Does the current CE service model really benefit anybody

Oddly enough, this post was inspired by a dream. Saturday afternoon during a brief nap, I dreamt that I was rousted out of bed by some old guy who had a complaint about his Hitachi television. In my dream I interupted his tirade about a flicker on the screen with "Two things, sir. First, I'm a Hitachi dealer, and not a service center. Since you didn't get the tv here, I'm not sure why you decided to call me. Secondly, what are you doing in my house!?"

Consumer Electronics seems to be a rare marketplace where if you have a technical problem, you go back to the store where you got it from. Everybody knows that if you have a problem with your car, you call the dealership's service center, you don't call the salesman. Yet, if somebody's television or other electronic device is acting funny, most people go back to the shop.

This paradigm has altered somewhat in the past couple of years. Some manufacturers, such as Apple and Bose, want to be solely responsible for customer satisfaction with warranty work. In fact, on some boxes of portable audio/video product that I've seen, the manufacturer has a big sticker that says "IS THERE A PROBLEM? PLEASE DON'T RETURN THIS PRODUCT TO THE STORE. CALL 1-800-[customer service hotline number]"

This is due to recognition that retailers are in the business of selling product, and are ill-equiped to process customer warranty issues in a reasonable manner. You have only to peruse some of the horror stories on customer complaint websites like http://www.bestbuysux.org/ to realize that the retailer is probably not the best choice for looking after problems. It's sad, but it's reality.

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