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good customer service — from sam’s club??

I purchased a 50″ Samsung DLP TV at Sam’s Club in Sep ’04. When I purchased it, the guy who was helping me with it asked me if I’d like to purchase an extended warranty. I had previously read that Sam’s will let you return items after any period if they break, as long as there’s no physical damage, so I asked about that.. he basically said that yeah, if the TV ever broke, I could return it — all the extended warranty would do is have someone come out to my house to fix it, so I didn’t have to hassle with it. So, I just purchased the TV alone, for $2800 + tax.

A couple months after the purchase, I had been holding onto the box, and was wondering if I could get rid of it.. I called Sam’s 800#, and asked if I needed to keep the box to return the TV. The guy said “well, technically we’re supposed to say yes, but they will probably accept the return without the box.” Since we didn’t have much storage space, and we didn’t expect problems with the TV (so we wouldn’t need to return it), I went ahead and trashed the box.

Over the last couple months, the TV’s been having problems where if we turn it off and try to turn it back on within an hour or so, it’ll just click a couple times and not turn on. We were living with it, but over the last week, it’s been refusing to turn on almost all the time; it seemed like it was a bad ballast, since when it would fire up, it’d stay on without any problems, and the ballast is not really a “user-replaceable” part. So, I finally got fed up, and decided to give the return policy a shot. I grabbed the TV, the remote, and my receipt, and wheeled it up to the customer service desk at my local Sam’s Club. I explained what was going on, and that I’d like to exchange the TV. The lady said “oh, ok”, then she looked at the date on the receipt, and said she’d have to call a manager over to approve it. The manager walked over, and said “no problem! Go find the TV you want.” I went over, and picked out a 50″ Sony LCD Projection TV, priced at $1950. Brought the tag back to the desk, and the next thing I knew, they had handed me a receipt for the new TV, complete with a $905 credit back to my Discover card.

So, basically, I got to use a TV for 1yr 10mo, and when it died, got a brand new TV with better features, and $905 to boot. The most I was expecting is that they’d do an even exchange for the TV, or at the absolute most, give me a store credit for the difference.

How’s that for customer service?

{ 3 comments… add one }
  • Mike August 15, 2007, 5:00 pm

    Awesome. You just sealed my deal with buying my new HDTV. at Sam’s.

    Thanks!!

  • ge November 28, 2011, 9:18 am

    Phoned my local sams club & asked “if I purchase a 40″ tv online, & it’s damaged in transit, can I return/exchange at your store”? “yes” i was told. Sure enough, the tv arrived, I have 2 problems & was told by my local club that I “can not” bring in to them. I must “contact sams club.com”. I’m now waiting for dot com to “rule” on whether I can swap it out at my local club, or hassle with shipping it back to them.
    The tv has a beautiful picture, (samsung 40″ led), and I’ve gotten good merchandise over the years from them, but this is very disappointing, very, very disappointing.

    • nc November 28, 2011, 12:18 pm

      Indeed – I wonder if the in-store service has also gone downhill, or if it’s just the online side.

      I haven’t been a member for a few years now, so can’t really say!

      Thanks for the comment!

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