Here we are at the busiest shopping time of the year. Many stores are open extended hours to accomodate shoppers, and conveniently, my local Wal-Mart is open 24 hours a day as it always is.
I decided to stop by my local Wal-Mart this evening to pickup the Vizio Blu-Ray Player Model VBR-220 that was priced at $138, a great price for the functionality that it claims to offer. The device has a Blu-Ray DVD player, built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi, Netflix streaming, Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Twitter, and Facebook access. Pretty feature-packed in my opinion.
So it was about 7:30 PM, I purchased the unit, and I headed home for some dinner. After dinner, my family and I put up the Christmas tree and a few other decorations. At about 9:30 PM, I decided to unbox the player, started doing a video review of the unit, and connected it to the HDTV in my bedroom, a 32" Vizio 720p unit that I have had for about 3 years, and have been very happy with.
The new unit would not power on. I consulted the quick-start guide packed in the box. It said to try another outlet that works with another device. Still, when the power button was pressed, the lights on the units flashed, and then went out. Obviously, the unit was defective. This happens from time to time, and I am not upset with Vizio as a manufacturer, as the unit may have been damaged in shipping or by some other cause.
Since I live 5 minutes from my local Wal-Mart, I decided to hop back in the car and exchange the unit for one that worked. The time was about 10:30 PM when I arrived at WalMart. When I entered the store, I looked for the associate that would give me a return tag and send me to customer service. They were not there. Instead, there was a snooty looking gentlemen standing inside the store a bit further who was staring right at me. He did not greet me, nor ask me if he could assist me. Instead, I had to ask him if there was anyone that could give me a return tag.
Under his breath he mumbled something. Unclear of what he said, I walked about 10 feet closer to him and said, "Excuse me, sir?" He then repeated himself, saying "Customer Service closes at 10 pm." He said nothing else. He did not offer an apology for the inconvenience, offered no indication of when customer service would reopen, nothing.
Next, I asked the gentlemen if I could speak to a manager. He looked at me blankly. I repeated myself. He then rolled his eyes and then headed somewhere into the store to find a manager.
A few moments later, a very pleasant woman approached and explained that the customer service department closed at 10pm and would reopen at 7 AM. She mentioned that these were the hours of the Customer Service department in all Wal-Mart 's each day.
I explained to her that I had just purchased the item and it was defective, and that I would like a replacement. She then went on to explain that they none of the regular registers in the store could process an exchange or return, and that only the registers in Customer Service were equipped to do that. She was very pleasant, and did in fact, apologize for my inconvenience.
Needless to say, I was pretty upset. I just spent $138 on something that did not work. The store was still open, and they would not, or could not allow me to exchange the defective unit for one that worked. Granted that it was not an emergency for me. However, there are situations where this could be more problematic for a consumer.
Let's say you are a college student, it is 10:30 PM and you have just purchased a notebook with cash and planned to spend the evening working on an important project for a class. You get back from the store, and your notebook is a dud. You head back to the store to get one that works, and they will not let you return it at that time. You have no more cash to purchase another working laptop. What can you do? You are stuck. Looks like you will miss your project deadline. You can go ahead and sleep, you won't be working tonight.
The scenario may seem far-fetched, but my opinion is, if you are open and will take my money for a product, then you should be required to refund my money for defective products as well at that same as long as the lights are on and you are conducting business.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on your run-ins with "Customer Service" or your findings on how service to customers has dwindled over the years.
