Do Product Guarantee’s Mean Anything?

I recently had a run in with a company that provided a money back guarantee on their product. When I tried to return the product they made up the fine print as they went along.

Several months ago I received an email from a website that I subscribe to (I should say “used” to subscribe to). The email promoted a new product; a course on how to buy tax leans and tax deeds. I’ve always been interested in the subject but thought the course was a little pricey at $495. What sold me on the product was their 90 day money back, no questions asked, guarantee. I thought that if I didn’t like the course I could send it back for a full refund.

A week or so after I placed my order, I received a nice looking booklet with 5 DVD’s and two course booklets – so far so good. I popped in the first DVD and with course booklet in hand I excitedly started the course. Despite the content only being OK, the speaker was constantly interrupted by his dog barking in the background. He stopped talking, mumbled some profanities, said in a grumpy voice “delete, I’m starting this section over”. This was followed by a loud buzz and then the speaker repeated the section. My guess is that they never edited the recording. For the $495 tuition cost that I paid, this just wasn’t good enough for me, nor was the content of the DVD’s.

So I called the company and mentioned that I wanted to take them up on their 90 day guarantee (I was actually only 5 days into the guarantee). The operator instructed me to go to their website and send an email through their support email address, which I did. A week went by and there was no reply, so I called back. Once again I was asked to go to their website and email through their support email address. Reluctantly I followed the operators instructions and sent off another email. A few more days went past and I finally received a call from Courtney, a very apologetic company representative. I didn’t go into their poor customer service; I brushed that aside and asked how I could return the goods. Courtney asked for my email address and said she would shoot through the instructions immediately after our call.

Before my conversation ended with Courtney I said “one thing, I did write in one of the booklets. If you need to take a couple of dollars to re-print those 10 or so pages, then I’m fine with that”. In hindsight I shouldn’t have been so generous. But that’s just me, I know how difficult it is to do business and in this economy money is tight. I figured that I could afford the $5 for reprinting 10 black and white pages. Courtney on the other hand didn’t see my offer as generous, she saw me as a person who had just lost them $25,000….. huh?

Here’s an extract from Courtney’s email to me explaining the $25,000 loss: “unfortunately the best thing we can offer, since the manual has been written in, is 50% refund ($247.50). To print out 1 or 250 copies of the manual costs us $25,000, because it is the minimum about our printing copy requires”. Can you believe it? What happened to the guarantee? What happened to “the customer is always right”?

So I responded: “I fail to believe that you could not get one copy of this document printed. To state that printing one copy would cost $25,000 is either an untruth or you have been exploited by the printing company. If it is the later, you may need professional advice. I’ve spoke with my business associate (he’s been in the printing industry for 20 years) and he is happy to offer advice on printing free of charge. You can contact him on XXX-XXX-XXXX – his name is XXXX.”

That email was said in tongue and cheek, but it raises my curiosity as to what does a “complete satisfaction or your money back” guarantee mean? I define a guarantee as something that assures a particular outcome or condition. In my circumstance I was not satisfied with the outcome so I asked for my money back. What about the small print? Well, there were no terms attached to the guarantee, so what should be assumed by a consumer? I agree that I was in the wrong for marking the goods. My gripe is that the company did not clearly indicate the terms and conditions associated with their guarantee. Had I known that they would only refund 50% if the booklets have a single mark on them, then I would have gone through the course to determined if I liked the content before I made notes.

I ultimately sent back the CD’s (I kept the booklets since they can no longer use them), and got my 50% refund and they continued business less one customer.

I might seem like a no good, complaining customer in this situation, but I’m a little old fashion when it comes to consumer-business relationships. The customer isn’t always right, but a paying customer is always worth keeping. And what gets me is that they never once asked why I was not satisfied. A good business would have offered assistance on the course, informed me of past successes from customers that have studied their course and made an effort to keep me coming back for future material. Their tactic of never returning calls, trying to prove themselves to be always right and generally having a poor attitude to the customer is indicative of an average company.