Adam ordered an older netbook from geeks.com. When it arrived, the wireless Internet didn’t work, so he upgraded the version of Ubuntu Linux from 8.04 to 10.04. This just broke almost everything else on the computer. He returned the netbook to geeks.com, but didn’t expect them to offer a full refund of the purchase price and shipping — which goes against the stated return policy.

A few weeks ago I bought a netbook laptop as a special from geeks.com. It was $199.95 plus $9.95 shipping — total of $209.50. It was an off brand and an older model, but would suit my needs…if it worked. It came installed with Ubuntu linux 8.04, a version that was two years out of date.

The wireless networking didn’t work, so I let Ubuntu upgrade itself to the latest version (10.04.01). This broke many of the drivers, including video, audio and USB, and didn’t fix the networking. I contacted the manufacturer, who pointed me to the chipset maker, Via. I tried different driver versions, but couldn’t get it working.

Finally, I entered an RMA with geeks.com. Their policy is that they will replace defective merchandise or give you store credit on the site, and you may be subject to a 15% restocking fee. In the comments of the RMA, I asked if I could get my money refunded because I considered it defective merchandise.

Two days later, they contacted me that I should ship it back and they would refund the full purchase price. Then, they sent me a FedEx prepaid tag so I could ship it back for free. When they refunded my money to my credit card, it was the full purchase price *plus* the original shipping, which I hadn’t even asked for and didn’t expect. So, all told I have not spent one penny on this.

Kudos to geeks.com for taking care of me as a customer when they didn’t have to. I will happily shop there again.

Sounds like Adam wasn’t the only one with a problem with this netbook. Still, that was great of the company to refund everything when they didn’t have to.

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