Systemax, the same company that now owns TigerDirect and the CompUSA brand name, devoured the remains of Circuit City and relaunched it. Unfortunately, this zombie retailer seems to have the collective customer service skills of…well…zombies. Kelly ordered a laptop, which is waiting around to be shipped. No one seems capable of throwing the computer on a truck, or telling her why the computer has not yet been placed on a truck.

I ordered a laptop from them on 1/13 1/31 and as of today, 2/8 it still hasn’t shipped and they do not know where the laptop is in the bowels of the ‘City.

I ordered a laptop through the BRAND NEW Circuit City – aka circuitcity.com. This is for work and was a great price compared to the other places I found it. We’re talking $100-$200 less than the other places I looked.

I ordered it on 1/31. Received an email with the tracking number soon after. Clicked on the tracking number and received the following message: “A label for this shipment has been created, but UPS does not yet have possession of this shipment. Once we receive the shipment, the tracking status will be updated.”

Sure – no problem. Let me check again…and again and again. Same message for days – so on 2/3 I contacted Circuit City to find out they can’t “find” the laptop. It’s been prepared to be shipped, it just hasn’t left their facility. I contacted UPS as well to confirm that they do not have possession of this package.

I have now contacted Circuit City four times – three of which were by phone. Each time, I am put in touch with CSRs that are from another country – they do not speak English clearly and therefore, they do not seem to understand how upsetting this is to me. The latest word I received from them today is that they DO have the package – it’s “somewhere” and they are “interfacing” with UPS to get me another tracking number. They can’t ship me another one because – surprise, surprise, I got the LAST laptop they had! (I did check – it’s no longer on the website) I am not confident they even have this laptop, I am afraid after all of this they aren’t going to have one to send me.

They also will not let me cancel the order…I didn’t press this, because I wasn’t sure if that is what I wanted to do. I was told I could refuse delivery and they would refund me then.

Further complicating this is that this is for my job. A brand new job. I needed to keep the price low and wow it is biting me in behind.

Any advice? How can I contact the upper management at Circuit City? Help!

Update: we got clarification from Kelly that the original order was placed on January 31. She also added that Circuit City has now promised to cancel the original order and send an entirely new laptop.

The main switchboard number for Circuit City and Tiger Direct is 305-415-2200. You can use customer service ninja tactics to get from that entry point to someone with actual power.

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