Complaint Review: Westinghouse Digital

Bought a 46" TV through Best Buy from Westinghouse Digital (now Westinghouse Electronics).  It started losing HDMI inputs one at a time, then finally fully failed within the first year.  I had sent in the warranty registration card when purchased.  I tried their 800# many times.  Always the same recordings:  we are extremely busy, blah blah, yada yada, etc.  Please leave your # and we'l get back to your shortly or within 24 hours, etc.

Of course, nothing.    So I sent lots and lots of emails through customer service.      Again, nothing for months.

Finally, being disgusted, I (and I don't recommend this) I looked up every offical at the company through LinkedIn that had addresses, and I wrote them letters to tell them what I thought of this company.  Quite a few, actually, probably dozens.  Many were email wrong address rejected.

After a while though, some kind of customer service guy actually called me on the phone.  He of course did not believe me when I reported that the original failure date was within the warranty period.  He asked me to provide proof that I called them.  I called them a lot from work, and of course did not have a phone record to show that.

He also stated that they don't honor the warranty registration card information, so don't bother.  I sent him copies of the email chains that I had sent them. Of course, since I had waited to hear back from the phone messages ( I was being patient; I won't do that again.  And we'd been forced to buy a substitute TV already) they were dated maybe around a week later than the one year anniversary of the purchase date.  I could not locate the original receipt, so I wasn't exactly sure; I knew I had purchased it right after new years by a few days.

My chain of emails was fairly complete, and pretty damning evidence, so he finally told me that he would honor the warranty claim if I provided him with a copy of the receipt showing purchase date.  Of course, by then, my bad that I could not find it.

Side note:  Best Buy was absolutely no help here, and I tried numerous times to get a copy from them.  I had them search the month using my name, using my credit card #.  They really let me down.

So some time later, I did locate the receipt and attempted to call them.  The number the "special" customer service guy had used no longer answered.  And I sent multiple emails to all addresses I had used previously, with no answers. 

I finally figured out that their domain had changed from WestinghouseDigital.com to WestinghouseElectronics.com, and no emails bounced to me from the old addresses.  They must have gone into the server's email black hole.  (or Hillary deleted them, perhaps)

So, long story short, with the proof that they originally requested provided that the original failure had been within their warranty period, they REFUSED to honor it, as way too much time had passed for them.

All I wanted was the thing fixed.  It was their original refusal to honor the warranty that made the whole thing drag out. Their phone # for warranty service is obviously a scam to make you get tired and just plain give up.  Then, they threw another roadblock in my way.  The service guy never said you had to produce the proof of receipt within XX days or their offer of warranty service was void.  And this changing names to protect the innocent?  Well, that dragged it out even further.