Before You Buy That Circuit City/General Electric Company In Home Warranty
Read This:
If you are in posession of a General Electric Warranty like the one above, you may find, as I did, that GE is no longer honoring their in home service promise contained in the contract. My first 2 incidents requiring in home service were honored, but now they are requiring that my equipment be mailed to New York for service. Citing that a "sterile" work environment is needed to open a laptop, GE will no longer authorize in home service, according to Ray Graves of Circuit City, and Becky of GE.
Strange, since if you were to purchase a new laptop from Circuit City today they will gladly sell you the same GE/Circuit City Computer Support Plus warranty!
What happened to Circuit City's customer satisfaction guarantee?
Hello! I am unhappy!
According to Ray Graves of Circuit City, General Electric has the final say in the matter of repairs.. CC sales reps are still selling the Computer Support Plus warranty (in home service) which the customer will not get.
Content of The General Electric Warranty
Terms & Conditions of Computer Support Plus
1. Availability of Services: Service shall normally be available and rendered during the
regular working hours and work week of the Service Provider. Service Provider will
exercise all reasonable efforts to perform service under this contract but will not be
responsible for delays or failure in performing such services caused by Acts of God,
government, failure of transportation, accidents, riots, war or other causes beyond its
control.
2. Coverage Provided: This service contract provides coverage only for the product(s)
listed as covered on your sales receipt and becomes effective at the end of the
manufacturer's warranty on each item The provisions of this service contract provide for
the repair or replacement of the product(s), resulting from failures that occur during
normal operating usage Replacement of the product(s) shall be at the sole discretion of
the Service Provider and will be of like model and quality Replacement parts may be new or
rebuilt and the selection of replacement parts or product(s) shall be at the sole
discretion of the Service Provider For certain product(s), you may be requested, at your
expense, to send your product to the address listed below.
3. Maintenance Requirements: For this contract to remain active. the purchaser must
maintain the product in accordance with the service requirements set forth by the
manufacturer, Including cleaning Purchaser must provide proper electrical requirements as
Specified by the manufacturer if you are more than 30 Contiguous miles from the nearest
authorized Service Provider, every reasonable effort will be made to
perform service at your address if some of the work must be done at one of our
service locations, transportation expenses of the covered product to and from the service
location will be covered by this contract
4. When Service is Needed: Call the 800 number provided on the sales
receipt for the closest authorized servicer to your location. The servicer must
• call for an authorization number prior to completing any covered repair.
5. Service Limitation: THIS SERVICE CONTRACT DOES NOT COVER ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE RESULTING
FROM EXTERNAL CAUSES (OTHER THAN LOSS OF POWER OR POWER SURGES), SUCH AS, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO. THEFT, ENVIRONMENTALCONDITIONS, NEGLIGENCE, MiSUSE.ABusE IMPROPER ELECTRICAL/POWER
SUPPLY, UNAUTHORIZED REPAIR BY OTHERS, IMPROPER INSTALLATION, ATTACHMENTS, TRANSPORTATION
DAMAGE, DAMAGE TO CABINETRY, LACK OF MANUFACTURER SPECIFIED MAINTENANCE, OR VANDALISM.
OTHER EXCLUSIONS INCLUDE: COMPUTER VIRUSES; CONSUMABLES SUCH AS TONER, RIBBONS DRUMS AND
BELTS; BURNED PHOSPHOR IN CRTS; TRANSPORTATION CHARGES IF SERVICE IS SPECIFIED AS
CARRY-IN; PRODUCT(S) WITH REMOVED OR ALTERED SERIAL NUMBERS AND ANY REPAIR COVERED BY A
MANUFACTURER'S WARRANTY RECALL OR REWORK, REGARDLESS OF THE MANUFACTURER S ABILITY TO PAY
FOR SUCH REPAIRS IN NO EVENT SHALL CIRCUIT CITY OR SERVICE PROVIDER BE LIABLE FOR SPECIAL
INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES.
6. Cancellation: You may cancel this service contract at any time for any reason To
cancel, you must notify the Service Provider in writing of your desire to cancel this
contract. The Service Provider will accept your cancellation notice and determine the
amount of any appilcable refund. Mail your notice of cancellation to the address listed at
the bottom of this contract. Your refund will be calculated as follows: (1 ) if the
Service Provider receives your contract and written cancellation notice within thirty days
of the original purchase of this contract, and if no claims have been made against the
contract, the Service Provider will refund the full amount paid for this contract or (2)
if the Service Provider receives your contract and written cancellation notice within 30
days of the original purchase of this contract, and a claim has been made against the
contract or if the Service Provider receives your contract and written cancellation notice
after 30 days from the original purchase of this contract, then the Service Provider will
refund you a prorated amount of the contract price. Except where prohibited by law, if
notice of cancellabon is received by the Service Provider after 30 days from the original
purchase of this contract, then the Service Provider may also retain an administrative fee
in the amount of 10% of the unearned prorata return premium or $25, whichever is less.
Your contract will not be Canceled by Circuit City or the Service
Provider except for nonpayment. If this contract is Canceled by Circuit City or the
Service Provider and there IS unearned premium due, return of that unearned premium will
be based on 100% of the unearned prorata premium.
7. Transfer and Assignment: You can transfer or assign your service contract at any time
by notifying the Service Provider in writing at the address listed below Your transfer or
assignment takes effect as soon as the Service Provider receives your written notice. You
can (1 ) transfer location of service for a covered product to a new address in the United
States other than that specified by your contract and (2) assign contract ownership to a
new owner of a covered product
8. Governing Law: Unless otherwise governed by applicable state law. your contract shall
be interpreted and enforced according to the laws of the stateof Kentucky.
9. Proof of Ownership: Retain your contract. The original customer copy of the contract IS
your proof of ownership You may be required to present your contract (including your sales
receipt for both the covered product(s) and the service contract.)
If you wish further help or information concerning this contract, please wrote General
Electric Company, Attn: Circuit City Program, RO. Box 22246 Memphis, TN 38122-2246 or call
(800) 555-4615.
The Following is an Exerpt from the Circuit City Web Site regarding Repairs and Warranties:
If you have a computer that needs repair and you purchased a
Computer Support Plus Policy, you should simply call 1-800-555-4615 to arrange for an
in-home service call. CSP begins during the second year of ownership since most computers
are covered by their manufacturer during the first year. If you are in the first year of
ownership, your first step should be to call your manufacturer for on-site service if
provided as noted above. Only computers not covered for on-site service during the first
year should be brought in to your local Circuit City store for the repair .. Power surge
damage IS covered during both the first year and all subsequent years of CSP coverage!
If you've had several repairs during your first year of ownership of any product we sold
you, you may be eligible for a replacement product. See our "No Lemon
Guarantee". Note that the "No Lemon Guarantee"
applies only to real repairs and not customer education, software problems or abuse of the
equipment.
Should your item be out of warranty, we will be happy diagnose the problem and provide a
repair estimate for a fee of $20. This fee will be applied to the final cost of your
repair should you decide to go ahead with the complete repair.
Circuit City performs factory authorized repairs on all the brands we sell. Even if you
didn't buy your product at Circuit City, we'll service any brand we sell for
"future" customers!
All repairs we make are warranteed for a full 90 days. Please contact us immediately
should you be unhappy with any repair we have performed.
Service Center Locations
Visit Your Nearest Circuit City®
© 1996 - 1998 Circuit City® Stores, Inc.
If you have experienced any technical difficulties with this Website, please contact the
Webtech.
Repeated calls to Circuit City and General Electric to express my "unhappiness" continues to result in being told to mail my much needed laptop to New York for repair. If CC and GE haven't gotton the message yet, let me say again:
I am extremely unhappy that you have breached my warranty contract and refuse to honor the in home service! Nothing will satisfy me except to get what your Circuit City salesman talked me into: IN HOME SERVICE!!!
Thankfully, not all computer related products end up with such dissatisfaction. I purchased an internet spider application called Promotion Artist (http://www.deadlock.com) which will list THIS web site with 900+ search engines and web directories. Go to any search engine and type in sowega and see whose website comes up at the top of the list everytime! (Mine: www.sowega.com !)
This page, http://www.sowega.com/cc-ge.htm will be listed today throughout the internet unless something is done to honor my contract.
Any Circuit City GE customer experiencing similar problems, and interested in pursuing a class action suit against the above, please contact me: Stan Suit, Ssuit@surfsouth.com
Any one who would like for me to post their own experience similar to my own on this web site, contact Ssuit@surfsouth.com.
Sincerely,
Stan Suit
FLASH! FLASH! FLASH!
6-18-99
According to Ray Graves of Circuit City, this problem has moved to a "higher level" and he will no longer speak to me on the phone. According to Mr. Graves, I will be contacted by the "higher level" people soon. His number is 1(800)962-4699 if anyone would like to relay the following for me:
Please have the "higher level" people contact me ASAP! Have them email me also so that I can keep them abreast of our web submission regarding your breach of contract.
7-12-99
Having sent my laptop to Michigan for repairs, two weeks later I am informed that the only problem that the repair technicians could find was "many corrupted software files and an almost full hard drive". The reason I sent the computer was because the cooling fan has not come on in about 2 months and the power & headphone jacks are not making good contact. I attached a note that an external hard drive was NOT being sent, and that this would give numerous error messages when the computer boots up "unable to locate file....etc, etc). Apparently, the technicians didn't read, or understand the note. Anyway, just how qualified could a repair tech be who couldn't figure it out on their own, anyway?
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