Costco tightens return policy on electronics

Too bad but I think everyone understands.

Too many "let me return my 42" plasma that I bought two years ago for
$5,000 and trade it in for this new $1,500 50" model and pocket the difference."

This should be a surprise to no one....

Its about time. Now we can expect to get better prices over the long run now. Not imidiately, but over the years the savings can be passed down to the loyal customers.

So what does "tightening" mean exactly?

The article says:


90 days sucks. What if my TV really does break? Do they exchange it for an item of equal or greater value, or just make me send it to a third-party warranty center?

90 days SUCKS?????!!! Who the hell else will give you a 90 day RETURN policy and bump up the warranty to two full years?
sheesh....
Chris

From my experience, if you like to purchase extended warranties they are FAR cheaper at COSTCO and SAMS Club than what Best Buy, Circuit City, etc offer.

Also 90 days is matched by no-one except SAMS club, interesting what SAMS will do with their warranties.

Kurtis

If I read the article correctly, Costco will still have a relatively long warranty for these items.

The 90 day limit is for "No Questions Asked" returns only.

Best Regards,
Doug

As a part owner of Costco (aka a shareholder) I'm really happy to see that management of Costco has put and end to the interest only TV rental program. Or, what others have called the free TV upgrade program. I wonder how many Pioneer RPTVs have come back as trade in's for Plasma?

Now, we just have to work on both Costco's and Home Depot's interest only tool rental program.

You do what EVERYOTHER retailer would ask you to do, which is take care of the repair through the warranty process. By changing they are NOT in a competitive disadvantage....why? Because no else offers the absolute return policy beyond 90 days.

**************

It's sad that again it comes down to the small percentage of members that abused the spirit behind the policy. The return policy was not created for ppl to bring back year old TV's etc...did the policy allow it...yes...but that's not what was intended.

this is not a great found deal.....

this has been posted in the flat panel general forum sticky about costco bb cc etc...where it should be not in here wasting forum space.

mod please move or close this thread........

It does to me, at least compared to what I enjoyed at Costco before. The membership fee keeps going up, and I've found the amount of money I spend at the store keeps going down. In fact, I don't think I've purchased anything from them in the last 4 months. Their prices are not competitive enough (most of the time), and shopping there is inconvenient for many reasons. I don't save money there, I don't find what I want, I have to beat other shoppers off with a stick, and now I don't have a security guarantee on what ends up being my big-ticket items. Costco isn't obligated to do this, but it was pretty much the only thing what kept me as a customer against offerings from Wal-Mart and the 'net.

I've had several consumer electronics items from them just up and die due to poor design and/or workmanship, and I've always felt good buying from Costco in the past without shopping around because of that security. Though they often would not stock the same item for replacement after 30 days, I could at least get something of an equivalent nature, or just call it a wash. Now, if I get a bum TV, it looks to me like I have to deal with many of the same things I get from any dealer, a lot of which will crush Costco prices, and still give you a 30-45 day guarantee. And who says Costco is even authorized? Again, my concern is that we won't get a 'real' warranty, but some 'limbo' warranty that involves finding a repair shop 50 miles away that has a 5 month backlog.

I agree that this is something Costco has likely been forced to do because of people maliciously using the policy, though I'm seeing less and less reason to consider Costco any kind of a 'hot deal' for anything. Their flyers are starting to look like Sharper Image catalogs, and without the Runco-level support, I may as well get "a Panasonic" somewhere else. Simultaneously, I've actually had to return more things to them lately because of poor quality. Like I said, I haven't been compelled to spend a dime there in the last several months. They may still have the best return policy anywhere, but it's almost not worth it.

I would be interested to see what Costco's return policy for actual "broken" electronics is...Do I only have 90 days? or do I have 2 years? If it is only the 90 days then maybe they should revisit this decision because this was 1 of the true reasons for shopping at Costco. The security of knowing that if the product failed they would stand behind it. While I know that no other store offered this policy it was the reason why so many have bought electronics before from Costco including me.

I am now concerned that TV's bought before this policy went into effect will fall under the "new" policy. That would really suck if I just purchased a new TV thinking if it actually breaks I can take it back & exchange it...only to find out that the policy changed & I no longer have the Costco return priveledge I had when i purchased the unit.

I completely understand why Costco had to do something, I know of atleast 2 people who bought 50" plasmas & returned them twice to get the same product for less money...saving like $400...So, this is the big reason why, but Costco should've limited returns to defective items only...this would've limited their returns to a minimum & still gave the consumer "piece of mind".

My $.02

Joe

I don't know how you could satisfactorily define "broken" as it's going to mean different things to different people. On your TV example, could it mean some imperceptible loss of brightness? Failure of the tuner to pull in previously received stations? Unless you limit it to simply won't power on, there's lots of gray areas.

The deal site vultures are strictly to blame for this. These are the same guys that find out that Frys or Best Buy has a pricing error in their system and try to run down there and buy 20 of them before it is corrected. The rest of us are stuck with the consequences.

John

This is great news. Their new return and warranty policy is still very liberal (2 years warranty for free???), but now it is not insanely easy to exploit to obscene levels.

I was getting tired of hearing about demons customers exploiting Costco's loop-hole. These demon customers often like to claim "Costco makes this up by all the other purchases I make there." Yeah right. Demon customers loyalty sounds like an oxymoron to me. They likely go where ever they can find loopholes to take advantage. Costco's high tolerance for returns on items that rapidly depreciate in no way helped their bottom line, nor did it ultimately help reasonable consumers who likely had to pay a higher price to subsidize the others who were "renting" TVs from Costco.