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As an employee of Office Depot (I'm only 19 so you can hear me out or not it's up to you), I frequent these sites because I'm curious to see what bothers our customers the most. I'm not doing this to protect the company name, I'm simply doing this because as a cashier I see many loyal customers at our store and I don't want people who live near OUR store to get a bad vibe from these complaints.
I respect everybody's opinion and believe every story on here. I'm writing this because I see our return policy is really frustrating people (not just on here but in our store too). Let me first clarify that our return policy is NO different then any other stores' policy as far as opened products, receipt handling, defective products etc. If you purchase a $500 laptop from us and you take it home, you can return it and get you're money back.
However, if you open the product (which is what we'd all do) and theres something wrong with it, you can no longer get cash back on it. You can bring it back in exchange for the same laptop (the one you got is defective so we'll give you another one). The reason being is we can absolutely not re-sell an open box laptop. Once that security tape is cut off the top of the box we are required by law to send the device back to the manufacture. If we gave customers money back for every laptop we needed to send back, we would lose millions of dollars.
Remember we bought you're laptop before you. We do get a fraction of the value of the device back from the manuf. but maybe $30 out of the $370(est.) we paid to sell it. The open container rule applies to all of our technology items. As for ink cartridges, the rules are flexed based on each store manager from each store. I know my store manager Mike Baxter is more then happy to take back an unopen or even defective opened cartridge. Even if you don't have a receipt, he'll give you store credit as long as you're not trying to scam us.
In conclusion, I just want to let everybody on here understand that it is easy to judge an entire company based on a bad experience at one of their locations (I've done it too) but it's not right. We at Riverside, CA Store 968 go to great lengths to satisfy our customers and we have a loyal customer base. I'm just tired of feeling like a bad guy and feeling like a bad store because I work for a company that may have a couple unhelpful associates.
Thanks,
- Donnie Stafford
(Customer Service Specialist, Store 968, Riv, CA)
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
The problem with Office Depot, as well as all these other office supply stores, is that they sell crap from Asia. They know it's crap, and they know that they can't back it or they'll go broke as you stated.
I've bought only two computer-related items this year: a printer and a laptop battery. In both cases, the first of each that I received (made in China) were defective. I tried to return the defective printer to Office Depot and exchange it for a similar printer that cost the same price. Turns out you can't do that, either. The manager was totally arrogant, which didn't help things. And to top it off, the store I went to didn't have any more of the same printer to give me. I had to go to another store 15 miles away to get my printer exchanged for one that works.
As for the defective laptop battery, I bought it somewhere else and am still trying to get a replacement. But, same thing. Received a defective product on the first try.
With a 50% failure rate for office electronics, no wonder these office stores won't refund the customer their money. If Office Depot would either refuse to sell crap they can't back or tell these manufacturers to stick their return fee up their you-know-what, they could go back to having good old, honest customer service.
They fact that you have to post something like this is already telling. The problem isn't with their policy, its their complete lack of honesty in informing the customer that they will not be able to return the item (even when its totally defective and unwanted) for a return. If company your purchasing from wont take returns, then the answer is simple, don't buy from those companies until they do.
Saying "I know my company does a lot of underhanded things, but i swear its a good company!" Is silly. Fix the underhanded practices and inform your customers what their getting into. My money is that they wont because they know a very good portion of people would walk away from their purchase.
Same thing here, i ordered a laptop on 2nd of Oct with delivery on the 7th, sounds fine.Delivery day nothing arrives and i get the run around for several hours long after its obvious there will be no delivery today.
I finally am told after hours of being messed around the item was never even sent as its out of stock.
Thats a shock as the transaction went through on my credit card but i thought..ahh well..one of those things.
Nothing could have prepared me for whats next, they offer to sell me the exact same item but now it costs $200 more than it did only days ago.
Thieves are kinder and more respectful than this mob of shysters, totally unhelpful and ignorant to a fault.
Ill happily give the business to a company more deserving as personally id never have anything more to do with office depot, i can only hope they go under soon which shouldnt be too long judging by the staff they employ.