Do not do not do not buy the rand mcnally tnd710.. Do not.

All of this would have been avoided if you took the GPS back to Loves with the reciept. Loves, Flying J/Pilot, TA/PETRO, all offer a 7 day risk free return policy, and a 30 day trade in policy. You could have simply traded it in for a brand new unit.

 

That's actually not a bad idea Bill...
Maybe Mark can take that to Rand and at least offer it to the higher ups as an option, especially for a customer that has more than 1 documented issue.

If none of the competition does that, then that could also be a selling point. It would show that the company is SERIOUS about supporting the OTR driver and would potentially be a good selling point...

 

I know he didn't have issues until at least the 3rd week...if it was actually 4 weeks, that could have been an issue itself.

I thought that Pilot and Love's had slightly different return policies too on electronic gear. I know one was better than the other...

 

First off Mark, I wanna think you for being here and all around a helpful person, but...

The quote is exactly why companies are held in contempt. Even if the customer blared it at 100% 24/7 the speaker should be good enough to handle it. Either make the volume lower so it doesn't damage the speaker, or put a better speaker in the unit.

Now that being said, I do understand bad luck and he might have gotten the two bad units in a row and all that. Just as a technician myself I see companies try and weasel out of their poor choices by blaming the consumer way too often.

-Steven

 

Rand isn't like that though....Could they have a better process as suggested above? - Perhaps... But what they ask of their customers is no different than the competition.....Its all the same.

If anyone knows about bad luck and bad luck happening, it's me.
I think I am related to Al Bundy I swear...

 

They are the same when it comes to electronics, IIRC.

I rarely buy anything at Pilot or Loves anyway. I always buy from TA or Petro as you can add points on your rewards card also.

 

The difference between any of the cell phone companies and Rand McNAlly or any of the other GPS manufacturers is that Verizon & the others have you under contract ... with normally a credit card on file. If you fail to return the defective unit, they turn around and charge you for the "replacement unit".

Unless a driver is willing to have his credit card pre-authorized for the retail price of the replacement unit and if the defective unit is not returned in a timely manner to Rand McNally ... than the credit card charge is processed ... I don't see how the return/warranty process that you have outlined would be feasible.

We all know of drivers that have tried to scam the system ... the risk would be too great to simply send a replacement unit without having some type of financial back-up from the driver.

I have had my Customer Care Dept., at times, do exactly what you have outlined ... shipped a replacement prior to the driver returning his unit ... but we already had a credit card on file for back-up ... from the original transaction.

 

Also being a Electronics Technician, I would be interested in how the speaker was run at x volume for x time on each unit. This is something then we can go back to factory and see if our specs need to be improved or maybe our specs are not up to par. Not blaming the customer, but trying to find out why this happened.

I do the same with the Beta Testers. They report an issue, but I send them a list of questions to narrow down why the issue popped up. I then can send this to the hardware engineer to help improve our processes and specs.

Thanks,
Mark

 

Sounds like a simple solution. Better yet, set-up agreement with TA or Pilot to allow swaps at these locations with authorized return number. Best Buy has this agreement with different companies for products past the exchange policy.

Sometimes living up to the image of being world class takes a little bit of work.

 

I got the other unit thursday, honestly they had it shipped back pretty fast. They sent the same one back but seems they have replaced the charging port. I saw some posts about the speaker not working twice, you may have misunderstood me. The FIRST time it broke was the speaker stopped working, i swapped that at loves, a couple weeks later the 2nd one stopped charging and it was after 30 days so I had to mail it in. I like the unit itself, (when it does work) it works great, im just pissed i had to spend almost $20 shipping it.. For now, whatever, the company handled it and I got another one, well see if it lasts. its not like im hard on the things, i carry them in a padded laptop bag