Friday, December 29, 2006

Damn store warranties.

I am never buying another piece of computer equipment from Office Depot ever again. Never. Never Never.

Last year my dad got me a PDA from Office Depot for Christmas. It was a floor model, so a lot of people had been poking at it before we got it. So, we bought the extended warranty because we figured I would need it.

About two weeks ago, it died on me. (touchscreen quit working) So, I called OD and tried to tell them it was dead and I wanted their warranty dept to either fix it or replace it like they said they would.

OD tells me that it's still under manufacturers warranty and wouldnt deal with me. So, I called the manufacturer (HP...love HP products) and they told me "sorry, manufacturers warranty expired on the 8th". So, I called OD back and told them what HP said. Emailed OD my receipt as proof.

OD claims that it's still under manufacturers warranty because I didnt register the PDA till December 26th. (ummm...it was a Xmas present) HP said that because it was bought December 8th that the 1yr warranty has expired. Office Depot is giving me the royal runaround and I get the feeling they dont want to honor their warranty contract.

I just spent a half hour listening to the crappiest hold music to find out that the warranty dept hasnt even bothered looking at my claim yet.

The guy on the phone said that if I know the PDA is unrepairable that I should go ahead and purchase a new PDA while they get things sorted out. Ummm...just how am I supposed to do that? They havent sent me the giftcard they give you when your warrantied item cant be repaired. Plus the fact that they dont even offer HP pda's in their store anymore, so I'm going to have to buy my next pda straight from HP (and I'm pretty sure they wont take an OD giftcard)

I explained that to Emilio, the barely intelligible warranty guy. (I know the warranty dept is in Florida, and there are lots of Spanish speaking people there, but can they at least hire someone who can enunciate clearly? I dont care if English was their 5th language, I just want to be able to understand what the hell the guy is saying to me without making him repeat himself because he cant pronounce the simplest words!!) Emilio told me that sometimes instead of a giftcard they can send a check, but that a check takes FOUR WEEKS to be processed. (what the f...?) It's nearly 3 weeks since my pda died...something that I'm not very happy about. (I used my pda for more than just reading fanfiction and playing solitaire) Now I've got to wait another four weeks??!?

Next time we get anything electronic or computer related, I'm going to Best Buy. They have repair people in the store...and their warranties are much much better...and next time I'll tell my dad not to buy the floor model.

I think I'll go write Office Depot a strongly worded letter about the crappy hold music they had on their phones. I dont think I'm ever getting that stupid song out of my head. I'm probably going to have to go listen to the song that I hate most in this world to get their hold music out of my head. (not telling what song I hate most in this world...one clue tho...it's by Toni Basil)

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