SUMMARY:
This article is a summary of our recent negative experience at a local super store - Best Buy sold us a broken Sony DVD camcorder claiming it worked great. They manipulated and lied to my mother about how to use it. Both Sony and Best Buy were unwilling to fix the problem and we were left as unsatisfied customers with hundreds of dollars stolen from us and a worthless Sony DCR-DVD105 Mini-DVD Handycam Camcorder.
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Best Buy Store: #311, Burbank Illinois, 60459
Original Value of Sony DCR-DVD105 Camcorder: $449.99
Sold to Mom at Best Buy for price of $224.99
Sony’s charge to customer to repair: $225
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THE UNSUSPECTING VICTIM (exploitation of innocent customer):
On March 3rd 2007 my mom went to Best Buy to purchase a new video camera. Keep in mind that my mom is a Polish immigrant with basic understanding on English. She understands and speaks English, but as it is her second language she isn’t as proficient as someone who grew up in and went to college in the United States. Also keep in mind that she is not technically savvy, she understands the basics of operating a video camera and knows how to use computers, but beyond that her technical skills are limited. That made her easy prey for the ruthless and underhanded sales associates at Best Buy!
When she arrived to Best, Mom was originally looking at a new Sony unit, but something was getting stuck with the buttons. She walked over and looked at another unit down the isle. Then the sales associate came over to her and said he found “another one” just like the first which worked just fine and that is was a great discount since it was open box. (Not only was it a broken unit, but it had no box and was in an envelope!!!) Because it was an open box unit she got it for 50% off of the retail price. The store associate convinced her to purchase an open box Sony DVD Camcorder. He manipulated her into thinking an open box DVD camcorder worked just as well as a new one. In fact, he had not even tested it to make sure it worked. He merely wanted it out of his returns boxes to get it off of his books.
As any good Polish person would (and I say this because I also fall into this thrifty category) she jumped at the great deal and purchased the sale camcorder. She has been a solid customer at Best Buy for years – buying all her recent cameras, tv’s, dvd players, etc. Every major household appliance was purchased from Best Buy so she had no reason to suspect foul play.
Her intent was to capture precious moments of family events, birthdays, baby’s first months, Christmas’s, and so on. Unfortunately I was away on expatriate assignment in England for six months so couldn’t come down to the south side of Chicago to help her examine the item before purchase. She was alone in the US and taken advantage of by the vultures in Best Buy.
At this point one could now say that she should have gone home, tested the camcorder, and returned it right away right? True. Except for one very important thing… the Best Buy associate specifically told her that she would have to record the entire DVD and “finalize it” before she watched it at home on her DVD player. She was explicitly told that if she took it out of the camcorder to watch it on her DVD player before she recorded a full DVD of images, that it would ruin the DVD itself and the camera. The Best Buy Associate had lied to her! He was only trying to push to the product to an unsuspecting customer. Because her English wasn’t fluent and her technical knowledge was simple, he robbed her of her dignity, her intelligence and disrespected her! At the time of the sale, he either knew that the item was broken and sold it to mom anyway, or else had not bothered to inspect the broken item and sold it unchecked to an innocent victim.
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USING THE CAMERA:
As mom didn’t have significant life events to record in March or spring (remember that I was working abroad at the time) she didn’t wasn’t able to record 6 hours of footage within 3 months. There didn’t seem to be much sense in recording 10 minutes of the fish swimming or the dog barking just to test the unit. She trusted Best Buy and trusted Sony. Mistake!
The first real chance she had to test the camcorder was at my birthday party in July of 2007. She video recorder me with my cake, the present opening, the two dogs playing (2 month old including baby Tosa), baby Ella screaming, Jeff telling a lengthy and funny story, and general family shenanigans and tom foolery. Yes, maybe even some havoc. In any case, the DVD she was using was so big that she didn’t get to finish it up. It wasn’t until Christmas, in December that she finally came to the end of the cd. Between July and December she had recorded two birthday parties, Thanksgiving, and a few samples of the dog. Nearly an entire year of memories was on that DVD!!!
So what happened? At Christmas of 2007, we gathered around the TV and popped in the DVD, excited to finally get to watch the recordings from that year. And what did we experience? A silent movie! Yes, that’s right absolutely no sound. The entire year was recorded without sound. It was worthless. All that work recording the events and interviewing family was for nothing. Who wants to watch a silent home movie for 6 hours?
To make matters worse, we could have used our existing camera to record our memories, but had faith that our purchase of the Sony DVD Camcorder from Best Buy would have worked. Instead we lost out on memories of baby Ella crying her little eyes out when her mommy left the room, baby Tosa growling at Sunday, and our nieces and nephews giggling while running across the yard. All footage and memories which we can never get back! We trusted Sony to make a quality product and we trusted Best Buy to sell us a quality product. We were betrayed, manipulated, lied to, and robbed!
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THE RETURN (also known as, worthless customer service):
We went to Best Buy in January of 2008 asking for an exchange of product or refund. We would have settled for store credit even. We were told that we needed to send the camcorder, at our expense, directly to Sony, since it was out of the 90 day store return policy for Best Buy. Grudgingly, Ben called Sony and was told that they would fix the camcorder at a cost of $65 plus he would have to ship it to them as his cost. The $65 cost would cover all the costs to fix the DVD camcorder. Since there was nothing we could do at this point, we acquiesced and sent it at the end of January. This was still well within the one year warranty.
A few weeks later (and I do stress how slow Sony was to respond to us), now late February, Sony called us back saying that they received the item. Upon further inspection they found “moisture damage” in the unit, which is why no sound was being recorded. They offered to fix the problem at a cost of $225! Due to technology changes and price decreases in technology the camera itself was now worth less than $200. There was no point in paying over $225 to fix a camera worth less than $225. They said that the warranty that covers parts was now voided due to the damages. In essence, we were responsible for the damages we did not create nor were aware of when we bought the camcorder. How were we to know that there was extensive moisture damage when the camera was purchased? Isn’t that the responsibility of the sell, e.g. wasn’t Best Buy suppose to ensure that the customer is not sold a faulty product?
After our conversation with Sony, we called mom immediately, and she confirmed that she did not spill anything on the camcorder. Given how much money she paid for it, she took great caution to take care of the camcorder. Thus, the really “great price” turned out to be a great shame! Somebody purchased the camcorder from Best Buy, spilled water on it, returned it to Best Buy (who never verified that it worked) and then Best Buy resold a broken camcorder to an unsuspecting and innocent customer. Talk about exploitation!
We again took the camcorder to our local Best Buy and explained the situation, retelling the story above. We offered to even take store credit and purchase a new camcorder from their store! Since it was out of the 90 day store warranty, and out of the 1 year manufacturer’s warranty, they claimed that there was nothing they would do for us. The store manager, though very courteous said that “if we take back the camcorder and gave you store credit then Best Buy would have to pay to have Sony fix it.” Suppose it is not really worth their money to fix a problem for a customer who already paid for the purpose. Remember though - we tried to get the item fixed within the 1 year warranty, but due to the slowness at Sony customer service, we were pushed outside of this time frame.
In summary, Best Buy took advantage of an unsuspecting customer by selling her a broken DVD camcorder. Then sent the customers offspring on a wild goose chase (which took up nearly 25 hours of leg work and boulders of stress) only to have no resolution to our problem.
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CONCLUSION: NEVER MAKE A PURCHASE FROM BEST BUY AGAIN!!!
Thank you Best Buy for your headache and pain in our ends. And thank you Sony for not fixing our problem. This family looks forward to never buying anything from either of you again!
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SUMMARY OF SUGGESTIONS:
• Do not purchase open box high tech products if they are marked down by more than 30%. It probably means something is really wrong with them.
• If you are considering purchasing an open box product from a retail store, make sure you test it thoroughly while in the store.
• When you purchase the item – take out the extended warranty. If it is an open box it has a much higher probability of having something be wrong with it. A closed box items probably had a few people touch it… while an open box probably had every Peter, Paul and Maria fondling the item.
• If you must purchase and open box high tech product, make sure you test it as soon as you can once you get it home. There is a limited manufacturers and store warranty – so make sure you are within that warranty time frame
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