Remember how happy I was when I sent my laptop off to Office Depot to be repaired under the extended warranty? Here’s the rest of the story.
I noticed that the case was cracked – just a tiny hairline crack but it’s growing – near a corner. It was obviously cracked when the repair person popped the case open to do the repairs. I wrote to the repair company which is a company contracted by Office Depot. They wanted pictures. I sent pictures. Then I get this response: Cracks and scratches are cosmetic and not covered by your warranty! Wait just a minute — YOU cracked my case. Sorry . . not covered!
Vince contacted someone with the corporate customer service department at Office Depot. He wanted pictures. He wanted copies of all the e-mails back and forth with the repair company. Sent all that. This has been going on for 2 or 3 weeks now. Today I get a response from him: Cracks and scratches are cosmetic and not covered by your warranty! But . . we’ll send you an Office Depot gift card for $100!
For what? So I’ll shut up and go away??
I’m so aggravated with them!
I still have 6 months left on my warranty and they already told me that when a computer comes in with a cracked case, they just send it back. . they won’t work on it. So, not only do I have a computer with a cracked case but the rest of my warranty is void.
So . . if you’re wanting to buy something and you expect to be treated with respect and get any degree of customer service, you might want to avoid Office Depot.
Erin says
contact their legal department Judy! Let them know you will go after them and send them the copies and pictures…I use to work for a legal dept. of a large corp and when we received the letters we ended up paying out money to settle it. It might be worth a try..or go right to the president and send him a letter…
Cindy B says
It’s not only Office Depot that has terrible customer service. I had the same problem with Maytag. I’ll never buy another Maytag product. What good is a warranty if you have to fight to get it honored?
Marlene says
I just read this week about Best Buy charging a “restocking” fee when you return somethings. Excuse me? Restocking fee? To walk across the store and put something on the shelf when you’ve got clerks standing around gossiping with each other? And some of their “restocking fees” are quite steep! Customer Service “ain’t what it used to be!” Blessings, marlene
Donna says
I won’t buy anything from Office Depot anymore. My problem involved something that was shipped. Long story but kind of like your catch 22.
I would contact someone else in their food chain, especially if you paid $ for the extended warranty.
Evelyn says
Keep going up the chain… I hope you get this resolved because it just doesn’t seem fair at all.
Cheers!
Evelyn
Pam says
If they’ve told you they won’t honor their warranty, tell them you want them to refund you 6 months of the warranty — and not in an Office Depot gift card.
Kare Ybarra says
Just went to the Office Depot website, sent their customer service dept an email and said that if this is how they treat their customers, I will no longer be shopping there (I pasted the link to your blog). Of course, they do not need to know that we don’t have an Office Depot where I live!
Judi says
I’m sorry your having to go through this to. I’m waiting for my laptop to come back from Best Buy they say HP has it. I guess the harddrive crashed but they aren’t telling me that. I’m geting a runaround and this is under an extended warranty also. They have had it for over 2 weeks now. The first one to look at it didn’t even know how to take the harddrive out of it’s case and this was the Geek Squad!!!
Kim says
This is really bugging me. Perhaps not as much as it is bugging you…but here’s my 2 cents.
They can refuse to do work on the computer if they think you opened/cracked the case, so therefore it is the technician’s job to see that the case isn’t cracked before he opens it. If it’s cracked, he stops, right?
If he doesn’t see a crack, they they assume there isn’t one and work on it. Which is what he did. You are bringing the crack to their attention. They can either fix the case and restore your warranty or you can escalate this to a higher authority/lawyer.
A new laptop would be fine if they don’t know how to fix the case that they cracked.
I’m so sick of this customer service nightmare we’re in. I am actively in search of companies who do not let you leave unhappy. It seems to me that a company looking for a way to compete in a tough economic climate could make a real name for themselves by truly providing wonderful customer service.
Also, I had a wonderful experience with Lowe’s over a dishwasher (no affiliation). They bent over backward to make me happy and I didn’t have to escalate beyond the appliance manager.