Complaint Review: Circuit City - Nationwide

It is often hard to get decent customer service from any US retail company these days since they mostly use phone centers in India to provide "customer service". However, Circuit City is the worst I have ever experienced and will never do business in any form with them again.

We purchased a shower radio from their web site. It was defective. We tried to return it and wasted a week of our time talking to people in India who are clearly not properly trained or given the authority to really do anything that can help customers. It seems there job is to keep complaints from reaching the US corporate office.

On most of our calls, we had to repeat our entire story, ask to speak to a supervisor, and even get arguments where they refused to give us a supervisor! In every single call to customer support, once they put us on hold to get the supervisor, the call was disconnected or we were placed on hold for over 10 minutes whereupon the PBX disconnected the call with a "goodbye" message.

Finally, we were able to get an RMA number and return the radio. Thinking this might be an isolated incident, and not doing a simple search to see just how many problems people are having with circuit city, we ordered another radio for a Christmas present.

We bought the radio in October and it was Opened on Christmas day. It had the exact same issue as the first radio. The CD portion would not spin. We called India again and were told that the warranty had expired and that they would not fix or take a return on the radio, we would have to send it to the manufacturer. We explained it was a present and that we did not open it until Xmas. They did not care. "30 days is 30 days" was their response.

We contacted the distributor. Apparently they to are a sham corporation that merely imports cheap goods from Asia. Every time we call Orbyx, we also talk to a different person who promises to help, but never does. They tell us that circuit city has an agreement with them, since they are just an importer, to handle the returns themselves. They told us to tell the Circuit City to look up "screen 85" where they will find instructions telling them they must handle the warranty.

Our first call after having this information resulting in the phone rep refusing to check the screen stating, "I am well aware of all the screens on my system". We begged, "will you please just look it up ma'am and tell us what it says?". She again refused.

We have called almost EVERY DAY since December 26. It is now January 10. We continue to get unhelpful phone operators with thick accents who seem to really not care at all about helping customers. If we can get one to agree to let us speak with a supervisor, we are either cut off or that supervisor will also not help.

We are now getting the runaround from both Orbyx and Circuit City and are filing complaints with the better business bureau and the state attorney's general office, and sending faxes and phone calls directly to the executive staff at Circuit City in Virginia. I am really shocked at just how poor their customer service is.

Much like that movie where a slumlord was punished in court by having to live in his own apartments, I think that the president of circuit city should be forced to have to try and deal with his own customer service department.

Certainly any reasonable businessperson, after seeing firsthand how horrible the situation is and how much money they must be losing as more and more customers realize they should be buying from Best Buy instead of Circuit City, they would take action.

Fred

Cary, North Carolina
U.S.A.