A couple of weeks ago I was at the computer repair department of a big-box electronics store to put my laptop in for its second round of repairs in a month (whole 'nuther story there). The guy ahead of me was also dropping of a laptop and really needed to have a machine for his (obviously self-employed) job.
The tech removed the hard drive so the guy could have his data, but when the guy asked if they had a loaner available he was told that the store did not give loaners, but that they do have a 14 day return window. He suggested that the customer buy a new laptop and use it until the old one was repaired, then return it for a refund. So he did.
I have never had an electronic device go bad (well, soon after purchasing, that is) until this year. I bought a DVD recorder, and it went bad 30 days later. The power supply died. I took it back, and picked another of the same model. This one lasted 32 days, and it died. Same problem. In both cases, the chaps working the return area said, “Yep, it’s dead.”
We bought a Dyson vaccuum cleaner. It would slip a gear and grind in the most headache inducing fashion. So we brought it in for repair or replacement. They took it for repair, returned it to us with “we couldn’t find anything wrong.” It still slipped (surprise) we took it back again, they repaired it, gave it back with “we couldn’t find anything wrong.” It slipped, we took it back - this time my husband said “I just want a new one - we’ve owned this vaccuum six months and we’ve managed to vaccuum the whole house with it once.” They didn’t want to do this, but did. I pity the fool who has my old Dyson as a “refurb.”
In other words, with some things that “work fine” when returned, they may not actually work fine if they are in real use situations.
You can’t really blame the average Joe for returning stuff they can’t figure out. Consider how much more functionality is built into stuff with basically the same number of buttons. In researching an article that began with this problem, I found a quote from a guy in IBM who said that most of the enhancement requests they get for laptops is for stuff that is already there - but just hidden under too many layers of menus. Most interfaces suck, so us engineer types can push buttons until we figure it out, but a lot of people are scared of breaking the product, and so give up and return it. Maybe it would be better if the manuals were written in English. A guy at MIT who works in this area notes that the manual for his new digital camera is bigger than the one for his car.
As for NTFs, I’ve published a few papers on this subject for microprocessors. Consider this - if there is a defect, and it escaped manufacturing tests, but got caught by someone using it in a different way from the tests, it gets returned, gets tested using the same tests that passed it the first time, and gets marked NTF. No test is perfect, so this is going to happen, and does not mean the product is good.
Interestingly, my iPod woes were just the opposite. I discovered the touch sensitivity right away, and was fascinated and delighted. It took a couple of hours of frustrated googling and me starting to get violent with the device, when I accidentally clicked the wheel while trying to choke the life out of it.
It was my million-monkey-shakespeare moment. But with just one button. And one monkey.
Lest anyone hunger for a unimportant piece of information: the Dutch may be “sneaky” (and when it comes to business, IME, they often are) but they have a HUGE interest in something so seemingly drab as returned electoronics.
Philips NV is a Dutch firm, and I would venture a guess (as I’m too lazy to do a simple internet search just now) that they are the second largest consumer electronics manufacturer in the world (behind Sony). Sony and Philips are, IMO, certainly the two most important global consumer electronics manufacturers, as they both seem to have a hand in nearly every important industry innovation that occurs.
That the Technical University of Eindhoven conducted the study is nary a surprise either, as Eindhoven is the home of Philips.
I’ve made great use of this a number of times. The first flatbed scanner I ever owned was on the discount table marked “customer says it doesn’t sit flat”. It sat just fine on my table.
I’ve bought cameras, printers, scanners, mixers, phones and video card this way. My recollection is that I’ve had more problems with new equipment then with those I bought as refurbs or returns. Return away. I’ll take the discount.
An old roommate of mine had a PS2 which had a broken DVD drive. He was on the phone with the PG&E customer serivce rep, and somehow the conversation turned from the electric bill to video game consoles. The rep told him to buy a new one then return the old one in that box, and that he’d done the same thing at Target.
I like to think that THAT call was recorded for quality assurance purposes…
I’m fairly technically inclined, but even then I’m sometimes presented with a misleading bug that prompts me to return working items.
I returned two DVDs thinking that they were defective. The first one had only a minor glitch in one scene, so when I got another copy that did the same thing, I returned it again, thinking that it may have been a manufacturing error that affected the whole shipment. The second time that happened, with much larger errors, I tested the DVD on a friend’s player, and saw that it worked fine. It was actually my player that was bad.
In my defense, the problem certainly didn’t seem like it was the player. I had played dozens of disks with no problem (and continued to do so), and the player didn’t randomly fail. It always failed on exactly the same scene in the same way.
I also nearly replaced my Sony 6.1 receiver (originally bought as refurb for 30% off) after it started shutting off while playing certain movies, sporadically. It flashed “PROTECT”. I read the manual, and found nothing at all about that error message. I looked online, and found numerous people complaining that the receivers tended to do that when they overheated, or simply that they went bad.
It wasn’t until I checked all my speaker connections (in the process of ripping the whole damn thing out and testing each connection one by one) that I found that one of the screws had come slightly loose, and certain sounds vibrated the speaker in such a way that the speaker wire shorted out.
Oddly, my mom once returned a travel adapter to Radio Shack, but for completely different reasons. When she bought it, the Radio Shack sales rep assured her that it’d work just fine with her camcorder. It wasn’t until we were in the B&B in Ireland and getting ready to recharge the camcorder that I noticed the fine print that said “For ohmic loads only. Not to be used with battery chargers”. The net result being that we only got about 5 minutes of video from our two-week Ireland vacation. So maybe the reason that a lot of people are returning Radio Shack travel adapters is that they don’t work as advertised. I’m still not sure what sort of device anyone would bring with them while travelling that would be a pure ohmic load…
Way back in 1988 I went to a friend’s graduation party where the music was provided by a brand new stereo system - cd player, pre-amp, amp, and speakers, all of which, I was later told, were boxed and returned to the store the day after the party. The girl was seemingly proud of the fact. I still see her sometimes, and everytime I do, I remember that.
And they’re very sensitive about quality. I wrote a paper once where I mentioned that reliability was not as important in consumer electronics. One of the reviewers was from Philips, and he let me have it. I also saw a panel on system test, where someone from Philips described how getting stereo components from different makers to interoperate by just plugging cables in was not as easy as it looks. I was impressed.
Immediately upon moving to Beirut and moving into an apartment, my wife and I bought a portable stereo. The radio worked okay, but the CD player didn’t work at all. We exchanged it for another identical one, and that had the same problem. Only then did we discover that although appliances sold in Lebanon are wired for 220v, our apartment was for some reason wired for 110v. Doh! One power converter later, we were listening to CDs and feeling guilty for having returned a perfectly functional stereo.
I’m kind of in this camp, also. I often buy electronics equipment knowing that it’s likely I’ll be returning it. I always considered this fair play.
Lets say my older PC is crashing when playing a newer video game. I don’t know exactly what the problem is, but I suspect it’s hardware related. I can buy a new video card online for $100. The same video card at Comp USA or Staples costs $180. I’ll buy it at the store knowing that I’m paying more for the return policy.
I plug in the new card. If it works, great, I’ll keep it. If it doesn’t work then something else is the problem and I’ll return it.
I always assumed that prices for PC hardware stuff was so much higher at the stores for precisely this reason. Why else would you be willing to pay so much for it? (Well, besides the fact that you don’t have to wait for it to ship.)
I do the same thing at Home Depot. I’m more likely to buy something, even if I’m skeptical if I really need it if I know that there is a good return policy.
You’re in a completely different camp. CG is buying something, like a cordless drill, for a project he’ll have to do once, then returning it. Same thing with the girl and her graduation party. It’s a very jerkish thing to do because guess where that cost is passed on to?