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Report: #840475

Complaint Review: ThinkGeek - Internet

  • Submitted:
  • Updated:
  • Reported By: Jason — Philadelphia Pennsylvania U.S.A.
  • Author Confirmed What's this?
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  • ThinkGeek Internet United States of America

ThinkGeek Very poor service, shoddy product, horrible return experience, Internet

*Author of original report: Issue Resolved

*UPDATE Employee: Sorry for the poor service!

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Over the years, I've purchased several thousand dollars worth of products from ThinkGeek.  This year, I purchased a light effect item, the LaserPod Galaxies, and it stopped working after about two weeks.  It was a holiday gift.  I filled out the RMA form online, and left specific instructions that this was a return in exchange for the same product.  The result of this is the following:

1. The return/exchange was processed as a return/credit, thus crediting my account the actual purchase price of the product.  ($69.99)

2.  No shipping charges were credited.  

3.  Upon contacting the company, they provided me a discount code to offset the shipping costs, to simply re-purchase the item. 

4.  Upon attempting to re-purchase the EXACT SAME item, I found that it was priced $30 above the original price, now $99.99

5.  Customer service was unwilling to send me a new product, since they had "made me whole" by refunding the price of the defective item.  No matter it was returned due to defect, and now priced $30 above.  They also said that the notes field in which I had stated the details of the exchange (instead of a credit) were not used, unless there was some kind of problem with the order.  This was not detailed anywhere on the form.  

6.  In making them aware that I was due some kind of shipping refund as well, they credited my account $1, adding insult to injury.  

So, they basically sold me a defective product, "botched" the return, jacked the price, and then failed to remedy the situation by providing an acceptable discount so that I could re-purchase the defective product at the original price
.  
Overall, they were very short-sighted, since after many years and thousands of dollars, I'll never buy another thing there again.  Not to mention that this smells of a purposeful action, though that's only my opinion, since they knew they'd get me for another $30 when I went to re-purchase.  I'd not be surprised if the return "policy" for items that have increased in price is not to exchange them, but only to credit the account.  Pretty shameful for a company to take such tactics, and all because THEIR product was defective.  

If you do a search for "geek toys" you'll find other website with similar products.  I did re-purchase the item, but at a different website.  And, just in case there's any rebuttal on this, there was no "confusion" regarding the version of the product I needed to re-buy.  There are two versions of this item, one is called the "Galaxies" and the other the "Supernova."  The Supernova version of the product is much larger and more powerful, and costs about $180; the Galaxy version is the one I purchased, and the exact one I tried to re-buy.  Originally it was $69.99, and the new price was $99.99

Very disappointing; for the sake of $30 or so, they lost a customer for life.  I guess they've gotten too big for their own good.    Very unfortunate.  

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 02/16/2012 05:10 PM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/thinkgeek/internet/thinkgeek-very-poor-service-shoddy-product-horrible-return-experience-internet-840475. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
1Author
1Consumer
0Employee/Owner

#2 Author of original report

Issue Resolved

AUTHOR: Jason - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Friday, February 17, 2012

The issue has been resolved, see the text below. It was a shame it had to come to this, but they did recover as well as could be expected.  Hopefully it won't happen to any other customers.  Goes to show, you need to stand up for yourself as a consumer.  

-Jason
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason,


Thanks for taking the time to get back to us!


I see from your account history that you have indeed been shopping with us for a very long time--almost 10 years!--and I'm sorry it came to this. I'm reporting your interaction with Chris along to our CS manager for review because that was absolutely not the right resolution to the issue. 


It sounds like you've found your replacement Laserpod, so I won't ship you a new one unless you'd like another from us. (Let me know if you do.) Instead, we've just refunded you the remainder of shipping from the initial order, which should have been done the first time, and here's a $70 gift certificate code to help make up for the all the trouble since then:


xxxxxxx


I don't know if you'll feel comfortable with us again to use it, but I wanted to be sure that we're even and then some. I would understand if not; I didn't want to believe you that you were only refunded $1 on the shipping, but... wow, that is in fact what happened. So sorry about that. 


Thanks again for getting back to us so we could take another try at getting this right, and let me know if you have any questions or if there's anything else I can do.

Carrie

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#1 UPDATE Employee

Sorry for the poor service!

AUTHOR: ThinkGeek - (United States of America)

POSTED: Friday, February 17, 2012

Jason,

So sorry for the runaround you received on your return! We're attempting to track down your order number with the details you've provided here, but if you'll email replybot at thinkgeek.com (the form here asks us not use email addresses but I'll try) that might help expedite the process. If the email address is stripped out of this comment, you can tweet to us @thinkgeek or post on our Facebook wall at http://facebook.com/thinkgeek and we'll get in touch.

We have Laserpods in stock now and we can ship you a replacement and refund the shipping cost on the first order as well. I can't speak to the $1 refund--if it was intentional, we'll certainly take that up with the rep who issued it because that's not the kind of customer service we want to provide, and if it was a mistake, I apologize for the trouble and we'll correct it. Sorry again for the poor service and hope we'll hear from you via email soon!

Carrie, ThinkGeek.com

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