DGDevin wrote:
-MIKE- wrote:

Class actions suit. One of those legal means.

Sure, try to attract landsharks interested in taking the case (unless you're
prepared to foot the bill up front), wait for a few years until the company
and the lawyers settle out of court, the lawyers get $7.5 million in fees,
the claimants get to split a $3.2 million judgement 127,414 ways. My wife
and I collected on such a case recently regarding a financial services
company that misrepresented fees. In our experience nobody should plan on
recovering their actual losses from such a settlement, what you get is what
the lawyers agree to *after* their handsome fees are paid. I've earmarked
some of the money for a plunge/fixed router kit.

Then you would've decided your integrity was for sale for the price
of a home theater system.

In other words in a dispute between an unscrupulous company and victimized
consumers and in which the deck is stacked in favor of the company, you're
with the company.

Then you would've decided your integrity was for sale for the price of
some inkjet cartridges.

In a situation in which a company pulls a Catch 22 to avoid having to honor
their return policy it's interesting that your instinct is to side with the
company.

It's hardly a high horse, and you're embarrassing yourself by saying
it is.
In how deep a hole must one stand in order that seeing petty theft as
wrong, looks like being on a high horse.

I'm fascinated by how you unerringly see returning defective merchandise as
"theft," as if a company that sets up hurdles, pitfalls and dodges to avoid
having to accept returns is not part of the equation. In a previous century
I was a retail manager for quite a few years, very successfully I might add.
I saw just about every sleazy trick a customer can pull including trying to
return items everyone knew they had broken through unreasonable abuse,
trying to return things they'd purchased at other businesses, trying to
return items from which parts had been removed, and so on. Happily I can
say we never sold anything we knew was defective and then refused to accept
returns because we'd dumped all our stock on unsuspecting customers and thus
our usual return policy no longer counted. IMO that's fraud, and suggesting
that anyone who doesn't like it should hire a lawyer is in effect saying
tough luck, shop somewhere else next time. Hire a lawyer over eighty bucks
worth of ink cartridges?

BTW, I've only done something like this once.

So have I.
And it was just as wrong as when you did it or when anyone else does
it.

I bought a lamp that was defective, I returned a defective lamp, the company
didn't lose a dime because the mfg. replaced it for them. Please point to
the "wrong" for me.

It's too bad they wouldn't take it back.
The HD's here will put it on a gift card if it's something they still
sell.

But that's still more rationalizing.
If it was after the amount of days stated in their return policy, it
was wrong.

It wasn't, it was just long enough for me to wonder why I was keeping the
box for a forty-dollar lamp, as soon as the box and receipt were gone the
lamp died. I even bought a new halogen bulb thinking that was the problem,
but it was the lamp.

If it was during the manufacturers warranty, you had another recourse.

HD wants to keep you and me as customers, so they replace defective items
(at least ones that fail almost out of the box) and they deal with the mfg.,
that's smart business. If HD had a big sign at the door reading If It
Doesn't Work We Don't Care, Ship It Back to the Mfg., how many of us would
shop there?

If you lose the receipt, it's your problem. But you said you learned
that.

"Theft" requires loss, pray tell, what did HD lose when I returned the lamp?
I bought two lamps, I exchanged one which they got credit for from the mfg.,
all I did was use the receipt from one lamp for another identical item.
The mfg. suffered no loss they didn't agree to with HD, they replaced
defective stock for a commercial customer who buys millions of bucks worth
of lamps from them, HD's return policy and whether I lost one receipt but
had another means nothing to the mfg.

You're going to some lengths to take the corporate side here. Return
policies that make the consumer jump through hoops or which simply refuse to
accept returns using loopholes are apparently okay with you for some reason.
I agree that returning something purchased a year before and out of warranty
as if it were new is over the line, I can't see myself doing that. But when
a company knowingly sells something defective and then stonewalls on fixing
it until the warranty expires, the company is in the wrong. Doesn't justify
breaking into a store and stealing a new one, but if somebody can finesse a
return in such circumstances despite the company's attempts to prevent it, I
for one will hoist a cold one in their honor. You can have a good scowl
over that if you like.


Nowhere in my writing have I taken the corporate side or defended a
company for fraud.
My only point in all of this is to say something that we have all heard
from our grandmothers; two wrongs don't make a right.
It is wrong to use fraud to combat fraud.


--

-MIKE-

"Playing is not something I do at night, it's my function in life"
--Elvin Jones (1927-2004)
--
http://mikedrums.com

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