I am so ticked off right now!
On Thursday April 3rd, I made a purchase for an Xbox360 from
www.irepairsquad.com for $239.99. Along with the Xbox purchase I ordered their protection plan for an additional $29.00. I made a note on my purchase that I would be in to pickup the item the next morning Friday April, 4th around 9am. I also called before making the purchase giving them the heads up that I was local and that I would be in to pickup the Xbox on Friday. They were very nice on the phone telling me yes it will be here and ready, ending the conversation with you have a nice day. This left me thinking what a good decision I had made. They were local and they had polite customer service.
Friday morning I drove down to their location which was hidden among a bunch of warehouse buildings along the river in East Peoria. I was able to locate the place by finding the door which had a small sheet of paper taped to the window which had an irepairsquad logo printed off of an inkjet printer. Upon walking in I got looked at by three men who looked at me as if to say, what are you doing here? I held out my printed receipt and said "I am the guy who is here for the Xbox". Someone quickly snatched the receipt from my hand and said he would be right back. After about a five minute wait he comes back to the front of the store with a beat up Xbox package which looked like it had been smashed in a box crusher and held together with a pound of clear tape. This did not bother me much since after all it’s just the box.
I get home and to my surprise I open up the box to find a really dirty console and a controller which had yellowed and reeked of smoke. I plug in the console and turn it on. It boots up and the dashboard is displayed. Everything looked good upon first inspection. Then I attempt to load a game and oh no the DVD drive did not open. It made a clicking noise and was stuck shut. I would consider myself a pretty patient and polite guy. I called the local number for irepairsquad. I told the guy on the phone that the Xbox they sent me home with was having issues. He says not a problem, bring it back in and we will have it fixed for you. Luckily I am somewhat local and within a 10 minute drive. This got me thinking how unfortunate this would have been had I ordered this online had them ship it to me and now would have to spend my money out of pocket to ship it back.
I then walk in with it and hand it to the guy who gave it to me in store. He said alright well lets see what is wrong here. First they tried to pass it off that it was just cold from sitting in a warehouse and it was just sticking. Then another tech says no I see what he means it won’t come out at all. So I am assured by the guy at the front it’s not a big deal and they will swap out the drive for me. I stood around for about 10+ minutes and finally he comes back out and says here you go try it out now you should be all set. So I head home with the console. On the way home I happened to look at it and to my surprise it was an entirely different Xbox. They had hand written a different serial number on my receipt which I had to show when I went in to get this fixed. I did not think much of it in the store but noticed this console had a large dark mark on it which was not there before.
When I arrived at home I hooked this console up and again it booted just fine and the DVD drive was now working. I then went to insert a game into the console. The game booted up to the intro screen and menu but then immediately froze. So I had no choice but to power down the console. I shut it off and turned it back on and I got the dreaded 'Three Red Rings of Death'. If you know anything about Xbox360's you will know that the first batch from Microsoft had an overheating problem which rendered the console inoperable. So now I know that these guys are just 'fixing' Xbox’s which should be scrapped then re-selling them.
After all of this I am still very calm about the whole deal. I liked the fact that they were local. I called them up again and spoke to a woman on the phone who after telling her what this console was doing said "oh my gosh, ok hold on one second". She then had me transferred to the guy who I had been dealing with the last time I took it when the drive was broke. He says I am so sorry man. He then said I totally understand if you would just like a full refund. He then went on to say I feel like I owe it to you to tell you that we had been getting these Xbox’s fixed by a guy in Peoria who we no longer do business with. He said they were unsure of the techniques he used to repair these Xbox's and he was very slow at getting them returned. He then says if I come back down they will give me one out of their stock. I assume this meant that they would give me one that they had 'repaired' in office there. Me, trying to give them the benefit of the doubt took him up on the offer. Again I thought to myself how terrible of an experience this would have been had this company not been local.
So I hoped in my car and took my third trip down to the store. They gave me another Xbox and told me this one should work. So not all that confident I took the console home and tried it out. To my surprise it was able to play a game. I then had a friend come over later that evening and we were going to attempt to play the console online. We put in the game and logged into the account. The console told us that it needed an update to be able to play online. You could either accept or deny the update. We told it to accept the update and install. It then showed us the progress of the download. It took a minute or so to complete then it immediately said there was some sort of an error and to visit some website for support. We tried this multiple times and every time we had the same result. We then loaded up the console and took it to a friends house to attempt it from there (he had his own Xbox console which was working online with no issues). We fired it up and again the same result. So by now the store had closed up for the weekend. I wanted to be sure that I let them know that I was having issues with it and was not satisfied.
The only way I could contact them (asides from leaving them a voice mail) was to submit a ticket through their website. So I sent in a very polite ticket stating that the third time was not a charm, and that I wanted the refund. Well of course they were out of the office all weekend and I would have to wait till Monday.
Monday morning comes and my ticket is not answered by 11am (They open at 8:30am). I wanted to get this all resolved over my lunch break so I got online and used their live tech support. I referred to my ticket which I had submitted on Friday. The tech on the live support told me yes he saw my ticket and that it should be replied to shortly. Well, at this point in time I just wanted to let them know that I was on the way down with the third Xbox and wanted my money back. The guy over the live support told me that they would have to check it over to determine if I was eligible for a refund. Again, being very polite I just said alright I will see you soon.
I took the Xbox in again (now my fourth trip) and handed it to the guy in the front (the same guy I had dealt with on Friday). He tells me ok he will be right back with it. They take it to the back and he comes out about 5 minutes later saying they could not replicate the issue and it worked fine for them. I then told him well it does not work for me I am not satisfied and I would just like to be refunded like I was offered on Friday. He immediately says 'Who told you, you could have a full refund?". I pointed to the gentleman who said I could have the refund. They just blew it off and said well there is a 20% restocking fee if you want to return it. I kept my calm and said so you have given me three devices which do not work. One of which had the 'Three Rings of Death' which is a big no-no and they guarantee on their site will never happen. Quote: "Here's what differentiates our Refurbished Xbox 360s & eliminates the "Red Ring of Death" forever". Then there were the other two which have obvious defects. I then brought up again that I was offered a full refund on Friday. He then went in some back room and came back out telling me that the manager was not going to give me a break. So I told him I would think about it and get back with them (since I was just on my lunch break, and did not what to waste anymore time there).
I then decided that it was not even about the money anymore and just wanted out of this whole terrible situation. So I called them and said that I would be back down with the console after they returned from their lunch break and take the $47 loss (20% of the $239.99). I return to the store to find that the guy who I had been working with the entire time is not there (must not have wanted to deal with me when I brought it back in). So I hand it to another guy who was there both on Friday and Monday morning and had overheard all the problems I had had (so he was familiar with me and the past issues). He then says ok so you just want the 20% restocking fee right. I said whatever but I need this refund on paper. He then does some math and tells me since your total purchase price was $290.51 ($239.99 for the console $29.00 for the additional warranty and $21.52 tax) there will be a $56.74 restocking fee. I looked at him and said where did you get those numbers. I said the console itself is what is being restocked. Any other time I have had an item restocked they have charged the fee based on the price of the item itself (which in this case was $239.99). So in my head the restocking fee should have been around $48 dollars. He then went on to say something else, by this point in time I just wanted to stay calm and get out of that place. So I told him whatever just make sure I have it on paper. So he printed out a sheet saying that I would only be charged a $56.74 restocking fee. I told the guy thanks for his help and sorry that it had to be like this and walked out.
At this point in time I was just happy to get out of the place. When I returned to work I checked my email and there was an email from Google checkout (which is what I used to make the purchase) stating that I had been refunded and that I was to be charged $58.10. I now have another $1.26 charge since I left the place on top of incorrect restocking fee to begin with.
Also, this place offers 'Free Diagnostics' on many devices such as iPod's, iPhone's and PSP's. As I was in the store which is in no way set up for customers to pickup orders (when you walk in and you are behind the row of tech's dealing with the live chat and answering customer submitted tickets online). I happened to overhear on multiple occasions the tech's telling one another what to do about so and so's ipods. Each time the story was the same, tell the customer that it is beyond repair and that it would cost $9.99 to have the non-working iPod sent back to them. So what would most customers do? Not wanting to spend $9.99 to have a broken iPod mailed back to them they tell the company to keep it. Well it is in my belief that the company tells the majority of the people who send in an iPod for repair that it is 'beyond repair'. They then fix whatever issue it may be and re-sell the iPod as "iRepairSquad Certified. Better Than New" item.
Bottom line. Stay clear of irepairsquad.com at all costs! These guys are local and seem to have things together but when it comes down to it they do not back their products and I feel they are scamming people out of their non-working products to re-sell as "iRepairSquad Certified. Better Than New"
Neil
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Topic: Do not buy from irepairsquad.com [My Horror Story Inside] (Read 5092 times)
