Unbelieveable horseshit from Toshiba!!

The BBQ Pit
1

This story is 100% true.

On September 12th, 2003, I purchased a Toshiba laptop computer. I have one from work, but I wanted a personal one, one my wife could also use. My choice of this particular notebook was influenced by the fact that it had $200 in rebates on it., plus it was on sale for $120 off the normal price.
The first rebate, $100, came from Best Buy around October 20th. By Thanksgiving I was curious where the second rebate, $100 from Toshiba was. I called Toshibas rebate center.
They claim that they never, ever, received my rebate information. They have no record of it. Bullshit! But what could I do?
So, I had to make photocopies of all the shit, UPC code, receipt, re-fill out the rebate application, etc.
Pain in the ass, but it is $100, so I did it all, and mailed it in.

A New Year had come, and still, no rebate. I call the rebate center. They claim “we sent that rebate out, but it was returned to us by the Postal Service, claiming no such person lived there”. What are you talking about? I’ve lived here for 6 years, and I owned the house 5 years before I moved into it. The post office has been delivering my mail here for over a decade. They know who I am.:confused:
“Well, we sent it to *** South 9th street, and the post officer returned it” :eek: Someone missed a few keystrokes when entering my info into their computer!
109th Street! *** South 109th! I wouldn’t live ANYWHERE NEAR *** South 9th Street in Milwaukee!
So the person at Toshiba promises me she’ll make the change, and re-issue the check. Please wait 6-8 weeks for delivery.:rolleyes:
St. Patricks Day, and still, no rebate check. I call Toshiba. Once again, they mailed the check to 9th Street. I sure the hell didn’t write 9th street on my rebate form!
4 more times, in as many months, I call Toshibas rebate center. Every time they claim to have mailed the check to 9th street. Every time they say they have corrected the address, and will re-issue the check.
Every time I call, they claim the check was mailed to *** south 9th street, and the Postal Service returned it!
I call, I email them, I wrote them a letter. But they keep sending that check to [my house number] but on south 9th street. The guy who lives there may not even speak English. But he don’t get the check. The Post Office keeps returning it to Toshiba! This has been going on for almost a year!

Then, on Friday, 11/03/2004, I was told that the rebate offer was closed, and that they could no longer issue my $100 rebate check to me! I simply should have been home when the postman delivered it to my address on south 9th Street! :mad::mad: :mad::mad: :mad::mad: :mad::mad: :mad::mad: :mad::mad: :mad::mad:!!!

Years from now, when I am sitting in the stadium of hell, watching the new people being brought in to burn, I will have the best seats in the house when the Toshiba folks are lead in. They should be good seats! They cost me a hundred bucks! Fuckers!!!

2

In a word [well, actually 3] Better Business Bureau.

Actually, if you can make photocopies of all the original paperwork [yet again] and this time have it certified by a notary public, copies of all teh correspondance you happen to have [hopefully you have some, or at least some sort of phoine log of names of cs people you talked to] and write a very complete and calm letter to customer service, ccing at the bottom better business bureau and attourney generals office for your city/state and tell them that they dropepd the ball and repeatedly sent the check to the wrong address, and that they were the root problem of the whole matter, and you waited with good faith for a rebate that they never managed to get to you * by their error* and that if they did not correct this problem, you were going to take legal steps. It would probably cost about as much to sue them in small claims court, but you could look at it in the following manner -

You take them to small claims court, and they are found to be responsible to get the rebate to you in a timely fashion, therefore they have to pay not only the rebate, the wages of their legal staff and the court costs=) if you dont win, they still have to pay their lawyers wages and their share of court costs. Check the local BBB and city/town attourneys office to double check the proceedures fr small claims court=)

3

Yeah, I know about all this. But it’s an awfully big hassle over $100. Calling them on the phone, sending an email was easy. My point is, I shouldn’t have to go through all this!!! These fuckers need to get their heads out of their asses!
I’m wondering if Toshiba has EVER sent out a rebate check to ANYONE!

4

Part and parcel of the rebate system. Always make a purchase expecting you won’t get the rebate back.

In my grad school days I burned about a hundred CDs a month backing up data dumps from some lab equipment we had. And of course my cheapskate prof made me pay for it, but that’s another pitting. So I went over to Best Buy every weekend and bought whichever stack of disks was up for the 90% rebate that week. I’d say I actually got the rebate check about one time in twenty.

5

11/03/2004 eh? Maybe it really was you who turned in the wrong info? :smiley:

6

:smack: Doh!
But the answer is, no. One of the operators got a look at my second application and confessed I had written the correct address down.

7

I feel for you. I had the same problem a few years ago with Diamond and at the time there was also lots of talk that they were very good at not sending rebates. I sent them an e-mail and told them that I was informing all my friends, family and acquaintances on a message board and suddenly within 2 weeks the check appeared. It might be worth a try.

8

Rebates are scams. Don’t fall for them.

9

I don’t do a lot of rebates but I wouldn’t say that they are all scams. A lot of companies are much better than others getting the rebates back to you.

10

When my $150 Dell rebate got lost in the mail, they graciously allowed me to resubmit it even though it was past the 30 day limit.

I had the check in about two weeks.

11

I have heard reports (NPR?) on companies that offer rebates and then stall them past the expiration date.

12

Have you thought about telling your story to a consumer advocate on your local news stations? It’s worth a try. Check out the website for one of your local stations. You could email your story or call the station to speak to the advocate. Toshiba is a large company. I’m sure any advocate would love to discuss your problem with them then air the results.

13

I rebate like crazy. When Circuit City runs a really hot special on notebooks, (and you’ve got to know enough about pricing to see the deal spread) I can easly flip them on eBay for 100. each, over the total I have invested in them. When I buy those units it's like someone handing me 100.00 - $ 200.00 for an hour or two of listing and shipping work.

14

Not all rebates are scams. The first rebate on the laptop ($100 from Best Buy) came within the 6 week time slot with no hassle.
But this garbage from Toshiba is pure shit. I’d like to know if anyone else has had problems like mine.

15

I ve never had a probelm with a big notebook rebate, but I have had one or two problems over the years with smaller ones on other items around $ 30 - $50 that were not granted for some procedural issue. The solution for me (generally) was to vist Circuit City and explain the problem and they would make it right. In your case I don’t know if those would work as it’s not a rebate grantng issue, but a logistics screwup on Toshiba’s end and the store may (with some jusification) not feel it is their proeblem.

Here is the rebate problem number (which you probably already have)

I’m having problems with a Toshiba Mail-In Rebate. What do I do?
Please contact the rebate department with any questions or problems regarding your rebate. The rebate center can be reached at 1-888-221-4317 (7am-7pm MST, M-F).

Here’s general customer serivce
How do I contact Toshiba’s Customer Service department?
To speak with a Toshiba customer service representative for additional questions regarding your order placed online or over the telephone, please call 1-800-618-4444, Monday - Friday 6am-6pm PST or Saturday 6:30am-2:30pm PST

If you do some digging you can probably find the regional Toshiba VP or representative for you are and a detailed letter to him (or a call ) might get results. I think they are pretty well aware at this point of some of the screw ups their rebate processors can pull.
Here’s a good link from the anandtech board for contacting rebate customer service reps and handling rebate problems

16

I think at this point pk has called Toshiba more than a fair number of times to bother with their rebate center again, considering that he’s contacted them (by his first post) at least eleven times for them to fix this.

If any more calls are made, they’d probably be better addressed by Toshiba’s management.

17

A woman named Shirley Rooker runs a program called “Call for Action” on our local radio newstation here (WTOP 1500AM). She deals with these types of things all the time, and makes the public aware of it. Drop Call for Action a line between Tuesdays and Fridays from 11am-1pm at 301-652-HELP if you really think Toshiba is pulling a fast one on their customers.

Adam

18

Oh, they can do much worse. They actually lost my computer. ::Warning Long Story ahead::

I bought a toshiba notebook from Circuit City on April 23, 2003. On May 24, the hard drive died. It’s too late to take it back to the store, so I call up Toshiba technical support, and they give me the name of an authorized repair shop.

On June 2, I drop off the computer, and they tell me that they’ll call when it’s fixed. On June 10, the repair shop calls and says that Toshiba didn’t send the right part, so they think it would be best to send the computer to Toshiba to be fixed. I agree to this, and they send it out, and give me a tracking number. A few days after the tracking number shows that the computer has been received, I call Toshiba for an update. They say that they never received the computer. I tell them about the package being signed for, and they say that they’ll look and call me back. Someone calls a few days later, and says that they’ve found the computer and are repairing it. I call back later in the week to find out how the repair is going, and am told that they didn’t find my computer after all, but they’re still looking.

Fast forward through July with several phone calls made by me and the repair shop to Toshiba asking what happened to the laptop (and getting responses that ranged from “What computer?”, to “stop calling here so often” to “it’s not our problem that you don’t have your laptop”) to August 5, when I get an email saying that the computer has been found, and is being mailed to the shop that day.

On August 6, the repair shop contacts Toshiba to ask why they never received the tracking number, and is told that the computer will be replaced if it doesn’t arrive by the 7th. Finally, the new computer is shipped out on the 8th, and arrives soon after.

If I didn’t have my replacement computer, I would have severed all ties with Toshiba immediately. It’s somewhat understandable that a one month-one day old computer will stop working. Almost two months of lies, and blow offs is not acceptable, and ruined my trust in the company, and I’ll be glad when I can get a new computer and stop using Toshiba’s product.

19

I bought a Toshiba laptop and have had no problems either with the technology or with getting my rebates in a timely manner. Just for the record.

20

I’ve already spoken with management. The big question is, why can’t they send the check to the correct address, when I’ve called, written, and emailed it to them.
One supervisor stated that it sounded like lazyness on behalf of his employees.
They called here yesterday and told my wife that even though the offer is now closed, they are going to send the check, as I am entitled to it.

Yeah. We’ll see!:rolleyes: