Circuit City Warranty problems and need to vent!

04-17-08, 10:29 PM

I have to vent because I am getting the short end of the stick for the past 3 months with these people. I got an iPaq HX2495b from a friend in a trade. When I got it from her, she had purchased the Circuit City warranty plan.

So, awhile ago it decided that its going to malfunction on me. So I wait a little while to see if it gets better. I am having a problem where at random the up/down buttons would insert a double press.

I call up my friend and she mails me the warranty information. I go up to the store and I get told that I need to call it in since they don't do this in the store. I call up and they tell me that they can't do anything since its still under warranty from HP. I contact them and its not under warranty from them and it expired a few weeks ago.

I wait about 2 weeks and call up City Assure again. They are the ones who do the warranty for Circuit City. They tell me that I need to wait and have the warranty transferred to me. Pretty much my friend has to fax them the unit information and "I am transferring the warranty to Mikey Pizano" on a piece of paper.

She doesn't have a fax machine so she has to mail them it instead. She is in the same state so we figure it shouldn't take that long right? WRONG! I wait 4 weeks and call them again. I am told they never got the letter and have her mail a new one. Okay so she mails the new letter and they get it within a week.

So that took over a month for just the transfer. So now they send me a box with UPS. I get the box, pack it up and send it out. About 2 weeks later I get the iPaq back. Guess what? Its not fixed! They didn't even TRY to fix it!

Then the next few days I get a call from CyberTech, the people doing the "repair" work for City Assure. They tell me that its a corrupted file on the unit that is not being cleared after a hard reset and that I need to let the battery fully drain and hard reset again. I then explain to the guy that the WM5 devices use a persistent memory and this won't work. He says it will so I just left the battery out for 24 hours. I wait another week for that box.

They call back in 2 days and I tell them that yes, it is still doing it. He says a box is being shipped out. I get the box after about a week and send it out the second time. So now we are 8 weeks into the torture. I then get another call on Monday. Now this is where it gets good.

They tell me that its my fault and I am holding down the button too long sometimes and that makes it repeat. Now, this is not my first PDA and I know a lot about them and can tell what the problem is and how to fix it. Its the button sensors starting to die.

Now, they said that they are sending it back to me. This means that I should have gotten it Wednesday since it was 2 day shipping on the 3 boxes. Well now I am starting to think they lost the iPaq and I will contact them if I don't get within a week.

The weird thing is that the tracking number I have from City Assure is turning up sort of blank. It says that they sent an order for a box on March 23, 2008 and they they never got the iPaq. This means that I didn't get a tracking number for the box. I have no clue where the thing is.

Now, compared to Best Buy this warranty is horrible. Best Buy took to weeks to replace the main board in my TV and it came back flawlessly. The VGA port would only display pink screen.

I think that I will be buying a lot less stuff at Circuit City and I will not buy a warranty that is for sure! Thanks for reading this long post and I look forward to your comments.

stevenator65 · 04-18-08, 09:16 AM

Good luck with the repair. I hope it works out.

aedmunds7 · 04-18-08, 09:32 AM

I had a problem with a warranty on my son's Ipod for about a month. Finally I called my niece who is a lawyer & she got results immeditately. I had to take to the manager at Circuit City & received a brand new Ipod on the spot. The problem was that the Ipod was malfunction but they had lost it!!! I really hope that you get some Final Good results - The Time Is Now!!

aximbigfan · 04-18-08, 10:07 AM

Small claims court? If they are not honoring that warranty, you might be able to gt them on some sort of "fraud" charge.

Chris

04-18-08, 11:11 AM

I don't know what I am going to do... I've learned to live without a PDA now anyway...

Pocketbrain · 04-18-08, 01:13 PM

Originally Posted by mikeyp

I don't know what I am going to do... I've learned to live without a PDA now anyway...

How on Earth do you schedule your frantically busy life without one?

04-18-08, 05:06 PM

Well, I just got it back and they are saying that I opened it and its not covered under warranty...

aedmunds7 · 04-18-08, 05:32 PM

Send it to PDASmart.com; they can fix your baby & get you back on the right road!!

oldx5advanced · 04-18-08, 06:34 PM

Circuit City doesn't appear to value customer service very highly--I had almost the exact same run-around from them about 11 (!) years ago when I bought a top-of-the line 24X CD-ROM that was DOA...

04-19-08, 08:17 AM

Its going to be sent in a 3rd time now. I am just going to keep wasting them money by sending it in until it is fixed. I haven't used a PDA for the past 4 months!!!

04-20-08, 12:12 AM

Yeah Circuit City tried to screw us on a camcorder, the problem that we sent it in for was covered under our warranty, but a slight dent in the tape loader (which did not effect the operation of the camera) was not, and in order to perform warranty repair they would have to bring the entire camera to reconditioned specifications, and wanted 275 dollars or they would not fix the real problem. Dear old dad got on the phone and it just amazes me how a subtly mention of a uncle who is a lawyer will bring people around to their senses.

aximbigfan · 04-20-08, 12:36 AM

Originally Posted by ericcumbee

Yeah Circuit City tried to screw us on a camcorder, the problem that we sent it in for was covered under our warranty, but a slight dent in the tape loader (which did not effect the operation of the camera) was not, and in order to perform warranty repair they would have to bring the entire camera to reconditioned specifications, and wanted 275 dollars or they would not fix the real problem. Dear old dad got on the phone and it just amazes me how a subtly mention of a uncle who is a lawyer will bring people around to their senses.

Why hello there Eric, haven't seen you in a long time.

CC has always been ok for what I do, in fact I got a $10 wireless Saltek game pad that works very well.

I have bought a few things there, and they have been fine thus far. No use doing much else with them. They will be gone soon enough.

@MP, SUE, SUE, SUE!!!!!! Small claims court.

Chris