“How to Handle a Defective Product” or “Big Fun at the
Customer Support Desk”
By Chuck Hinton
Originally published in Home Toys Magazine, April, 2010
Issue
SO, you got some new do-dad for your stereo, once you hook
it up, you find you have: Hum, buzz, distortion, no power, or some other issue.
Here are the best ways to handle the situation and the order in which you
should do them:
1. Blame the most expensive unit in the system (top quality
gear should never break, like Ferraris, Harleys, or i-phones)
2. Make a judgment as to the cause of the failure (do not
check your connections or read the manual, you have been hooking up stereos for
years and you can tell what is the exact cause from across the room)
3. Write a scathing report of the product on one or several
Audio Forums, let those irresponsible manufacturers who never test stuff before
it leaves the factory know what scum they are. Be sure and call the unit a
“Piece of S%*T” so readers can understand your level of disappointment.
4. Contact your lawyer
5. Write letter to the president of the company threatening
to sue him.
6. Send an email to the general mailbox of the company, be
sure and tell them you have already posted this all over the net and contacted
your lawyer (those folks only respond to force, if you were to call them and
ask nicely and reasonably for a solution to your problem, they will know you
are a wimp, pass you around the company to voice mails of people who are on
vacation and eventually send you to an extension that no longer exists).
7. Call the Main office of the company at 3AM on a Saturday,
or any time you are reasonably sure the office is not open, leave a scathing
voice mail with lots of colorful adjectives, exclaim you cannot believe you
can’t get a human on the phone. (do not leave your name or contact number. )
8. Go to your dealer and demand a full refund, be sure and
tell them you, nor anyone you know, will ever set foot in the store again.
9. If all this fails, check to see if the unit is plugged
in.
