CircuitCity CityAssure Extended Service Plan Ripoff Lansing Michigan

About 1.5 years ago I purchased a camera from CircuitCity plus the 2-year, CityAssure extended warranty plan. The camera was on sale due to it's being on clearance. When the one we purchased turned out to be defective we took it back to the store for a replacement. We could have got our money back, but the wife had her mind set on this camera, so we accepted the only one that they had left of the same model, an open-boxed unit.

A month ago it stopped turning on. I went through all the diagnostics to confirm that it was bad and sent it in with the prepaid box we were sent by the camera company that now does all the camera service work for CircuitCity. The camera was in perfect condition, and had never been dropped. It just refused to turn on.

A little over a week later I was surprised that I hadn't gotten any email's regarding the camera, since I was told that I would be notified by the camera repair service at each stage of the repair. I called CircuitCity because I hadn't even been notified that the package had been received by them. The company didn't know either what the state of the repair was, and I was told to call back the next week.

When I called back, I was surprised to find that the camera had already been evaluated, and that the camera repair service had reported that the injury that had caused the damage was due to it being dropped, and they had emailed CircuitCity, not me, a picture of the damage.
Well, I complained till I was red in the face that it must have been damaged during shipping since we had done nothing to it.

We finally got it back a month later, opened the box, and it didn't appear to have any damage at all, contrary to what they had said was in the photo. So I assumed that the photo had been taken of another camera accidentally, and mixed up with ours. So I took the camera to the store to prove to them that it had no physical damage. When the manager of the store could see no damage either, he called the main offices to ascertain what damage they were referring to.

It turned out to be a nearly microscopic nick in the bottom of the camera, where they said there was the slightest difference in the alignment of the two surfaces that should have been flush. The 'damage' was apparent when you looked very closely, but only because the slightly raised edge had significant wear, as though it had been like that since the camera was new.

I don't know if it was there when the camera was new or after it was returned by whoever had it before us (since it was returned and resold as an open-boxed item to us), but the fact that it was worn down slightly on that edge is a sure sign that it wasn't a fresh injury or flaw, and the fact that the damage was nearly non-existant accept for the wear on the adge, should have indicated to the camera repair service that the 'damage' had nothing to do with it's present state.

Well, CircuitCity refused to do anything about this misjudgment regarding the camera. The manager even refused to admit that he agreed with me that the damage was so slight (and apparently worn) that it wasn't the cause of the electronic defect, preferring to act as though he would be immediately struck by lightening or find a pink slip in his locker if he even reasoned a guess at my predicament. He wouldn't even agree that he was a thinking human being BEFORE he was a mere employee of CircuitCity! How's that for effective brainwashing!

They didn't even offer me the money I paid into this defective service plan until l was livid and threatening and said that I was going to get another camera somewhere else and never come back to their store. You would expect that this money would be sent to me immediately after they refused to perform the repair service!

From this experience I can only ascertain that their repair service will use a magnifying glass to determine if they can find any damage, no matter how insignificant to the supposed defect in the camera, in an attempt to preempt repairing cameras. They didn't even open the camera and try to do further testing to determine IF a bump to the bottom of the camera could have caused the type of electronic damage the camera exhibited. Surely there would have been a broken circuit board or some kind of a sign of further damage, if physical damage was the cause.

Ram
Holt, Michigan
U.S.A.

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