complaints

Consumers Speak: Omni Technologies RAM Leaves Bad Memories

The reader complaints here on The Consumerist can be a bit murky at times, but if everything in Michael G’s story is as he reports then there’s no reason not to blacklist this company from your shopping selections. We’ll put his whole complaint about Omni Technologies after the jump, but we’d like to excerpt one bit from it here just to highlight the absolute insanity of their responses.

After two weeks of waiting for the RAM to arrive, I called them back and spoke to a Mr. Grant. He gave me some BS about that memory still being manufactured…

RAM for computers (a Mac in this case) is manufactured by a very small set of companies, all of whom buy the actual memory chips from companies like Samsung and Hynix Semiconductor—not podunk companies who can’t figure out how to put text on a website without using Photoshop. In fact, in a shocking bit of journalistic fervor, we called them and asked. They don’t make the chips nor sticks of memory themselves, they told us. So what they were trying to say, when they said the chips were being manufactured, were that they were out of stock.

Consumers Speak: Gateway Laptop Lemon

We heartily recommended a refurbished Roomba yesterday as we’ve had great luck in the past purchasing reconditioned electronics. (Although, in retrospect, we haven’t bought very many reconditioned robots.) We did call Roomba yesterday to question what exactly their reconditioning process entailed and were told—not very reassuringly—that “all the broken parts are replaced.”

Thomas Hawk Chased Away from Cingular’s 3G Service

Thomas Hawk, he of a PriceRitePhoto scandal fame and G.I. Joe name (lucky bastard), details his attempt to sign up with Cingular Wireless’s 3G Laptop Connect service. He’s already an AT&T Wireless customer—now part of Cingular—but the Cingular rep insisted that he ‘switch’ to Cingular so he could use the 3G service. Thomas seems a little baffled by this, but having put in our times in the phone trenches, we can almost certainly say that the rep would have gotten a ‘sale’ on her account had she convinced Mr. Hawk to switch his service.

Apple Genius Bar Soho Crashes, Burns

Apple Genius Bar Soho Crashes, Burns

The Apple Store in Soho (Manhattan) is a favorite of ours, but only because we enjoy running our greasy thumbs across the once-immaculate products on display. The Genius Bar—Apple’s haughty name for their customer service desk—we avoid with extreme prejudice; We’d rather mail our faulty products back to Apple than wait in a line for hours to talk to a service tech—especially when their service can be so uneven.

Consumers Speak: London Flat Rental Flippancy

Monday afternoon, we also received an email saying “So sorry, there’s a problem with the flat and it has been double booked, so you are out.” To say that I was livid was an understatement. And to have been notified in such a fashion was the height of unprofessionalism.

Using a Credit Card to Fight Sprint

We have an unfortunate/fortunate lack of credit cards, so we are not able to take advantage of the protection services afford customers from credit card providers. Ramit “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” Sethi had been struggling with Sprint for quite some time, and despite reaching a supposed resolution, he was still charged a fee for his early cancellation—despite the fact he did not have a contract.

IMterview: The Publisher Speaks

IMterview: The Publisher Speaks

Consumers Speak: Neighborhoodies Nebulous Replacement Policy

Eustacia W. writes:

I placed an order with Neighborhoodies on November 16 for a navy blue hoodie with white lettering, outlined in baby blue and a graphic of a regal lion on the front left. They sent me the sweatshirt about a week later and the lettering on the back looked great. But the front looked horrible. The regal lion was in black. On a navy blue sweatshirt. With white lettering. Now I realize that I failed to specifically state that the graphic was to be in white so that it would match the lettering. But I also most certainly did not ask that it be done in black so that it would virtually disappear on the shirt. I would think that any reasonable person would look at this and say, “Hmm, perhaps we should contact the consumer to make sure she gets what she wants and to save everybody some possible grief.” This did not happen.

Sony Makes Buying Replacement Parts Expensive and Difficult

Sony Makes Buying Replacement Parts Expensive and Difficult

Hilary G. writes:

My friends & I really like the Sony Fontopia headphones. The earbuds are soft & comfortable, and block outside noise well enough that you may listen at a civilized, Pete Townshend-sanctioned volume. They come with 4 removable earbuds, a pair each of small & medium. However, no matter how hard I try to be careful, eventually my headphones will wind up at the bottom of my bag with heavy junk thrown on top of them, or they’ll get caught on my coat collar, or a dog will chew on them, and with these headphones that means the earbud will get pulled off. And once they’re off, man those little suckers are hard to find.

Best Buy Screws Up Sirius Installs

Best Buy Screws Up Sirius Installs

A comedy of errors of a Sirius Best Buy install, probably installed by the above aryan guidos:

Consumers Speak: Yahoo! Domains Nightmare

Mike Harris provides this epic tale of woe dealing with Yahoo! Domains:

I detest the support staff of Yahoo Domains. I detest them with the passion of a thousand white-hot suns. Not only has the experience entirely soured me on Yahoo! Domains, it has soured me on pretty much any for-pay Yahoo service.

Consumers Speak: “Going a little easy on Amazon, aren’t you?”

Reader Ray R. writes:

The company’s infamous “customer relations” policy must be among the worst going. My christmas orders for nephew and niece went completely astray and I wasn’t informed at all. When I phone head office in Seattle on Jan. 3 I get put through to Kham in India. She was polite enough, but the best she was going to offer was a $15 voucher, even though the $24 recharchable battery, the only part of the order being filled, was going to be delivered anyway, even though it was useless without the toy boat it was supposed to run, which was not being delivered. So, they’re refunding me about $100 for two presents not delivered and giving me a $15 voucher, but not refunding the useless battery — not to mention the cost of the phone call, the hassle of tracking them down, the fact that I look like a deadbeat uncle for not delivering presents thanks to Amazon.

ChiaGate: Shrek Has a Mullet

ChiaGate: Shrek Has a Mullet

It’s suppose to fully grow in about a week. It’s been over a week. Our Chia Shrek has a mullet. Where did I go wrong? Do these things suck, or is it me?

We think that the mystery of which hairstyle will grow on your terra cotta head is part of the magic of Chia, but we will not rest until we discover if Chia is using the lovable cartoon ogre as a carrier for the reintroduction of ‘parties in the back.’

NewerTech RoadTrip! FM Transmitter Kills iPod

NewerTech RoadTrip! FM Transmitter Kills iPod

It’s bad when purchased electronics don’t work—it’s even worse when they kill one’s precious iPod. Eric Mortensen had a suspiciously bad run of luck with NewerTech’s RoadTrip! FM transmitter for the iPod not once, but three times. The first one took a dive and killed his iPod, as well, probably because it plugs into the dock port of the MP3 player into his car’s power outlet.

Failing Enterprise: Rent-A-Car Corral

Failing Enterprise: Rent-A-Car Corral

Renting cars is a monumental pain in the rear. (We have our own saga that we will probably be discussing in the near future.) We don’t have a particular preference for rental agencies, as they all seem bound by a byzantine set of regulations and limitations that are designed to extract every dollar while at the same time limiting your ability to actually rent a vehicle.

H&R Block Prints SSN on Junk Mail

Reader Drew L pointed out this serious snafu on the part of tax giant H&R Block:

I read something on your site about a company or three using a security breach to sell identity protection services. Well today I received a letter from H&R Block (I did my taxes online free there last year, great site). They described how through an error they placed customers’ social security numbers in a 40-digit alphanumeric code on the outside of some free TaxCut software they had sent out. The kicker here is that they were simply writing to inform customers of the mistake and to apologize… no services were offered, sold, or otherwise browbeaten. I thought that part was remarkable.

We don’t know exactly what they could have done to fix the error—the damage is done. But it does feel like they should be offering some recourse.

Consumers Speak: Procura.com Woes

Consumers Speak: Fedex Follies

mortar mega-shops that come up with dubious if not devious ways to defraud their customers. Sometimes its the delivery service that turns the tricks.