Warranties that aren’t…really.

09Aug06

I bought a Logitech G5 mouse in September 2005. Over the past months I was having weird problems with the way I used my mouse…or so I thought. I was doing strange things like moving mail folders into other mail folders in Thunderbird, when I was trying to move in-box mail into mail folders.

It turns out my mouse is defective. When I click and hold down the left mouse button — such as for drag ‘n’ drop operations — the mouse actually malfunctions with a mouse-up and a mouse-down on its own before I physically let the left mouse button up. So what happens is what I start out dragging gets unselected, and whatever happens to be under my mouse at the moment of malfunction gets selected instead. A mouse that does more harm than good. I also try it on another computer with the same ill effect.

I’ve decided at this point the physical hardware mouse is defective. First I go to Logitech’s website, register my name, and submit a support ticket. A day or so later I get a response stating I have to call (a toll number) and speak to a trouble shooter. They are closed when I call, so I drop it for a while. In the meantime I go back to using my previous mouse (a Logitech MX510) which works as it’s supposed to.

So today — about two months later — I decide to try again. I get through to Logitech Support. The CS representative goes through a series of troubleshooting questions, then takes my mailing address info, and tells me he’s off to get a RMA so my defective mouse can be replaced. This isn’t so bad I think. But wait, there’s more…he comes back and says the RMA Agent wants me to start uninstalling software (this will only take ten minutes he claims). I have to uninstall my Logitech software and all other pointing device sofware (this is laptop so I have a trackpad as well). Ten minutes? I don’t think so. I can barely reboot Windows in ten minutes.

Come on Logitech…it shouldn’t be this hard! I demonstrated to the first support person I have a legitimate hardware failure.

At this point I decide, Logitech wins! They’ve worn me down and won’t have to honor their warranty. If I go through all the software uninstall/reinstall steps, my time wasted has become more costly than the damn mouse to begin with. I would like to bet this happens on purpose. How many companies actually end up honoring deflective merchandise warranties on items costing…say…$50 or less. Hmmm….

I’ll be victim to Logitech’s warranty that isn’t…really, just once. I will not buy their products anymore.

Filed under: Computing   |  1 Comment