Dear Circuit City

29, October 2007

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to you for several different reasons but most of all as a favor to you and your company and to help you see some major problems you are having on the level of customer service. I will tell you my story which is not overly horrible but bad enough to make we want to write to you and let you know from a customer point of view what is wrong with your customer service area. To make things easier I will just list the things that have happened and then maybe you can take it from there and do with the information what you will.

In February 2006 my husband and I decided that we would spend some of our tax return to update our television and thought we would see what kind of offers Circuit City had as we had never been to your store before (we were tried and true Best Buy people after all) We bought our 32" Magnavox TV from your store located in Crystal Lake, Il. on 2/24/06. It was one of your floor models but because it was a flat panel and in our price range we took it but just in case also bought the Advantage plan for an extra $259.99 for three years. We wanted to be sure that if anything happened, we wouldn't have to scrape money together to fix it. About three weeks ago (October 13th) we called to have a service tech come out and look at our television because we were experiencing a loud popping sound and the volume was turning on and off intermittently (and has since stopped working all together). We were told a tech would be there on Tuesday October 16th. On Monday the 15th we received a phone call stating that one of your service techs was out due to a back problem and could they please rearrange our day to Thursday instead. Being that my husband also works in the service industry I was sympathetic and agreed that Thursday would be just fine. Thursday arrives and our technician "Pete" arrives to take a look. Pete was not an overly friendly guy but I was still glad to see him (we had been without our TV for almost a week at this point). I told Pete our troubles and he proceeded to make connections from my DVD player to all the many ports on my television each time asking me again if I had been getting any volume out of each port. I told Pete several times that no, we were not getting any volume�.out of any port. Pete called Magnavox who was trying to help him do some kind of reset and while he was on the phone I told him I would was going to put my infant niece down for a nap and I would be right back. I was gone about 40 seconds when I heard a very LOUD and quite obnoxious "HELLLLOOOOO?" coming from my living room. I quickly got my niece down and ran out of there just assuming he forgot in that 40 seconds that I was putting my niece down to sleep. He wanted to ask me again for a second time if that was the original remote control that he had in his hand. I assured him a second time that it was. At this time he and Magnavox must have been flummoxed because he just up and told me I needed a part and he would be back in 7 to 10 working days. I thought to myself "he must be pretty good to realize I need a "part" and not even have to OPEN the TV up for inspection!" I also thought to myself that 7 to 10 working days was an awfully long time to wait for a parts shipment from such a huge company as Magnavox but what do I know? Upon leaving, Pete my surly TV tech turns to me and says "you know, you really should make your service call appointments for the beginning of the week". I thought he was joking. He was not. I explained to him that my appointment WAS made for the beginning of the week and that I was called by you guys to switch because of an employee injury. He looked at his vast pieces of papers on his handy dandy clip board, looked up at me and says "well that stinks�I don't know why they did that" and turned and left without even saying so much as a good-bye. Needless to say I was not very fond of Pete and called City Advantage to tell them not to send him back. The girl I spoke with told me she had no way of knowing who was sent to my house (really?? There are really no records of what person gets sent to another person's home???? That can't be very safe!) but would make a note of my unhappiness towards this man's insulting manners.

Now comes the best part. Another seven working days pass by before Pete calls me to tell me he would be there between 9am and 11am on Monday the 29th. Monday the 29th is a very busy day for me as I have a daughter to get to school, a quickie doctor check-up at 8:15 and a field trip with my preschool son and his class at 9:45. Since I was not given a choice of time frames I arrange for my cousin to come to my house at 9:00. I managed to get back from my doctor at 9:03 am. My cousin (a 24 year old college student) was late. In that three minutes, I lost out on my time slot until THURSDAY. It turns out my good friend Pete showed up at my home at 8:57am and when there was no answer high tailed it outta there for apparently a very far away location because it was just IMPOSSIBLE for him to return later in the day. I have to admit, I was not very nice to the poor girl that answered the phone after I waited 15 or so minutes for her to answer (are you aware that your customers average wait time for a rep to pick up is somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes�.I am dead serious and not exaggerating one bit). In all fairness, she wasn't exactly the sweetest thing either. She refused to help me out even a little bit. She told me she could not call the rep because he was busy. We ended the conversation with her promise that she would leave a message for Pete and have him call me. Silly me to think Pete would really care about my situation. I tried calling back on my cell phone on my way to my son's field trip but by the time I actually got a rep to answer I was there already (a 25 minute trip) and had to hang up quickly with her promise that she would leave another message for Pete. I got home about 1:00 pm and called a third time this time talking to Lawrence (Larry). Larry is a very nice boy and tried to explain the best he could why I could not get a rep there sooner and upon asking for a manager kindly told me that it would take one to two days for a supervisor to call. I thought to myself "wow, he must really know how busy those supervisors are if he can tell me right off the bat that they have a wait time to actually service their customer!". Also-I am convinced that none of your reps have children and don't know what it is like NOT to have a tv around for even a small portion of the day.

This is where I leave it to you, Circuit City Corporate Offices. I am now waiting for three phone calls. Pete the service tech, Mr. Scott Woodson the call center supervisor and Patrick from the Crystal Lake store (because apparently the supervisors at the store level are also way too busy to talk to me). I leave it in your good hands to deal with because after all this is not my problem, but YOURS.

In today's world vast quantities of information are put out there on the web in seconds. Consumers no longer have to wait for word of mouth to reach the attention of the business in question; we have only to click a few buttons on our computers. Guess what I will be doing after printing my letter to you?

I sure hope you can fix your "customer service" (or lack thereof) problems and hope my letter will help you in any effort you put forth. I won't be holding my breath for a return phone call and I most certainly will not be returning to Circuit City.

Shari Williams

Cary, IL.

Comment On This

I wish I could say this was the end of our journey with Circuit City but alas it was not to be. Pete came back and fixed our volume but now our screen image was really bad. He came back again THREE WEEKS LATER with a part and it still did not fix the problem. We then contacted Viola and she gave us replacement code in about three days. What happened next will be posted under Dear Circuit City part II.

Comment On This

Viola called to offer a replacement TV which we opted not to take because we did not want our warranty to become void. Our pal Pete came back on Thursday and fixed the problem and left without incident. He seemed more determined to be a nice man than before. Hopefully that is the end of our story!