eCost Bungles Customer Service on Refurbished Westinghouse HDTV
Adam writes:
I know that you guys are conscious of providing accurate and good info, particularly when it involves your readers purchasing products recommended by the Gadgets section. Back in late August, I purchased a 37 inch HD Westinghouse video monitor as a result of the heads up on Gadgets, to replace my 19 inch old timey tv. The new monitor arrived, but without a manual and speakers and god knows what else...I called the company to get the missing stuff, but they instructed me to return it all, after they send me a "return label" by snail mail. It never came. It's been a month of endless, frustrating calls. They will never put on a manager or supervisor. And they won't reply to emails except with form letters.
I now suspect that they will never send this return label, and I'm stuck with a fully paid-for partial device. Just don't know what to do to handle this. Do you have any suggestions?
The TV is a refurbished set, but eCost's product page clearly lists "2 Detachable 20 Watt Speakers" as one of the bullet point features. When you buy a refurbished product, it's reasonable to expect some things to be different—minor scuffs, generic packaging—but unless it is specifically noted, you should expect all the same accessories that were included in the original, especially if they are specifically listed. Otherwise it would be an "open box."
(The lack of manual is sort of a borderline thing. I'd expect a manual with most refurbs, but I wouldn't be surprised not to get one.)
This is a real bummer for me. I'm a fan of Westinghouse's inexpensive LCD TVs and have had generally good luck buying refurbished items. (All my Macs except the most recent one I bought have been refurbs.) I'm about to head out to the Create Digital Music/Etsy/MAKE event, but we can dig into it tomorrow and see why eCost wants you to ship back a whole HDTV just so they can send you the missing pair of speakers.
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funny thing is (ok maybe just to me since I didn't get rubed by eCost) that I didn't even know you could buy tvs with sound of any kind any more. I just assumed everything video over 30 inches is simply a monitor...
I've dealt with eCost's customer service before, and they were great for me - I bought a watch, and the package I received had a nice box, but no watch inside. I called them up, about an hour later got a call back from a shipping supervisor, and had a new watch 2 days later. I've recommended them to folks since then because of this, I'd hate to think I got lucky and most folks get screwed.
This sounds familiar. I work for a major online retailer, and our procedures for dealing with "missing pieces" is much the same. It sucks big time, but it makes sense in a robotic sort of way: the company doesn't want to open another set to send out parts, leaving themselves with more problems, so instead they make you trade the incomplete set for a (hopefully!) complete one. I assume that the return they get back from customers is then sent to the manufacturer/distributor/warehouse for credit.
The bottom line is that the procedure is designed to save THEM time and money, which, i suspect, makes the replacement process quicker and smoother for the customer, even if only marginally so. I still think it sucks, though.
Regarding the form e-mail... when a customer service department regularly processes thousands of e-mails a day from customers, you just have to expect that a great deal of each response is going to be cut-and-paste. They deal with a lot of the same situations over and over, and to free-write each and every bit of every response would only waste a whole hell of a lot of time for everybody... and probably delay your response by days (multiply the difference between, say, 30 seconds for pasting answers, and four or five minutes for hand-typing a whole reply, by thousands of replies). Not only that, but even the bits that ARE hand-typed will still look like forms, because responses really should look as professional as possible.
Anyway, don't feel too bad, and don't automatically assume that they're not going to take care of you, just because the return label hasn't come. Return it yourself, and tell them to just reimburse your credit card for the cost. Just make sure you use UPS or insure it, because if it gets lost en route, Westinghouse can't be held responsible. Count on it getting lost, even if it probably won't. Just cover yourself. You'll be alright.
Doesn't help now, but for future purchases, check the reseller at: http://www.resellerratings.com.
eCost currently has a 2.36 rating (out of 10) with lots of negative comments. http://www.resellerratings.com/store/eCost
Two words. Charge Back. You don't even have to go through with the whole process. As soon as your credit card company threatens to take the money back from the retailer, you'll either have your speakers or an RMA label pretty quickly.
The thing is that most companies don't care about you the consumer any more than you count as a fraction of a percentage on their P&L. You as a person don't have any power over such a behemoth. They do care however about a company of equal or greater size and power knocking on their door asking why they screwed over their little friend here and can he please have his money back.
Just a suggestion, but head over to this post, or this one, or this one over at Consumerist for a list of ways to get yourself heard when a company is not acting responsibly.
Hey. I have the LVM-37W3 (a minor improvement on the W1 that adds an HDMI port). My suggestion: download the manual from:
http://www.westinghousedigital.com/manuals.aspx
...and consider yourself lucky that the unit works in the first place (my first one was DOA). Also, I can sympathize about not having the speakers, but frankly, they're fairly worthless anyway, so just feed the audio into your receiver like I do and enjoy the decent picture and better sound.
-- Bill
Someone probably screwed up the description. Sure, you can detach the "2 speakers".. the thing is, they are all part of the same unit attached to the bottom of the screen. They can be detached, but it sure does not look very pretty if you choose to keep the stand installed.
In my opinion, these suck as a TV, but are a really really nice monitor for your computer. Mine came with the detachable speaker pod and no manual. really, what would you need a manual for anyway? I took off the base and craptastic speakers, attached a vesa mount from a dead monitor, and ended up with a kick ass computer display. My larger 1080 TV with DVI in does not look nearly as crisp as this westinghouse as a computer monitor.
ecost was fast to ship my order, and I have no complaints. however, a friend of mine ordered one, and Customer service has been VERY slow to provide even an order confirmation for him.