The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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All original content on MoreThings.com copyright 2008 Albert Barger or the respective authors
August 08, 2006
Buffalo Technology ripoff warning Buffalo Technology ripped me off, and I'm here to file a public consumer alert. I bought an external hard drive of theirs from Frye's a couple of months back. It was priced for $150, with a supposed $60 rebate. They simply refused to honor their rebate.
When I called them, they claimed that I took too long in filing the rebate- about three weeks from my date of purchase when supposedly they specified 14 days from date of purchase.
This is bogus. For starters, I went over their paperwork in detail with the clerk at Frye's at the time of purchase, and neither of us saw anything like that. So I don't think it said anything about that. If it did, it was carefully buried down in the verbiage to not be noticeable and give them an excuse not to pay up.
Beyond that, it would be a bogus condition to put on a rebate because of common retail merchandise return policy. The rebate requires cutting off the UPC code from the box. After you've done that though, of course you can't take the product back to the retailer. That's common sense, as you'd otherwise have folks sending in for the rebate and then taking back the merchandise. But normal retail return policy is 30 days, so I held off till close to the end of the standard return time to make sure the product was going to work.
No, they just never intended on paying the $60. They got my money, and there was nothing to do for it but to accept that I paid 2/3 more than I had been told the product would cost.
It's not just a matter of not paying a rebate, but the clear implications about their business practices. Buffalo Technology won't do what they promise. If they won't pay a rebate that they promised at the time of purchase, then one has to assume that they would be even less inclined to back up a warranty claim some months down the road. Fortunately, the drive is working good so far, but I'm stuck with it if it goes south.
I know I'll never buy another product from Buffalo Technology, and I'd strongly advise other consumers to likewise avoid them. This is not just being mad at them, though, but recognizing that they have proven themselves to be disreputable. Consider yourselves warned.
