all of us, especially those of us who live in more remote areas and use the 'net and mail order more often than the norm, have had some bad consumer luck. my most recent episode of consumerism was so good, that i feel compelled to blog and thus cultivate some good consumer karma to offset the bad:
i mentioned it on one of andrew's posts. a while back i ordered a home theatre receiver and speaker package from futureshop. after hours of rearranging the living room and running and hiding all the speaker wires, i finally managed to fire it up. unfortunately, there was a distinctive lack of bass - my sub was d.o.a.. after much reading, phoning and gnashing of teeth, i was told that i had to ship my entire package (all the speakers - not just the defective part - and the receiver, oh...and the wires, too) back to future shop, at my own expense (which would be considerable - well over a 100 bucks), at which point they'd refund my credit card charge, and i could re-order.
well, there was no way in hell that was going to happen. between the time it would take to undo all the wiring, and hook my old system back up, plus the cold, hard cash to ship it all back, i could just go buy a new sub locally, or just keep using my old one. and so, i decided, before i totally give up on it, i'd open up the new sub and see what i could see...maybe there's an easy fix. (yeah, yeah, fat chance, right?) well, after a $10.99 investment at canadian tire for a set of hex keys, i opened 'er up and, lo and behold, the main wiring harness from the rear inputs had become detached from the pcb (primary circuit board). 5 minutes later, we were all hooked back up, and running the thx optimizer.
now, you're probably wondering what all this has to do with cultivating good consumer karma. read on for, "the rest of the story....": i was feeling pretty good about my decision to save a hundred bucks and a couple hours...for a week or so....until the sub checked out....again. i opened 'er up (again), and it didn't take long to notice the burnt out fuse on the pcb. i headed down to radio shack to find a replacement, but no dice. even looked on-line, but couldn't get one unless i wanted a few hundred of 'em. as a last resort, i decided i'd contact the manufacturer and see if they'd send me a new fuse. with much skepticism, i fired an email off to athena technologies. to my utter surprise, i promptly received a response saying that, yeah, they could do that, but if the fuse was blown, the main board's probably shot, too. so, we tried a couple fuses, and they both blew. i was starting to think my luck had run out, but no sooner had i informed my tech guy at athena that the fuses were a no-go, than there was a brand-spanking new board on the way. a few screws and some heat-transfer paste later, i'm laughing....again...
the moral of the story? there do exist some kick-ass companies out there - usually smaller ones - that, like athena (a division of audio products international corp.), value their customers and will, "make it right."
as a further example, take my most recent good consumer karma: a while back i ordered a roll-up screen door from secret screen to keep the cats & dog out of the bedroom (it gets too cold in there with the door closed in the winter). there was some minor damage during shipping, but they were more than happy to send replacement parts. a couple months later, the retraction mechanism failed and it started flying up like a blind from a loony toons cartoon (thankfully, no one ended up wrapped up in it, like on tv). after a couple troubleshooting attempts, they sent us a new one - no charge for shipping, they didn't even ask for the old one back. now that's how you do business.
so - i think it's only fair, after being treated so well by a couple first-class companies, that i return the favour:
if you're ever looking for speakers, look for the athena brand-name - they'll treat you right.
if you're ever looking for a screen door, check out secret screen - first-rate service.
there...we can only hope that what goes around, comes around.... :)
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