sending stuff back

[birdy]

I am wondering if this situation is the same all over the world or is just limited to the UK or possibly to just me.

Whenever i have had faulty stuff and had to send it back i ring up the company to determine whether the item has arrived and how long i can expect to wait for a replacement. I am usually told something like "oh that will be around two weeks, ring us back then". I then leave it three weeks and ring up. It's uncanny the amount of times i have rung up after three weeks to be told that the item was being shipped that day. Do these people just think 'we'll just wait for him to ring back and then send it out' or am i just unlucky?

[Chris B]

It´s not you, I can definately say that much

But what I usually do, is get really pissed by the third phonecall or so, and demand my money back....

Once I couldn´t get my CD player fixed, so I took the whole damn system (amp and speakers) to the store (without warning them that is) and asked them to take it back so I could buy something that worked. That pretty much did the trick

[Raptor^]

I've found sending faulty stuff back generally OK.

One company I know of gave trouble when a friend ordered a K6-2 450 and mobo from them ages ago. The CPU was fried, but they wouldn't accept what we told them and asked us to try a load of crap to try and make it work. I told them it worked fine in another identical mobo (from my brother's comp), but that wasn't good enough for them. Eventually we managed to get them to give us an RMA and it turned out that.... the CPU was faulty. Idiots.

I seemed to have an unusually high number of faulty components from them too, so I haven't ordered from them since that incident.

[The PIT]

The most annoying thing is when they insist that you keep the orginal packaging otherwise your warrenty is void. Do they expect us to keep a warehouse full of every cardboard box that we've unpacked?
No the only problem I've had is when they say the person you need to speak to isn't here but we'll take the number and ring you back.
Of course they never do and you have to keep ringing back.

[Taz]

What's worse is when they insist you speak to one of their techies who obviously knows a damn site less than you do! I once had to speak to someone in Intels tech support regarding a NetPort, it was clear he'd never seen one before in his life.

[The PIT]

Just when I said I never had a problem with a company on getting a returns setup I get one. Four phone calls to get a damn returns number despite being assurred three times we'll ring you back!