My Gripe with Circuit City
 

I've been buying all my car stereo equipment from Circuit City for years. They've done the installation on my last three cars. Well, recently they moved my stereo equipment from the last car to my new one. I went back a week later to get XM radio installed. Well, when they went to put my sub back into the car, my amp started smoking and shorted out. The installation guy told me that he might of crossed some wires. I was told I was lucky that I had the extended service warranty so they could send it in for service. Don't think I was the one lucky since it saved their butts for the mistake. What really upsets me is that I have to have my amp rebuilt and put back in when they are the ones who shorted it. This isn't a warranty issue, I feel they should have to replace it with a new one. Just afraid it'll never been fixed correctly. I always have problems when things are a rebuilt or repaired. I called their corporate office this morning since the manager refused to do anything about it yesterday and said he didn't know if it was really their fault. Now I wait for a call back from the corporate office.

Re: My Gripe with Circuit City
 

Yeah, that'll happen.

Re: Re: My Gripe with Circuit City
 

I'm learning that. They said they would investigate and call me back by end of business day which was suppose of been 2 hours ago. I guess I won't be hearing from them today, hopefully tomorrow.

Fight for it dude....

They weren't easy to fight with. We came to an agreement today on what would be done. Turned out my amp was 4 years old. Originally they were only willing to fix it which would be just one out of the 5 channels being replaced. They made me an offer today that they would give me credit toward a new one but they would have to pro-rate the price of what I paid for the original amp. They knocked the price in half so I basically getting a new amp for half the price. It was the best I could get and I guess these car amps aren't made to last anyways so I'm going to jump on the new one for half the price.

Oh hell no! If I were to take my truck in and they blew out my RF 4080 and told me that they would prorate it ... there would have been hell to pay. Amps are made to last. They broke yours. It was because of an incompetent installer that your amp died, not "old age" and they will only give you half of what you paid for it? That's messed up. If they busted part of your car when you took it in would you accept them only paying for the prorated price of the part needed to fix it? No, you would expect them to replace it as good as new. Same thing goes when it is a audio part of the car.

I agree but my fight with them was getting no where. They wanted to just fix it in their service center. I was a little worried about some Circuit City Technician who is supposively Alpine certified working on my amp. They claim it would be repaired to factory spec but I just didn't trust them. The only way I could get a new one was by having this pro-rated. There reasoning behind was, if I was in a car accident, would I expect the person who hit me buy me a new car or repair it. I really felt that was a bad comparison and I argued with them on it. I really was left with no choice but to take the pro-rate or have mine repaired. The corporate office seemed to not want to deal with it and just turned it back over to the store.

I would have gone for the repair.

I've found that well-written letters to my state's Attorney General's office, Consumer Fraud division (and carbon copying the store) tends to get the store's attention.

Are they going to charge you the $3 "materials" fee for the installation of the replacement amp? At least refuse to pay that.

I have a loaner amp in my car which I'm probably going to keep. I had a 5 channel alpine before and they gave a 5 channel MTX. Just need to make up my mind if I want another Alpine or MTX

Ah you really should go back to the store and raise serious hell. IT IS NOT A CAR ACCIDENT..when they take possesion of your car, they are responsible for bringing the car back in its original POSITION. A repaired, re-manafactured ALPINE amp is not the same.

Don't let them dick you around like that.and tell them you will follow up and make their live a living hell.

Acting like that will get you nowhere except being talked about when the employees hit the break-room.

You must be a circuit city employee. ;)

Not Circuit City, but I am a college student and work in retail when my college course load is light.

People get talked about all the time in the break room where I work. ;)

I was a manager for 5 years at CC. You should have them repair it. It it a "performance guarantee". If it doesn't perform like new, they must either repair it to perform like new or they will replace it with a similar model. Now we used to just give people a store credit for what they paid, but they can just replace it if stuff has gone WAY down in price. We refunded a ladies VERY old VCR once and gave her $1000+ since that was what she paid, but we could have just given her a top of the line VCR (Which was around $299 at the time)

Talk to the district manager of the roadshop. If he/she can't help call the "Cool Line" and keep escalating...I would NOT accept taking half off of your old one, when # 1 it was their fault, # 2 you have the warranty which would at least give you a similar replacement at NO cost to you...

Any questions, email me, I HATE CIRCUIT CITY! (They were the worst company in the WORLD to work for)