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Blisteringly Adequate: A Review of Roxy.comDec 12 '00 Write an essay on this topic.Roxy.com is a reasonably useful e-store for people looking to purchase satellite dishes and related paraphernalia. Their prices are very attractive; their delivery is prompt; and their product descriptions do a fair job of detailing precisely how many pounds of flesh potential buyers will have to sign over to DirecTV in order to take advantage of Roxy's bargain basement prices. The limitations of Roxy, however, emerge with regard to their customer service department. At least that was where they emerged for me. My first encounter with one of their sales representatives was actually quite positive because he managed to persuade me that his decision to include a free installation kit (valued, he said, at $75) was some sort of personal favor to me. Predictably, I later learned that other friends and family members who ordered dishes were being offered complimentary installation kits as well. But hey, where's the harm in trying to make a guy feel special? The confusion cropped up when I called to order a second receiver for my satellite dish and an antenna designed to pick up the local network signals (in the event of cloud cover blocking the satellite signal). I wasn't sure that the antenna (designed to be mounted on my dish) would work because of the placement of my dish, but my first experience with Roxy.com had been pleasant enough for me to feel comfortable with the idea of returning the antenna if it didn't work. That was a mistake, though it didn't feel like a mistake at the time. The antenna cost me $80. When it didn't work, I didn't really mind paying a few dollars in postage to have it returned to Roxy.com. The post office was closer than the nearest Radio Shack, so I figured that it had been worth the gamble. And it would have been worth the gamble if my $80 had been returned to me in a timely fashion. However, it took me far more than $80 worth of effort to get that money back. When the credit did not appear on my next credit card statement, I called Roxy to make sure that they had received the package. I was assured that the package had been received and that my next statement would reflect a credit to my account. When the next statement came, I was extremely annoyed to see that I still had not received a credit from Roxy.com. I called the credit card company first to make sure that there was not a problem on their end. I am the sort of person who becomes annoyed when I find myself on hold for ten minutes with a credit card company in an effort to correct someone else's mistake. (Truth be told, however, I am the sort of person who is even more annoyed by such things as having to keep track of the fact that some e-store owes me $80.) Once I was assured by an account manager that my credit card company had not been contacted by Roxy.com with regard to my account, I hung up and called Roxy. Here began my true quest, for I learned that according to the Roxy.com computer, I had shipped them the complimentary installation kit. "That would be difficult for me to do," I chuckled, "since most of it is attached to the side of my house." "Well," I was told, "according to our records, we only got the kit, not the antenna." "Let me be absolutely clear about this" I said (though probably not as patiently as I think I said it), "I never returned the installation kit. I only returned the antenna." "Our records say it was the kit." "Do your records tell you what my motivation could possibly have been for shipping a free item to you at my own expense?" "Let me have you talk to a manager." I talked to the manager for a few minutes before he and I agreed that it would be better for him to speak with my wife. (All right, all right . . . after he hung up on me, my wife called and tried to reason with him.) At the end of their conversation, my wife informed me that we had to return to the post office for an official record of our shipment. Although the Roxy manager did not dispute that the shipment had been received, he had decided that the weight of the package would indicate whether it had indeed been an installation kit or an antenna. Without coming out and saying so, he was calling me a liar. I had insisted over and over again that the return could not have been an installation kit because most of the contents of the kit had been attached to my house. He maintained that his receiving department did not make mistakes. Unfortunately for me, I had not used an official post office. The post office nearest my home is actually one of those postal-counters-in-a-retail-shop type set-ups. They did not keep records of the weights of their shipments. They sent them off at the end of each week. "Where to?" I asked. "Downtown, but good luck finding a record from over two months ago." I went to the downtown post office, stood in line for nearly an hour, and asked the clerk to tell me how I could go about finding a record of my shipment. The clerk said that I should come back the next day to talk with the morning manager. Trembling with rage, I drove home. Once inside, I took a deep breath and called the Roxy manager's extension. I left a message on his voice mail. "Okay," I said. "You win. I have done all that I am willing to do for that eighty dollars. You keep it. Enjoy it. Distribute it to your shareholders with glee. I retire from the fight vanquished and humiliated. It goes without saying that I will do everything in my power to warn people against using your service." Although my wife had given him our number, he didn't call me back. There was a credit, however, on my next month's statement. My little passive aggressive fit had done the trick. I still think I got good stuff at a decent price. If it weren't for the shenaniganery regarding the eighty bucks, I would certainly have given Roxy a rave review. As it is, however, I can only recommend that you deal with these people if you're pretty sure you won't be returning anything.  |
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