Still no news from Westinghouse
I filed a complaint against Westinghouse to the BBB, but two weeks later they haven't responded to it yet. Can't say I'm surprised. The good thing is that if they don't respond to the BBB, they get a big fat stinking black mark on their BBB profile. Might not do that much good, but it hopefully will let others know to avoid them.
I've gotten some posts from some people in the same situation of Westinghouse blowing them off and not sending them replacement items when their crappy merchandise breaks. Some people want to file a class-action lawsuit. I don't know if I'd go that far. I may take them to small claims court though. Before that, I'm going to write a letter to their corporate office, pointing out the existence of my website.
In the meantime, conclusions:
- Westinghouse doesn't give half a crap about its customers.
- Never ship anything expensive via UPS. They're happy to leave $500 merchandise sitting on your front porch (assuming it even made it to my front porch and the UPS guy didn't just keep it, how would I know? I never saw it).
- Beware buying things online. When they break, your options for getting them fixed or covered by warranty are limited, impractical, and prone to months of aggravation. Is it worth the time you save buying things online, when you have to spend six months going through the kind of bullcrap I went through over this monitor?
This is post is just a friendly reminder to everyone reading this, don't buy anything from Westinghouse, and tell everyone you know the same thing. I wonder if Westinghouse cares about all of the people whose business they flushed down the toilet by ripping me off?
(Read the whole crappy story of Westinghouse's dishonesty and horrible customer service: The beginning, Update 1, Update 2, Update 3, Update 4, Update 5, Update 6, Update 7, Update 8, Update 9, VICTORY, aftermath.)
From what I can tell, class-action lawsuits are mostly a money generating scheme for the lawyers anyway. If you have a real issue, it's probably better to take them to court yourself. A lot of the class-action suits I see are more nebulous, with some vague notion of harm.
A few months ago when I was looking at monitors, a Westinghouse model was quite recommended. Having read your posts about their service, I'm kind of glad I didn't have the money at the time. I bought my new 24″ LCD from Dell, and I've good results getting replacements from them in the past, so I hope I don't have to worry about the kind of nightmare you've gone through.
Yes, Dell is usually very responsive to replacing hardware, especially if you go through their small business department.
Personally, I think the BBB is worthless, because in every scenario I see it mentioned, it's *after* the customer has gotten screwed. I've never really seen any examples of people checking to see how a company performs on there before purchasing anything.
Besides, if the entire context is complaints, wouldn't it ultimately make any company listed look bad?
I have actually checked the BBB before going with a business in various circumstances (for example when I was moving across the country and needed to find a company to ship my car), but yeah if people don't use it to research a company then it doesn't do a heck of a lot of good.
BBB lists complaints but also lists how the company responds to them. Every company has complaints, but some companies react to complaints by taking care of their customers and some ignore their customers.
Westinghouse for example has tons of complaints, but they appear to have resolved most of them satisfactorily. So Westinghouse apparently cares about their BBB image, whether customers do or not.
Westinghouse some how has a AAA rating on BBB, how is this possible? I also filed a complaint with them on June 15th and have not heard anything back.
From what I know, Westinghouse has to respond to every complaint or they lose their rating with the BBB. But I don't know if there's a time limit.
On the BBB website it says 20 business days. Did you file using http://www.labbb.org?
Also I heard if you take them to small claims court you have to go to a court that is near them. This would be very inconvenient if you are not located in the Orange County, CA area.
Here is the location of the small claims court near them:
Whittier Courthouse
7339 S. Painter Avenue, Room 300
Whittier, California 90602
You can file the law suit online: http://www.lasuperiorcourt.org/efiling (make sure to use IE, not firefox).
Also in case you decide to sue them you need to know who to serve the papers to, here is the info I found on the CA Secretary of State website:
http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/corpdata/ShowLpllcAllList?QueryLpllcNumber=200234710019
WESTINGHOUSE DIGITAL ELECTRONICS, LLC
Number: 200234710019 Date Filed: 12/10/2002 Status: active
Jurisdiction: CALIFORNIA
Address
12150 MORA DR
SANTA FE SPRINGS, CA 90670
Agent for Service of Process
DAVID O CHEN
12150 MORA DR
SANTA FE SPRINGS, CA 90670
I live in LA, so I am really considering driving 30 miles to the court to sue them. I will probably wait another week to give BBB a chance to help, and if that doesn't work I will file the law suit.
Yeah I did file at LABBB. I emailed them today asking if they're going to contact Westinghouse again or what.
It'd cost me more to travel to California than the monitor cost to begin with. :(
I'm somewhat content knowing that I've cost Westinghouse plenty of business by telling people how they ripped me off. And I don't plan to stop raising a stink about it any time soon. But I'm still ticked off about it.
My situation is similar to yours, but possibly even worse. My 47Inch LCD TV (cost $1400) broke and I shipped it to them in March, then I got a refurbished piece of junk sent back to me in May which did not work. Don't they have a quality control department??? So then I had to pay again to ship them the TV and I still haven't received anything yet. Now I know why the Sonys, Sharps, and Samsungs cost more.
Ouch, yeah that's worse. I feel for you. Yeah I've learned my lesson about buying a cheap brand. An extra 10% on the price is worth saving yourself this kind of bullcrap.
I've also learned my lesson about buying expensive things online without getting some kind of warranty or replacement plan. If I'd bought this monitor from Best Buy down the street I could've driven it down and gotten a replacement in one day, or at worst let them deal with Westinghouse.
Well great. I just sent in my monitor last week to be RMA'd because the HDMI port has a nice pink hue on it. As much as I love the color pink, it doesn't look that great while trying to watch Planet Earth in HD… UPS says they have it, let's see what happens to me.
Maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones they don't screw over. I can't imagine they do this to everyone or they'd be out of business.
Their rating on BBB just dropped from “AAA” to “A”
Good! That “1″ under “Unanswered” is most likely me. I still haven't heard a word on my report. I hope their rating keeps dropping.
I was just going to complain to the BBB asking how Westinghouse still has a AAA rating with unanswered complaints, but now I don't I have to. At least the BBB has a shred of integrity.
check out their rating now, it went from “AAA” to “CC”
Hi,
I have been following your westinghouse saga because I have also returned a monitor and gotten nothing. I filed a complaint with the BBB and this morning received an email telling me they have closed the case because after two attempts the company refused to reply.
I am curious to know what has happened with you.
And thanks for putting this info out there so others will learn from our experience.