Remember the good old days, when the salesman would ask you if you wanted to pay an additional large amount for a warranty, and you almost always said "NO" because the cost of the warranty was more than half the cost of whatever you were buying? Sometimes I'd say "Hell no, I could buy two for just a little more than that and throw one away if it breaks." Yeah, something tells me the salesmen at CompUSA have heard that one a time or two as well. I guess they decided to skip the whole "asking the customer if they want it" thing and just include it in the price. Hey, more commissions that way. Also, more clients for whoever handles the warranties... in this case, Tiger Direct. I didn't know this at the time, but it surprised the hell out of me, CompUSA and Tiger Direct are basically the same thing!
I'll try to make this short, here's what happened. I needed a backup computer so I bought a used one for around $200 from the CompUSA right down the street. That was the price I had budgeted for a computer. At the time there was no need to look at my receipt, where, to be fair, it broke down the prices. Who the hell actually looks at their receipt? I knew I paid the right amount, into my records the receipt went. A month later the computer died. Go figure, right? Not that a $200 computer couldn't have died also, but maybe it would have taken a lot longer to do it. Bottom line is that I wouldn't have bought it if the price tag said $119. So I took it in and spoke to an employee who was very friendly and said since it was only a month, they'd repair it no problem. He didn't even ask to see my receipt. After eight days and no phone call, I stopped in to check on it. A different employee was there and finally found my computer in the "done" section, but without any info. He assured me that it had been taken care of. I drove home, plugged it in, and guess what? It still didn't work. So I drove it back. I told the dweeb behind the counter that it hadn't been fixed, and asked what they had been doing for eight days. After about fifteen minutes of nervous glances, scuttling about, whispering, they told me that I would need to pay for a diagnostic to see what was wrong, as well as any parts and labor for the repair. At this point I pulled out the receipt and asked for a refund. They informed me that I was past the return/exchange date (which was 15 days). By now I'm seeing red, and their suggestion that I deal with their warranty people wasn't satisfactory. I mean, here's this big, sophisticated computer repair shop, and since I have a warranty issue, they won't repair the computer I had just bought from them. So I look at my warranty pamphlet, and see that the warranty people are Tiger Direct. I found out a couple days later that CompUSA and Tiger Direct are basically the same entity. You can interchange the names however you want, but the way I see it, I bought a computer from Tiger Direct, paid Tiger Direct for a warranty, was standing in a Tiger Direct repair shop, and they wouldn't honor my warranty right there. I can't imagine how little it would have cost them to repair my $119 computer, considering I paid an extra $75 for the warranty, but evidently they'd rather have an extremely dissatisfied customer. They had my money, and now I was being Gotten Rid Of.
All I can say is that if you choose to shop at CompUSA, be very careful and always ask if there's an extended warranty hidden in the price of whatever you're buying. Personally, I won't have that problem because I'll never shop there again.
