Thursday, October 20, 2005
Today this techno geek learned a hard, expensive lesson about the way big corporations such as 'Best Buy' can screw you. My $100.00 four year extended warranty turned out to be near worthless. I could have done just as well with their cheaper two year warranty. Actually I would have been better off as I would have spent a lot less for the two year warranty.
If you buy an extended warranty on an item from Best Buy, you should know they can cancel it at any time after the original manufacturer's warranty simply by telling you it is not cost effective to repair what you bought, and replacing it with an inferior or less expensive product. If the original item had a ninety day warranty and you bought a four year extended warranty, they can cancel it out without giving any kind of a refund at ninety one days. Then you have to buy another extended warranty at full cost.
Here is what happened: A little over a year ago I bought a JVC DR-MV1S DVD Video Recorder / Video Cassette Recorder. It came with a one year manufacturer's warranty. I bought the four year extended warranty, expecting it would insure I had a working machine for at least four years. In three months, it died. They fixed it (after keeping it for most of a month) then it died again a few months later. After a while they replaced it with another identical unit. Now this unit died, and since it was a couple of weeks past the original one year warranty, I expected it to be repaired or replaced again. After all I had wisely paid a hundred bucks for a four year extended warranty, right?
Wrong answer!
I received a message that Best Buy had called, and to call them back, so I did, spending 49 minutes on the phone before getting to speak to a real person. (They had written down the wrong extension number on my receipt when I dropped it off for repair.) After another ten minutes on hold, the person came back and said they were swapping it out, and to bring in whatever I had in parts, such as the remote control.
So I did.
I was told to pick another one out and they would swap it, so after 20 minutes of looking at the different models before someone showed up who worked in that department, I found out there were none that had all the features my original one did. None of the ones they have had dual antenna inputs with dual tuners, so I could record only one channel at a time. My original had two tuners, and I could record different channels to both the DVD and the VCR at the same time. Fine. I finally accepted one with reduced capability. I could always bring out my old VCR and use a splitter to record two things at once.
Then reality hit!
I was informed the one I had picked out had 90 days labor, 1 year parts, and that I would have to purchase the extended warranty again if I wanted it. What???
What about my four year one hundred dollar extended warranty? The one the salesperson said would insure I had a working unit for at least four years?
Worthless.
It seems there is one line buried in the warranty sheet they give you (after you pay for it, not before) that states: This Plan is fulfilled when a product is replaced after the expiration of the manufacturer's warranty.
That's the 'Gotcha.'
So now I have to spend hours and hours on the phone trying to track down a unit with equal features, that I won't get the rest of my four years warranty on, just to hope it doesn't die one day after the original warranty unless I pay a ridiculous amount for an extended warranty they can cancel at their whim one day after it technically goes into effect.
Wish me luck, and I'll keep you posted.
Update. I just got off the phone with their corporate headquarters. After an hour on the phone, they decided they will refund me (in the form of a gift card) the value of the box they were going to give me as a replacement - much less than I paid to begin with. I get nothing for the remaining three years of my extended warranty.
Now I have to jump through hoops to get the money. First, I have to drive back to Best Buy, which is in another city as there isn't one here, and get them to issue me a gift card. Then I have to call American Express and have a funds hold put on it, and mail it to them. In three to six weeks I will get a check. Meanwhile, I'm without a recorder, and I've made multiple trips to their store.
What it comes down to is that I'm being financially penalized because they decided it would cost them too much money to fix my old machine, which would still be under the extended warranty had they fixed it to begin with.
Look at it this way: You buy a brand new car - a Lincoln, and pay for an extended warranty. One month into the extended phase, something breaks. You take it in, and they tell you it will cost too much to repair so they are going to give you a new car but you will have to pay extra to get an extended warranty with it. Then they give you a Kia.
Hope you don't have to do it again. You might end up with a bicycle.
Ok, I'm going back over there tonight. Wish me luck.
10/24/05 - Conclusion. A semi-happy ending.
Rather than take the refund, I ended up with a DVD recorder with a 40Gb hard drive. And a 4-year warranty (no 2-year available), good for at least 90 days. No VCR capabilities. And a Gift Card worth $3.51. But I'm still out a hundred bucks as that part went out the window. The new unit was much less than the original.
It took four hours to rearrange the furniture and shelves to hold all this. Which I was going to have to rearrange anyway as I was going to build a media center PC (Linux based, of course) but with the new recorder with hard drive it's a moot point. Of course, I could go ahead and finish it so I can record multiple channels at once, except there is nowhere left for me to put it, even with rearranging everything. Dang small house!
Lessons learned:
1. ALWAYS read the fine print. Ask for a copy BEFORE you pay.
2. Sometimes you have to be the squeaky wheel to get your grease. (Now that didn't sound the way I meant it.)
3. There is a class action lawsuit somewhere in here, as it's their decision as to when your item is not economically repairable and the warranty goes out the window. That just doesn't seem right.
4. I can expect to spend 40 hours training my family how to use this newfangled box. The MythTV setup I was installing on my media center PC is a heck of a lot easier to use than the setup on this thing.
5. Being able to pause live TV is cool. Now when one of my kids start talking to me three seconds after ten straight minutes of commercials end, I can pause the show and pick it up where it left off after I've handed them the money they asked for to buy something else for me to pick up off the floor in a week.
Ya'll be careful shopping out there!
