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Genie Charges Customers to Ship Faulty Parts
By JLP | October 25, 2007
This just cracks me up.
I recently purchased new garage doors and two Genie garage door openers from Home Depot. I spent $185 per opener, which I thought was expensive. These openers came with remote keypads for easy access from outside. It’s a cool feature and one of the reasons I bought these particular openers. I decided to pay extra to have the openers installed because installing garage door openers is a royal pain in the…
After the doors and openers were installed, I had to program the keypads. It took me a few minutes to figure out the process but I eventually got one of the keypads to work. I never did get the second keypad to work. I called customer service and the rep told me to change out the battery in the keypad. So, I went and bought a 9 volt battery, installed it, and tried to program the keypad again. It still wouldn’t work.
So,…
Today I called customer service again and the rep told me that they would ship me a new keypad. She took my address and then told me that I would be reponsible for the shipping of the keypad. LOL! I said, “That doesn’t seem right to me. I mean I paid $185 for the opener and the keypad not working is not my fault.”
She was nice about it and told me that the warranty states that Genie is not responsible for shipping. What a load of crap! Anyway, she did agree to waive the shipping charge for me one time but told me that I was now in their system and that if I ever had a problem again, I would have to pay shipping costs. I told her, “I hope I don’t have another problem with the openers.”
Had I known this, I wouldn’t have bought a Genie garage door opener. It tells me that they must ship out a lot of parts and they are tired of paying for shipping. Regardless, making customers pay shipping costs to replace defective parts is VERY POOR customer service!
Topics: Rant |
October 25th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Take them back.
BTW, it isn’t that hard to install a garage door opener. I did mine by myself, and it took me 15 minutes, including putting the frame up.
Get a Chamberlain belt-drive; it is better than a screw drive, and just as quiet. The install process is nice and easy. Build the rail, mount it above the garage door, connect the opener, and bolt it to the supports. Voila! A one person job.
October 25th, 2007 at 11:28 am
I know this wasn’t the main point of your post, but before you assume the little keypad is actually broken, there may be a fix. Mine didn’t work either, and it turned out it was because the back of the keypad was in contact with the metallic siding on the side of my garage. That scrambled the signal. The exceptionally easy hack to fix it was to attach a small piece of wood, about a half-inch thick, to the wall, then mount the keypad on that. Now it works perfectly.
All that having been said, I would be steaming if I were you, too - paying for shipping in this case is just bad business.
October 25th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
BS! If it’s broken why in the heck should you pay for shipping? It’s already an inconvenience that you had to call these people up, wait for them to send the part etc. Its another way for companies trying to pinch pennies. They figure you have no other choice. It’s not like you’re going to say no to the replacement part. The funny thing is most places that do this charge a shipping AND handling fee. Shipping isn’t that expensive but the ridiculous handling fees are. Glad you got them to waive it.
October 25th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
We had some people try to charge our business for sales tax on something that we got waived. She argued “Well, we still had to pay sales tax.” We argued “But we didn’t actually buy it. You gave it to us as part of the contract.” I don’t know if I would do this as a consumer, but at my job we try to get all stupid fees waived. I feel much better with a corporation and big contract at my back!
October 25th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Wow, what horrible customer service! I agree, I don’t think any responsible company should charge customers to ship them a replacement for a faulty part that was faulty when it was purchased!. I would contemplete returning them, but after having paid for the install, I would probably cut my losses and hope they worked trouble free as long as I owned the house.
October 26th, 2007 at 8:43 am
[...] AllFinancialMatters tells us about a bad customer service story with Genie [...]
October 26th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Yeah that’s really stupid of them… But I think a lot of companies TRY to do it.
Even on eBay sellers usually end up paying for shipping costs of faulty products because otherwise it will effect their feedback.
BAS
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