American TV Most Horrible Customer Service Ever Waukesha Wisconsin

These are the two (2) letters I wrote regarding this mess. The first went directly to American and the second was a letter responding to the American reps weak response to the BBB - Enjoy the letters but be warned about shoping there!

To whom it may concern:

This communication is being sent in accordance with and as a result of the notice of service claim unpaid I have received via mail dated October 28, 2007. I certainly hope it does make it "To whom it may concern" because as of this moment I don't believe anyone at American is concerned with any level of customer service.

My agonizing journey began way back on September 4, 2007 when I made the mistake of assuming American would be capable of providing service on the Mitsubishi 65" television model #WS65511, Serial #110154 I purchased from them on January 14, 2003. My Initial call for service was met by being on hold for 9 minutes then being told the soonest I could receive an initial visit by your service technician would be in two weeks on September 17, 2007. At this point I advised them of the problem with the picture on the non-HD channels and assuming you would be the most appropriate to provide the service, accepted the two week wait. Since the HD channels came in fine, the wait wasn't as difficult to accept.

September 17th arrives and your technician advises he thinks it would be one of two parts and gets the parts ordered indicating it would take a couple days and they would then prioritize a repeat visit. This prioritization never occurred and I then waited all the way until October 8th, 2007 for his return. You had initially scheduled him to arrive slightly earlier but someone from American called to cancel advising the wrong technician had been scheduled.

Finally over a month after the initial call for service your technician arrives, tears the television apart and gives me the news that they had ordered the wrong part for him and leaves. However this time he left me a parting gift of appreciation for my continued patience by leaving the television completely broken, unable to even be turned on. At this point I am over a month into this agonizing journey and my television is broken worse than when I first called. But wait! The fun had just begun.

Beginning on October 9th, 2007 I called American repeatedly trying to get some sort of help. My calls (too many to fully detail) ranged from Quinn to Georgia to Donna who was supposedly a supervisor. Every time I waited on hold (I have a timer on my business phone) for agonizing amounts of time including once for 47 minutes! Everyone kept indicating they would find out "what the heck was going on" and "would call me back ASAP" however I never received these calls (thus forcing my repeated callbacks). They would indicate they had spoken with Bruce the "team leader" or some other person who would "get to the bottom of this". The end result was always the same - dead silence from my phone. One person went so far as to say "they can't believe I would be charged for all this and I should bill them for my time" then blamed all the problems they were having on some "acquisition" that American was making. Why do I care about your acquisition?

Needless to say I had lost my patience and asked to speak with someone in charge. Initially I was advised there was two people responsible for making sure "this type of problem gets taken care of" and "one of them would call". I'm still waiting. In the final conversation I requested the manager or president and was advised by Donna that this was "crazy TV Lenny" (sarcasm maybe?).

Cont.

American Disaster
page 2

When the technician finally arrived on October 12th, 2007 he advised me the TV had gone completely out after his last visit because of the "IC connections get warm then cold when you turn the TV on and off then they break". I believe he was trying to explain the concept of the coefficient of thermal expansion and contraction but neglected to mention the one in a million odds of it happening to break the very next time the television was turned on right after he left.

After the technician had finally repaired the television and requested $400 in payment, I advised FIRST I wanted to speak with the supervisor/manager/president/whatever that was supposed to call me (or I would be happy to meet them if they wanted to stop by). He relayed this to someone on his phone BUT I'm still waiting.

BY THE WAY, after this final visit by the technician, my surround sound system suddenly wouldn't work. I went behind the television myself (I sure wasn't going to wait for his return again) and found the cable wires pulled from the rear connection ports. Whether it was done on purpose or accident, your people are apparently either highly unscrupulous or unskilled.

American will receive zero compensation from me for this disaster. American will be fortunate if I don't take action to collect from them for the time I have invested in this unbelievable journey through the worst customer service I have ever encountered in my entire life.

2nd Letter

I appreciate finally receiving a response from Mr. DeShong regarding the issues I have been faced with since calling American. It is a shame all of my previous efforts to contact anyone at American since October 9th fell on deaf ears. Only when the Better Business Bureau became involved did I hear from them.

That being said I note a number of obvious falsehoods with his details. The most glaring of these is where he indicated that "prior to arrival" they discovered one of the parts was incorrect. This sounds like more unscrupulous behavior on the part of American. Are you denying your technician Tim arrived at my home on October 8th and left my television completely broken? Since it can easily be proven he was here, are you stating he broke my television on his own while not representing American? This would now mean I should file a report with the police so you may want to "own up to this".

Mr. DeShong, are you the American representative that everyone kept referring to that was going to "get to the bottom of this" and return my numerous calls for help? I note that you never referred once to any of the customer service problems I experienced with the exception of "apologizing for my frustration". Frustration with American in this situation is the understatement of the year and will not be allowed to be minimized with this weak effort on your part. Are you covering for your own inadequacies with your own horrible effort at handling this in a more proactive manner?! Are you actually the "crazy TV Lenny" Donna referred to so professionally?

As with the other issues I note you also never address the surround sound cables pulled from the rear of the television. More unscrupulous behavior ignored or is it standard for your technicians to leave a television broken on one trip and then broken in another manner on the following trip? In other words, you cover none of the primary issues in your response. Apparently since the end result was the TV worked it doesn't matter how disastrous the trip was to arrive there.

Ken
Verona, Wisconsin
U.S.A.