Gadget Support & Warranties – Do Your Homework

One thing that many people may not fully consider when making their gadget purposes is what they can expect in terms of warranty and support in the day, weeks, months and years after that fateful day.

Back in November 2009, I bought a Krups Espresseria EA8080 for the wife and I as an early Christmas gift. I figured with the amount of money we spend on coffee at work and also when we go out we could save quite a bit if we had our own machine.

So, I ordered it from Catch of the Day where it was going for about $700 which is significantly less than the $1100 to $1200 found at retail stores. Anyway, it arrived after a week and I was excited to get back home and try it out.

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

The unit appeared to be stuck in French with an obscure error message that still made no sense after running it through Google Translate. I tried in desperation to find hidden buttons, discover a magical combination of buttons or something that I had assembled incorrectly. It was not to be and I was shattered.

The next day, I called up the local distributor who then advised that I should take it to one of their authorised repair centres. I was given the choice of two that were closest and I selected one in Hornsby, NSW.

Worst decision ever.

From go to whoa, it took sixteen weeks. There were numerous phone calls made during the period to get status updates which attracted the following responses:

• they are waiting on a response from the distributor,
• the part has to come from France,
• they just pass on whatever information they are provided,
• the distributor never received their e-mails,
• Metro Wide never received a response to a fax to the distributor asking about their e-mails.

Now, some or all of the above could have been true. What truly annoyed me is that I had to constantly chase them up as to what was going on and in the end, we had to demand the details of their contact at the distributor upon threat of involving the Department of Fair Trading. What was even more amazing was that raising the issue with the distributor (when the repair centre didn’t have the will and/or initiative to do it), we received a call back to advise that our coffee machine (which was brand new but failed to work out of the box) would be replaced with another brand new one.

This then begs the question, why couldn’t this repair centre do their job and manage the customer relationship with the distributor rather than kick back and take the mushroom approach (i.e. sitting in the dark and occasional fed something of questionable nutritious value). If I could talk to the distributor to escalate my problem and get a result in thirty minutes, why did I wait months before things came to a head?

I was in two minds about having one last parting shot when I picked up the replacement coffee machine earlier this week. I decided it against because I firmly believed that repair centre wouldn’t understand (given they hadn’t up to this point).

I can also draw similarities in my dealings with HP and Sony with laptop warranty repairs with regard to poor customer experience and treatment, either direct with the company or with their authorised third parties. This has been contrasted with my experience direct with Toshiba for another laptop repair (which they did outside of warranty and free of charge after I had unsuccessfully attempted to fix the issue myself).

So I urge you all, consider the implications of your brand choice when you purchase a gadget. Does the brand name have a good reputation for repairs and stand behind their products if they fail? What about their authorised agents?

Save yourself potential pain in the future and do some homework before you make an impulse purchase.