought. Getting under a good lamp (I'm in my 50s, the text is a bit small for me on the microSD card) I saw immediately that even though the packaging was for a 16 gigabyte card, the card itself said 2 gigabyte AND it was a different manufacturer!
I had paid almost $30.00 for a $6.00 card, and it was too late to go back to Fry's, they closed about 7:00.
Immediately after work on Monday, March 21st, I went back to Fry's and told the clerk in returns what the problem was. He got a manager who also looked at the packaging. The manager said he couldn't conceive of how a different card could have gotten into that packaging so he wasn't going to help me.
He then took the card out of the packaging and checked it out on one of the computers, and reported that there was data on the card, and then he asked me if I had a cell phone. I said yes and showed him mine (Sony Ericsson Z500a — which anyone knows doesn't take any kind of SD card), he looked at it, gave me the stuff back, and told me goodbye.
No exchange, no return, not even listening to me. I think he had his mind made up before he even saw me.
I have shopped at that Fry's for most of the time they've been there, almost 20 years. I've spend thousands of dollars with them and now it looks like they're not going to get a dime out of me ever again — they don't give a damn about their customers, even long-term ones. As well I'm going to tell everyone I can about this, including mentioning it on my FaceBook page, etc.
Interesting aside: I found some shareware on the internet that allowed me to recover the 'erased' memory on the microSD flash card (beyond the couple of ring tones left on it — it indicates that the card was in a blackberry prior to 'appearing miraculously' in that 'sealed packaging') and I've recovered a few hundred files from it that leads me to think that it's an employee at Fry's that switched the cards and put the sealed packaging back out there to be bought by some unsuspecting customer... Which is pretty close to a bait and switch as far as I'm concerned.
Why they wouldn't want to treat a long-time customer better, and why they don't want to know which of their employees is ripping them off, I don't know. I have no reason to ever buy from Fry's again.
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