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From:
Robert Briggs
P.O. Box 7175
Murray, UT 84107-0175
SYSOP of FIDO 15/464 (801) 264-8290
To:
Anyone who purchases IBM-PC products, all
Bulletin board SYSOP's and users.
A bulletin that I have
posted on my board:
_________________________________________________________
WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING
__________________________________________________________
The SYSOP of this board has been ripped off to the tune of
$700 by PC's Limited, 7801 N. Lamar, Suite E-200, Austin, TX.
Please take a look at the file RIFOFF$.700 in the bulletin
section( file area #5) , which includes correspondence to/from
Byte magazine and my recent letters to the Better Business Bureau
and the Attorney Generals office in Austin Texas. Also, please
take and distribute a copy of this file to every bulletin board
that you frequent. Since I don't seem to be going to get my
money, how about helping me keep other people from being
ripped off the same way??
______________________________________________________________
This whole situation started on the 27th of March, 1985. The drive
that I originally obtained from PC's Limited was faulty. It was
returned to them for repair. It came back "Dead On Arrival" - the
person responsible for Quality Controlling the drive failed to retract
the heads, this resulted in a bad track 0 which made the drive unusable.
The drive was once again shipped back to them on June 7th, 1985,
accompanied by a letter requesting a refund. (it is interesting to
note that the RMA number issued the second time was 3436, the first
RMA was 2973 - that means that in a period of roughly 2 weeks, PC's
Limited had 493 defective products shipped back to them!)
There was no response to my letter, nor any repaired drive returned.
I was unable to contact the person who was responsible for handling
refunds. Two months later, I sent the following letter addressed to
the Chief Executive Officer of PC's Limited:
_____________________________
Correspondence that has led
to my distributing this file:
_____________________________
Robert S. Briggs
P.O. Box 7175
Murray, UTAH 84107-0175
08 August, 1985
Dear Sir:
It has now been over 60 days since I returned my disk drive to your
company for a refund, and nearly six months sine I originally purchased
the drive, (which has never worked correctly). While I (am) normally quite
patient, this situation is causing me to become angry enough to take some
rather strong measures to recover my money. Unless I receive my $695.00
refund check by the 21st of August, 1985, I intend to do the following:
1. Send a copy of this letter and a formal letter of complaint to Byte
magazine, PC magazine, and any other major magazine that I can find one of
your advertisements in.
2. Publish a copy of this letter in the public domain, and a warning about
both the type of service and equipment that you seem to be providing. In
addition, I will request that anyone reading that warning distribute it to
any other bulletin boards that they use. I expect that such a warning would
be distributed to well over 2000 bulletin boards in a matter of several
weeks, making this letter available to well over 200,000 readers by the
middle of September. This could have a great impact on your sales...
The situation is becoming ludicrous; I have been unable to contact the
mysterious Tammy (the person handling refunds) in nearly two months of
calling two days a week. A typical days worth of calls (my local time)
goes something like this:
9:00 a.m. Not in yet 10:00 a.m. Not in yet
10:30 a.m. Not in yet 11:00 a.m. Out to lunch
12:00 p.m. Out to lunch 12:30 p.m. Out to lunch
1:00 p.m. Out to lunch 1:30 P.m. Out to lunch
2:30 p.m. Out on break
3:30 p.m. Left for the day - try tomorrow
I have enclosed a copy of my invoice; my original copy of the charge
slip was sent in the last time I returned the drive for repair. The last
return of the drive was under RMA #3436, the drive was "DEAD ON ARRIVAL"
when returned from RMA #2973 repair (due to the heads not being retracted
when the drive was shipped back to me).
I would appreciate your prompt attention to this matter, and hope that
this whole situation can be settled swiftly and in a friendly manner.
Sincerely,
Robert S. Briggs
_________________________________________________________________
After another month with no reply from PC's Limited, in frustration,
I sent the following letter to the
advertising editors of several magazines, PC-TECH, PC WORLD, etc.
_________________________________________________________________
Robert Briggs
P.O. Box 7175
Murray, UT 84107-0175
(801) xxx-xxxx
XXXXX Magazine
Advertising Manager
xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxs xxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxx, xx xxxxx
August 29th, 1985
Dear Advertising Editor,
I would like to make a formal complaint against one of the
companies that advertises in your magazine. It has been nearly
six months since I first ordered a 20 megabyte drive from PCS
Ltd., (the drive was originally ordered in March of 1985), and
in that time they have failed to deliver me a either a functional
disk drive, or the refund that I have been requesting for over
two months now.
Enclosed please find a copy of a letter that I sent to the
Chief Executive Officer of PCS Ltd. on August 8, 1985. There has
been no response to this letter. As nearly as I can tell, I
have simply been "ripped-off" for the sum of $695.00. If there
is any way that you can assist me in recovering the original sum,
I would be pleased, I have already "written off" the money spent
in long distance phone calls and shipping.
Unless I can recover my money in the near future, I am going
to place a description of what I have been through and copies of
the correspondence into the public domain with a request that it
be distributed as widely as possible. It is a last resort and a
one way step - once done it can not easily be undone - but maybe
I can get some satisfaction out of keeping other people from
making the same mistake. I am not vindictive and would be more
than happy to let the whole matter drop upon receipt of a check
for what I am owed.
I would certainly appreciate any help that you could give me
in this matter.
Sincerely,
Robert S. Briggs
____________________________________________________________________________
On September 13th, 1985, I received the following letter from Byte magazine.
It is nice to know that at least one of the magazines was interested and
courteous enough to reply. Looks like I will have to re subscribe to BYTE
magazine....
____________________________________________________________________________
September 10, 1985
Mr. Robert Briggs
P.O. Box 7175
Murray, UT 84107-0175
Dear Mr. Briggs:
This is in response to your letter of August 29, a copy of which we are
forwarding to PC's Limited. Rest assured that we shall use whatever
influence we have to get them to satisfactorily respond to your complaint.
Please also try to understand that it is impossible, both logistically and
legally for us to try to resolve all disputes between advertisers in BYTE
and their customers.
The best we can do is to provide a conduit to start communication between
the advertiser and the customer, and to cease offering advertising space
in our magazine to an advertiser when a clear pattern of unresolved
customer problems appear. With your complaint, we are sincerely
attempting to facilitate discussion between the parties which could lead
to an appropriate resolution.
We are asking both you and PC's Limited to keep us posted on any
results obtained from our transactions. Thanks you very much for
your patience and information.
Sincerely,
xxxxx x. xxxxxxx
Customer Relations
_________________________________________________________________
Here is my reply to the Byte Magazine letter:
_________________________________________________________________
Robert Briggs
P.O. Box 7175
Murray, UT 84107-0175
(801) xxx-xxxx
BYTE MAGAZINE
Attn: xxxxxx x. xxxxxxx
70 Main Street
Peterborough, NH 03458
October 7, 1985
Dear xx. xxxxxxx,
This is in reply to your letter of September 10, 1985, concerning
PC's Limited. I believe that I have allowed a sufficient time for PC's
Limited to reply, so I must regretfully state that I have received
absolutely no correspondence from them. I must also assume that they
have chosen to not reply because they have no intention of issuing me a
refund - they have simply "ripped me off" to the tune of $700.
I hope that there is some pressure that you can exert on them as
advertisers in your magazine. I am also going to correspond with the
Attorney Generals Office, consumer complaint division, and the Better
Business Bureau of Austin Texas, in hopes of getting some response (i.e.
a refund) from them.
I am preparing to distribute all of the correspondence to date to
each of the nodes in the FIDO network (watch your BYTE bulletin board,
all of this information will be distributed under the file name
RIPOFF$.700 or pc-ltd.rip or something similar) and will request that it
be passed along to any bulletin board that the users know of, and I hope
to have copies of all of this correspondence published in several IBM-PC
specific newsletters. This action should make this whole situation
available to approximately 200,000 readers in a matter of roughly two
weeks, and could reach a million PC users, by word of mouth, in roughly
a month.
I do not understand why PC's Limited is forcing me to pursue such
an unfriendly course of action. I think that anyone is entitled to a
refund and a letter of explanation after attempting to obtain a working
product or refund for over six months.
Thank you for your time and the help that you and Byte Magazine
have given me.
Sincerely,
Robert S. Briggs
SYSOP of FIDO 15/464
________________________________________________________
A copy of the original letter to the advertising managers
suitably modified, has been sent to the Austin Texas
Attorneys office, and the Austin Better Business Bureau.
As yet, there have been no replies to the latest round
of correspondence.
I guess that I have to leave it up to you, the reader to
decide whether I have been too harsh on a company that
failed to deliver me a working product after more than
6 months, and who seems to refuse to issue me a refund.
If you can, give this file the widest distribution that
you have available. Maybe someone else will avoid get-
ting ripped off by this company. Maybe even you...
If you are really into such things, how about sending a
letter to PC's Limited telling them that you have read
this article, and have no intention of purchasing any-
thing from them because of it. Anyone having similar
problems with this company might drop a letter to the
BYTE Magazine Customer relations department, urging them
to remove PC's Limited from their advertising.
You can keep current on the situation and get any further
bulletins from my board at (801) 264-8290.
Robert S. Briggs SYSOP FIDO 15/464 (801) 264-8290
_______________________________________________________
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