Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me • Hacker News Board

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#91

Post by hfsktr » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 10:59 PM UTC

quinnchr wrote: post #69

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: My apologies. It looks like I'll need to have a discussion with my friend about this.

"This seems impossible. Returns require a receipt. I don't know what you're talking about." Depends on the store. When I used to be behind a returns desk we'd give store credit (on a gift card) if they didn't have a receipt.

I had accidentally bought two copies of the same book from Barnes and Noble. I didn't have the receipt anymore. At first they thought I wanted to return it for money and seemed hesitant but I just wanted to get the first book (I had two of the second). They were really helpful and exchanged it for the correct book.

I know it's not too relevant but I was so afraid of a no receipt, tough luck situation. I'm surprised they didn't think I just grabbed it off the shelf and went to the counter. It was just a $10 book and not a TV or anything but it left a good impression.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#92

Post by bcoates » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 11:07 PM UTC

fuckpig wrote: post #72

I haven't since this event: > In 1987, Tocibai Machine, a subsidiary of Toshiba, was accused of illegally selling CNC milling machines used to produce very quiet submarine propellers to the Soviet Union in violation of the CoCom agreement, an international embargo on certain countries to COMECON countries. The Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal involved a subsidiary of Toshiba and the Norwegian company Kongsberg Vaapenfabrikk…

The Free World won the war against Communism through economic warfare, surely Toshiba contributed to that impoverishing them by $517 million of hard currency for weapons they never got to use?

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#93

Post by tedkalaw » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 11:08 PM UTC

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #68

lambda wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people do abuse this to rip companies off, to varying degrees; I know some people who treat returns as free rentals, buying something, using it without ever intending to keep it, and then returning it. Some people go even further and steal things and then return them for cash. But I guess that on the whole, the good customer experience for the honest customers outweighs the cost of fraud.

EDIT: My apologies. It looks like I'll need to have a discussion with my friend about this.

Regarding returning things without a receipt:

Once upon a time, it used to be possible to get Bing points by playing a bunch of stupid games on Club Bing - you could accumulate at most 1000 per day, unless there was some sort of modifier (like "double ticket day") site-wide. The prizes available for these points were usually older Microsoft products like old games (9.99USD), kitchen appliances, hammocks, cheap headphones, etc. The biggest prizes were Zunes, Vista, Microsoft Office, and the XBox360 Arcade Edition. As I recall, the XBox required some crazy amount of points and thus wasn't worth it...and Vista and Office are hardly sexy items. You could win at most one of each prize per physical mailing address.

The games that you played to win points were flash games, so a bunch of bot writers automated this. They'd register multiple accounts and try to max out the number of points they could get per day. Since users had multiple accounts, people would maintain different amounts of points to save for the big ticket items. I believe that Office and Vista were in the 50,000 to 100,000 point range. (Side note: Microsoft was slow, but they DID actually deliver - I got a 360 controller for free!) There are forums dedicated to "opportunities" like these.

So, what do you do with a free copy of Vista Ultimate? Well, one day a user who had exhausted all of the other prizes tried going to Best Buy with his copy. He went to customer service, in-store, and said "Hey, my grandmother got me this for my birthday. I already have it. Is there any way you could possibly help me out?"

Can you guess what they did? They gave him $450 in Best Buy credit.

For awhile, the overarching Club Bing metagame was to simply farm Vista Ultimate, go to a different Best Buy, and "return" your copy. And, on top of that, someone discovered that Microsoft's shipping treated "123 N. Fake Street Apartment A" and "123 N. Fake Street Apartment Z" (and, for that matter, "123 N. Fake Street Apartment AAAA") as unique addresses - so it became possible to have multiple copies of Vista Ultimate shipped to your house. At one point there were so many Club Bing copies of Vista Ultimate floating around that you could go on forums and purchase it directly for $100 because botters had exhausted their local return options.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#94

Post by aestra » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 11:10 PM UTC

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #68

lambda wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people do abuse this to rip companies off, to varying degrees; I know some people who treat returns as free rentals, buying something, using it without ever intending to keep it, and then returning it. Some people go even further and steal things and then return them for cash. But I guess that on the whole, the good customer experience for the honest customers outweighs the cost of fraud.

EDIT: My apologies. It looks like I'll need to have a discussion with my friend about this.

>This seems impossible. Returns require a receipt. I don't know what you're talking about.

Ever try to do this? Plenty of times I've done this and sometimes you get store credit sometimes cash. Many stores have "customer friendly" return policies such as these. Walmart is a big one who will take any return. You need ID usually.

>The store then had the same graphics cards as before

No they don't, they now have used graphics cards, and they have the overhead of staffing the return counter if many people get this idea. Plus the contract (i will buy this item at this price from you) was entered into in bad faith.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#95

Post by vacri » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 11:10 PM UTC

My own Toshiba experience with Australian support is that they wouldn't even talk to you unless you paid them $55. I was after a service manual, not troubleshooting, but I couldn't even get to ask what I wanted unless I paid. There were a couple of other times I needed to ask for trivial things to service clients' laptops, but at $55 per question, sod them.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#96

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 11:15 PM UTC

lambda wrote: post #63

dguaraglia wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, that's the case in both Argentina and Brazil too. But then, customer service sucks pretty much at every level. In the US you can buy a product from Walmart, use it for a couple weeks and if you aren't happy with it just return/exchange it (and yes, you get your money back, not some store credit.) Coming from Argentina, I was amazed the first time it worked and felt like I was ripping someone off. After a while I…

Some people do abuse this to rip companies off, to varying degrees; I know some people who treat returns as free rentals, buying something, using it without ever intending to keep it, and then returning it. Some people go even further and steal things and then return them for cash. But I guess that on the whole, the good customer experience for the honest customers outweighs the cost of fraud.

[deleted]

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#97

Post by MoosePlissken » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 11:15 PM UTC

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #68

lambda wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people do abuse this to rip companies off, to varying degrees; I know some people who treat returns as free rentals, buying something, using it without ever intending to keep it, and then returning it. Some people go even further and steal things and then return them for cash. But I guess that on the whole, the good customer experience for the honest customers outweighs the cost of fraud.

EDIT: My apologies. It looks like I'll need to have a discussion with my friend about this.

> This isn't morally wrong. My friend, a graphics programmer, did this with videocards in order to test his graphics engine on various types of hardware configurations. If the companies didn't want you to do this, then they wouldn't let you do this.

Morals have nothing to do with what others let you or don't let you do. If anything morals are about your sense of right and wrong in the absence of external pressures. It may be legal, but I don't think it's moral to abuse a system that's intended to help and protect honest customers. Even if you don't care about hurting the profits of a giant corporation, you're potentially hurting other consumers if the benefit is revoked because too many people are abusing it.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#98

Post by kps » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 11:16 PM UTC

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #68

lambda wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people do abuse this to rip companies off, to varying degrees; I know some people who treat returns as free rentals, buying something, using it without ever intending to keep it, and then returning it. Some people go even further and steal things and then return them for cash. But I guess that on the whole, the good customer experience for the honest customers outweighs the cost of fraud.

EDIT: My apologies. It looks like I'll need to have a discussion with my friend about this.

  > The store then had the same graphics cards as before.

No, they started with new graphics cards, and were left with used graphics cards.

  > If the companies didn't want you to do this, then they wouldn't let you do this.

In that case, why didn't your friend simply ask the graphics card companies for some loaners?

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#99

Post by aestra » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 11:17 PM UTC

bentcorner wrote: post #81

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: My apologies. It looks like I'll need to have a discussion with my friend about this.

> This seems impossible. Returns require a receipt. I don't know what you're talking about. 1. Buy item #1, obtain receipt, take it home 2. Go back into store, find identical item #2, take it past checkout counter and up to return counter 3. "Return" item #2 using receipt for item #1 4. Profit For big ticket items there's usually a unique serial the store will scan to prevent this sort of thing, but not always. Prett…

Walmart has a very liberal return policy (accept anything) and the staff was somewhat aware this was going on. This is what my friend and former Walmart employee tald me years ago.

Re: Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me

#100

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 03, 2014, 11:22 PM UTC

trentmb wrote: post #74

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: My apologies. It looks like I'll need to have a discussion with my friend about this.

> This isn't morally wrong. My friend, a graphics programmer, did this with videocards in order to test his graphics engine on various types of hardware configurations. If the companies didn't want you to do this, then they wouldn't let you do this. No, that's immoral.

[deleted]