Wow. On the Brookstone rep for their ethical breach in selling you a warranty without informing you and for the ethical breach of the OP by recommending use of a warranty that they didn't get. Looks like everyone was out to take everyone.

@fantomesq: here here.

Shameless tactics by brookstone, but really? stealing a warranty?

I remember kids stealing TI calculators from best buy, now-a-days they'll be stuffing their oversized pants with receipts.

This kind of story reminds me of the Emo Phillips joke about sitting in a bar and realizing that people are using the back of his head as a dart board. He tells them firmly that they have to stop after they finish their current game.

If I catch a store cheating me then the sale is done. Refund my money and take your product back. The salesperson tries to steal money from you, and your response is to still give them a profit by buying a product that is probably overpriced and that is going to wind up in a junk drawer in a month or two? You still rewarded them, even though they tried to steal money from you.

Boy, you really showed them, OP.

@fantomesq: I'm Nadav and to me it seems that if you want your customers to be honest with you than you have to be honest with them. All I see here is us getting what we were initially promised.

I'm not defending the clerk's actions, but as a former Best Buy employee I know where she's coming from. Employees are required to sell a certain amount of warranties and service plans or they're reprimanded. Instead of paying commission on these items, they flip it around and require you to sell them to keep your job, even when they're a bad deal.

Certainly a clerk should never stoop to this, but perhaps Brookstone's policies are pushing her to this.

When I first glanced at the title I thought it said "Bookstore" and not "Brookstone" and was wondering why they would want a warranty on their books.

@jewsrock: I agree, the cashier implied the warranty was free and then tried to charge them for it without their consent. They deserve the free warranty.

A massager thingy? Do you really need a 2 year warranty for a vibrator?

Nothing new. I bought one of those little R/C helicopters, the rep repeatedly tried to get me to buy the extended warranty. After I bought the toy, he proceeded to chide me for "making a mistake" in not buying the extended warranty.

I wrote the regional manager and got him written up.

I find this to be kind of surprising. Who knew Brookstone was still in business.

@sean98125:
Agreed.

I would have returned everything, and made a lot of noise doing it.

@sean98125: Well the thing is we live in Israel and we were at the airport allready getting ready to board the plane so this was our last chance to buy this thing that costs a lot more money in Israel.

@sean98125: I'm Nadav BTW.

@jewsrock: This is true, but were you even thinking of a warranty before she mentioned it? Would you honestly have not gotten this overpriced vibrating trinket if you couldn't get a two year warranty from Brookstone (which probably will be more than a hassle to redeem if you try)?

From your story it seemed like you were set on buying it, heard about a free warranty, thought "oh, that's nice..." then later were afraid to touch the thing for fear of a warranty.

@Saboth: If I remember sex and the city, she was able to repeatedly get new ones

I used to work for Brookstone as a sales associate. I'm pretty surprised by this story. I always found the company to be pretty ethical and treat customers with respect. For instance, they used to have the Lifetime Return Policy. As long as the product was made by Brookstone (sometimes we sold products from other manufacturers), if it breaks, you can just bring it back in, and they will replace it. No matter what. I did this with my ear phones twice. Unfortunately, they got rid of this policy about a year ago.

I think this article above might have more to do with her store manager than Brookstone as a whole. Our store manager was SOOOO good with customers and did everything he could within his powers to please them. Which excludes lying and making them pay for extra things.

@B: They are.. I think you're thinking of Sharper Image, which went out of business.

@theboomboomcars: I thought the exact same thing. I couldn't understand why a bookstore sold massager thingies. Well, a non-adult related book store, that is.

@Chris Walters: I'm sorry Chris but I'm just not convinced. The OP -MIGHT- have been entitled to the product and warranty at that point if that was what he had demanded but that wasn't his demand. He demanded that the clerk refund the unrequested warranty which was done.

The OP's -later- recognizing an opportunity to scam the vendor "in revenge" by claiming a warranty that he explicitly said wasn't part of the deal is no more ethical than the clerk's original overcharging him. The OP should not be claiming the moral high ground if he stoops to the same levels.

I would be amazed if Brookstone actually let themselves be scammed so easily anyway. Most companies look up a transaction in their systems before performing the warranty work which would show that the OP got refunded on the warranty and had no claim.

If we want to develop consumer-friendly companies, first we need to be good consumers. Their "illogical" policies are born of scams like this.

@B: I agree. I don't think I've ever seen anyone actually AT a register in a Brookstone. Ever. Let alone anyone carrying a bag with a purchase in it.

Brookstone is clearly one of those stores, like the now-defunct Sharper Image, where you simply cruise in to look at/play with all the shit you know you won't buy because it's overpriced and not terribly useful, on your way to a store with something you actually need.

@fantomesq: Well they just gave us a new receipt that just had "-$3.99" on it. It didn't say anything about warranty or anything. I didn't try it out but I'm assuming it will work

@Lauren 'Lao' Oliet: Are you serious? When my alarm clock broke, they made me buy a new warranty! He said he was being nice and that he wasn't supposed to do this.

@Saboth: Lol it was a back massager.

@jewsrock: don't worry about what these idiots think Nadav, nothing can get posted on this site without these roaches coming out of the woodwork and blaming the op. Even if you had done what this one suggests and refuse to buy the item, someone else would have posted that you over-reacted and allowed a bad sales woman to prevent you from enjoying your massager. You can do no right with these people.

@Juice Box Hero: Yea, well I dealt with that too at best Buy and Gamestop when I was younger - and in both scenarios I never stopped to dishonesty to achieve those "goals". It takes bad store policy AND a shady clerk or a promise of sales commission AND a shady clerk for this to happen. The common denominator there is "shady clerk".

@jewsrock: They very well may scan the receipt and say "Sorry, you returned the warranty." I'm not commenting on the ethical implications of trying, but I have my doubts that it would work. Most places pay a third party insurance on the item (in fact, I believe this is required by law in most states - if not all - due to the possibility of bankruptcy; witness all of Circuit City's warranties still being valid) and they'd have a contract number assigned to your warranty. If you didn't pay they're not going to pay the insurance company and thus there would be no service.

@exo:
I wasn't blaming anyone. I was just stating that I too would have returned the purchase.

Brookstone is all ABOUT scams. Here's the one I personally had to deal with:

www.Javin-Inc.com/brookstone

@Juice Box Hero: Do you still have any of the official training material that says as much? Or if such a thing has already been leaked, do you know where I might see it? I have heard countless people mention this fact of Best Buy employment and to date I cannot find anything official that ever got leaked.

I had something similar happen to my wife at a GameStop. She was going to pick up a game for me, I warned her that they were going to try to push the "scratch insurance", and when she came back, there it was on the receipt. She insists her exact words to the question were "No, that's okay", which I can only assume was deliberately interpreted as "aha! she said it's okay!"

@Javin: THAT is bad! time for small claims court.

@jewsrock: If that's the case, you may very well be able to argue that the $3.99 was a discount on the item to compensate for the warranty, rather than a refund of the warranty.

If I was a sales clerk being pushed to sell warranties to the point I felt compelled to scam it on people, I would certainly prefer giving a discount to "encourage" warranty purchases to repremands from the big boss.

@exo: @jewsrock: That makes sense, though personally I'd go without even if it was a deal.

Even though I wouldn't, I would have been tempted to take the item out - drop it on the ground - step on it a few times - hand it back, and say "Hey, I got the warranty on this and need it replaced"

Seriously, who shops at Brookstone? I've been in the store a couple times, but usually leaves thinking everything is overpriced and won't last longer than 2 weeks.

@brandymb: Yeah. Consumerist didn't pick it up to report it, but that's probably because I have a tendency to ramble and put my own opinion in too much. :/

@Juice Box Hero: No policy can force you to make these choices, as she can always quit and get another job. Therefore what she did, she did willingly.

@Justbecos Kelvinlee: 2 weeks? I'd be happy if their garbage even worked right out of the package.

@snowburnt: Haha, I cant be mad at kids stealing those damn calculators. I remember having to fork over ~$136 for one because a Calculus professor *required* us to have a TI-86 or better.

Two months later, she announced that since people were cheating with them, the Dept. changed its policy and we can no longer use them on exams. Till this day, the damn thing sits in my drawer.

@Javin: I was counting on the 2 weeks delivery? ;)

@snowburnt:

"it comes with a warranty"

So they bought it, thinking it came with a warranty. Whether you realize at the time of your decision to buy it that it comes with a warranty or not is immaterial. They said, before money changed hands, that the item comes with a warranty, and then sold the item. They created an oral contract which included a warranty.

It is not, therefore, stealing to use the warranty that they were told came with the product, even if the store no longer wishes to honor their own oral contract.

Good call.

@Justbecos Kelvinlee: I'll shop just about anyplace when I'm bored at an airport.

@shadowkahn: So, now every single random Brookstone clerk has the right to enter into legally binding contracts on behalf of the company? What if a clerk says you get a free car for buying the massager? Would that mean that the company would owe you a car? No, it would mean the employee is a liar. Just because a clerk is a liar doesn't make it okay for a customer to steal the warranty. And like has been pointed out above, there is probably a database with valid contract numbers. I totally understand being pissed that the clerk was so shady, but stooping to the clerk's level isn't the answer.

@Sean Masters: Yeah. Because the job market's so good right now.

@Sean Masters: Why doesn't she just strap on her job helmet and squeeze down a job cannon and fire off into Jobland where jobs grow on little jobb-ees!!!

Rules structure and constrain all of our choices.

I guess "comes with" now means "we'll sneak a charge for it in so you don't notice and lie about it if you do."

@Javin: that seems more like an issue with the Sub-contractor repair company... I don't recall my Brookstone store I worked for ever selling refurbished chairs. But we did sell a lot of massage chairs and very rarely would anyone try to return one.

@Justbecos Kelvinlee: It's the kind of store you shop at when you need to buy something for your dad who has everything.

@secret_curse: Sure, why not?

Of course you couldn't expect them to follow through on the promise of a free car. It's too far-fetched, so no reasonable person would. But we're not talking about a free car here, we're talking about a warranty. A warranty that costs about as much as a gallon of milk. That's vastly different, and to my mind, well within the clerk's right to provide.

Now I may be niave, but every employer that I've ever worked for has expressed to me how important it is that its employees refrain from doing anything that might put the company in a compromising position. I would imagine that this sort of thing illustrates why.