Buyer Beware....Circuit City
3 commentsI have no computer at all right now until the end of the month. My computer has been out of service for months and I was using the kids computer to check my mail. It has since went out and it is being fixed by our Best Buy Warranty. My husband has bought me a new lap top... I am getting a Dell laptop but it won't be in until for a little bit. I'm excited to get a Dell. We have always bought all of our computers at Best Buy in the past but the last one we bought had Vista on it. I absolutely hate it. My husband had all kinds of problems trying to network our printer because of the Vista and was never able to get it to work. You can not get a computer without Vista on it at Best Buy. Because of this, we went with Dell. I hope we'll have good luck with that. My husband has always had Dell's through work and has never had the problems we have had with our computers. I am typing this on my husband's work Dell as we speak.
Now the Buyer Beware is that my lap top that has been broke for months is the first and LAST computer (or anything for that matter) that I will ever purchase at Circuit City. We bought a very expensive lap top at Circuit City for me about 2 1/2 years ago. We bought the extended 3 year extended warranty like we always do. My computer is a HP and within the first year my plug in where the power cord goes into the computer broke. HP fixed that because it was still in the manufacturers warranty during that time. Last summer my computer started shutting down for no reason all the time. It seemed to be overheating. I had to use it with a fan blowing on it all the time. We sent it in through our Circuit City Extended Warranty. They sent it back saying they had cleaned it and it appeared to be able to stay up and running a little longer but within a weeks time, it was shutting down again. It was shutting down less frequently so between my husband's procrastination and the pain of having to be without my computer to send it in, we didn't send it back right away. It finally got to where I couldn't keep it running to even use it so we sent it in again. It was gone several weeks before it came back with a tag saying "service denied". They didn't say why. Jeff called them and they told us there was a bug infestation so they can't work on it! What kind of bugs my husband asked...all we got was some kind of bug infestation and it would have to be cleaned before they could work on it. We're talking actual insects here. Jeff asked if he had permission to take it apart and look in it and clean it. They said "sure". My husband is no dummy at computers. He took it apart...looked inside...Nothing....no bugs. He cleaned it. He called for another box to send it back in. We send the computer back to them. Another few weeks pass and it comes back once again..."service denied". He calls them again....after fighting and clawing to talk to someone higher. He gets some guy named Michael who tells him the same story. There is a bug infestation only this time he said we're going to have to pay someone to clean it and give us a insect free report. Fine...we're still just trying to get these people to honor the warranty we paid for so we take my laptop down to Circuit City where we bought it and explained it to them. The guy there says it sound like they don't want to fix my computer but they will look at it and clean it for us for free. We get the computer back with our "bug free" inspection report and send it back in. You guessed it...."service denied". By this time, my husband is really getting irritated. He called and fights and claws to talk to a higher up who ends up being this same guy named Michael. Jeff tells them we did what they told us to do and now they need to fix my computer. This Michael guy asked my husband where he took it and did they charge us! Now he says we need to have it fumigated and tries to tell my husband he had told us that the last time which is a lie. He accused my husband of cussing at him on the last conversation which is a complete lie. I'm sure he's used to being cussed at but my husband doesn't cuss and I've witnessed his conversations. He said Jeff didn't hear him say that because he was cussing at him. Total fabrication. The last call my husband did yell and get mad because he had this person refusing to listen, refusing to fix the computer, after we have complied with everything they have asked and they keep upping the anti on us. The computer has been inspected and cleaned by both my husband and Circuit City techs and no one has seen a bug yet!! Where are they hiding? My husband tried to talk to someone even higher...but this Michael refused to let Jeff talk to anyone higher. He said his boss doesn't talk to customers. They give you a customer resolutions fax # and PO Box to take up your problems with! You can't even stinkin' call the people at the customer resolution dept! We have faxed them numerous times...Jeff finally got a voice mail from someone. We're going to try to get it in writing from them that once we get it fumigated, they will fix my computer. To make a long story short, we took the computer to the Circuit City store that sold us this "warranty" that isn't worth the paper its written on to see if they would do something about it. Nope...they aren't going to do a thing. So that is where we are...I am stuck with a $2,000 lap top that is still under warranty and they won't fix it. My husband is going to check into the "fumigation" for these imaginary bugs next....what else can we do? These people are trained to not service the customer even if it means lie like a rug. I'd like to add here that if this computer would have been bought from Best Buy this would not be happening. We have bought from them and used their extended warranties for years. They have always fixed our computers and even gave us a brand new one on our very first computer. Since this was my first purchase away from Best Buy I guess I just never realized there would be such a difference in warranties. My charger went out and I had to send my whole computer in to the Circuit City warranty people just to get a new power cord. Best Buy warranty....we called them and they sent us a new one...that's it. So that's my consumer alert...NEVER buy anything from Circuit City. I will NEVER grace the door of that store again.
11:06 AM
Good information!! Thanks. dj
8:24 AM
I'm sorry you have had trouble with your laptop and with your Circuit City warranty. I encourage you to contact Circuit City at consumer_affairs@circuitcity.com. They are working to improve customer service-- you should hear back pretty quickly.
6:56 PM
I am sorry for you problem also. Seems that it is a systemic problem with this big comanies. I had a problem with my desktop and Best Buy fixed the problem twice but each time took them 3 weeks to fix. In the third time I decided to go with Friendly Computers Repair they fixed in two days and the desktop never had the problem again. I think we should search better before the next buy because you never know if they will delivery the customer service promissed or not.