Complain about a product or service

ElectricSam.com

Wendy of Congers NY (7/20/04):
I was impressed with the competitive price ElectricSam has to offer, and it would be a perfect camera for me to bring along with me for my out-of-the-country trip which I have just returned from, so I decided to place an order. I received the camera on Friday late afternoon (7/2 at around 4pm) and charged the battery immediately so that I could test the camera and report any problems within 24 hours as specified on the receipt.

Disappointedly, the camera was showing blurred image on the LCD and can not focus. I called the customer representative immediately, but no response after waited for at least 30 minutes, then I found out from the website that the customer representative is not available after 5pm on Friday and all day Saturday! The customer service hotline did not even mention it and it would just make the customers wait. Since I would fly out of the country early Sunday morning, I turned to Canon for help and I was asked to send it to them for repair because the problems I have described are not due to the improper setup and it's because the camera is defective.

Knowing that it would pass the 14-day deadline of returning to ElectricSam when I returned from the trip, I've decided to send it back to Canon. I have also sent a email to ElectricSam immediately to describe the problem, I actually got a response from a customer representative named Michael two days later saying that I should get the repair/reference # from Canon and call ElectricSam back. I got the repair # from Canon and tried calling ElectricSam from out of the country, but every time I would have to wait for over 15 minutes with no one to pick up. As soon as I got back to US today (7/16), which is exactly the 14th from the time when I received the defective camera.

When I finally got to a cust. rep. and described my situation, the first thing she checked and said to me was it has passed the 14-day deadline of reporting defective product. I requested to have my shipping and handling charges refunded back to me and was denied! And the cust. rep. was telling me her own experience on how she ordered from the internet, she would usually have to pay for the shipping and handling charges for any return or exchange. First of all, if I simply want to return the camera because it doesn't look pretty to me is one thing. But I need to return it because it's defective, I do not expect to have to pay for the S&H. Second of all, whatever price ElectricSam has listed for the product, I guess it should inform the customer that it doesn't include the S&H charges that might be required to return the defective item. What if the next item they sent out to the customer to replace for the detective one is also defective? Is the customer expected to pay for the S&H until the non-defective item is finally sent?

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