(no subject)

eCost and why I will never buy from them again

A month ago I ordered a relativly nice Denon AVR-2105 from eCost.com on the recomendation of some guys back up in Madison as they had had good luck and decent prices from eCost. However as of today I still do not have a working unit in my house.

Needless to say I'm rather ticked off.

I recieved a unit some 3 weeks ago, about a week after ordering. After much happiness and about 2hrs of organizing cables and wiring the thing up to everything I proudly turned it on. And not a sound was heard. Ok... maybe it needs some setup. Tried playing with the setup.... nothing, in fact it gives off errors. Hmmm...... 10 minutes of nothing and than *** BOOM *** sound of some such comes blaring out of my speakers at the full capacity of the reciever. Needless to say I'm still not sure my ears are happy with me. After a weekend full of fiddling I determined that something was wrong with the reciever's audio system, as it switched video just fine, because not even the headphone jack would produce sound on a regular basis.

After trying to figure out eCosts's return mechanism out I found this lovely piece of information that was never brought to my attention at any point through the checkout process.

In addition, the following products are not returnable, and all sales of these items are final. This policy is necessitated by restrictions imposed by the respective manufacturers: ........, Denon, ......

Ok THAT sucks and I should have been informed of that prior to purchase. So I called up Denon, talked with them, they agreed it was broken somehow and that they could fix it but that I'd have to ship it to them. Fine. They also said call up eCost something isn't right with that policy.

So I did. I talked to someone who mumbled the entire time, I asked at least once for them to clarify something but they wouldn't clear up what they were saying. After getting an RMA and stating I wanted them to replace the item they kindly told me "We are out of that model".... Ok so where does that leave me? Something was mumbled about something else but they didn't expound and I disheartendly gave up and decided to call back the next day.

The next day I call and ask whats going on (this is after I've sent an e-mail asking to be contacted mind you with the same concerns I called about). I was told they suddnely had 6 in stock and they weren't sure why I was told they had none (ok most of my concerns now vanish yay) however they forward my phone call stuff off to the Denon person in the company and they will call me back.

Ok I pack the blasted thing up, and pay another $30 to ship it back to them (stupid big and heavy thing). A week goes by, they get it and I call to see where things are at. I'm informed my money has been returned. ** WHAT? ** I tell them that I explicitly wanted it replaced. They look back through their logs seeing I said "replace" several times and go ahead and do up an order to replace the unit. Fine, can I have the tracking number because UPS around here is stupid? No? Ohhh I can call on Monday and get it, thats fine.

I than watch the money returned to my bank and the next day taken back out (at least they aren't charing me shipping to get the thing here this time) Monday rolls around so I call and ask for the tracking number. "I can't give you the tracking number." ** WHAT?! ** "It will be there on Friday." Fine...

Yesterday was Friday, I couldn't make it home before the apartment office shutdown so I stopped by today... no package. eCost doesn't have weekend hours at all so I can't call and ask where the thing is or whats going on. Come Monday I'm calling eCost and I'm demanding to talk to a manager, this is getting rediculous, particularly when I could wander down the street to Best Buy and pick up the AVR-2106 (the current model slightly upgraded not a big deal) for getting close to what I've paid for the AVR-2105 plus all the extra shipping.

Please SOMEONE tell me I'm being unreasonable that when I buy a $300 piece of electronic euipment and than spend another $80 shipping it all over the country, waiting a month to get something to work that thinking eCost should have contacted me on their own (they have NEVER contacted me, I have always contacted them) and at least told me what was going on?