16 minutes of hold to get to the first human to answer why they have not credited my return of over a month ago..... and still listening to sales pitch auto-record.

If you cared about your customers you would staff more people.

 

Wow thats disappointing, though not surprising. Good customer service is hard to come by.

 

V1 answers their phone with no wait. Service shouldn't be so hard

 

V1- Its also 90's technology... Im just saying! Maybe they can incorporate GPS technology soon? Its beyond me this has not been done yet. I assure you when it is I will come back to V1. Until then Im sticking with Escort.

 

not to start a debate but i think gps is a good idea. however, when i tried the 9500ix, it was rather useless as it didn't detect much of anything. i returned it after 3 days.

v1 gives a crap load of false. the trick is to disable X band. it'll eliminate 95% of false alarm. very tolerable after this simple procedure.

 

If you are in an area with speed cameras the GPS Database is imperative. Today it saved my butt twice here in Phoenix. I have the 9500 ci, its amazing, little to no false alerts. I do miss the arrows though on the V1.

 

Well it turns out its worse than I thought.. though it is a partly self inflicted wound.

I had purchased a spare lidar transciever in March. Was charged $200, assumed it would be two of them, as the kit and prior folks had gotten two. Ended up with just one tranciever and no mount. Hmph. Ok, called back and ordered a ZR4 kit (2 full trancievers with mounts and hardware, and the rear transciever and control stuff).. for $450.. a better buy.

Then I forgot to mail back the initial spare. It sat in its ziplock and bubble wrap til just this week when I discovered I never returned it. Oops. Thats my contribution.

So I called Escort customer service. They won't take anything back after 30 days. Period.

Really? I asked? its still factory fresh and the spare you can put right back in the bin. Nope.

I asked if they were comfortable with the fact that for the cost of $200 (for a <$50 part) they were converting a good customer into an enemy for life, and ruining the brand. Yup, thats what they intend to do, because "its their policy".

Ok.

 

You can't blame Escort for not accepting your return. The North American (including Canada) culture of use & return has made retailers vary and if they made an exception for everyone then it adds to the additional processing that they have to do on their end. I worked in Retail for 3 years and you won't believe the excuses people come up with to justify their returns.

Just my 2 cents.

 

I agree, can't blame Escort for following their policy. FWIW my 9500ci today picked up 2 Radars 1 mi out on flat ground today. I looked at the odometer at first beep, 1 mi later exactly there they were.

 

Anyone who thinks Valentine Research has good customer service hasn't had to deal with them for much.

They are absolutely brutal. They are run like a back alley mum and pop shop. The bitter old hag that answers the phone the majority of the time is a real peach to deal with about 25% of the time. Depends what day of her menstrual cycle you call in on.

 

Try doing a credit card chargeback and filing an online complaint with the BBB. You may not get your money back, but it's a nice way to stick it to them. They're not technically obliged to issue you a refund, but I think a fair resolution would have been to issue you a partial refund or a store credit.

 

Lol thats great

 

While I agree that I cannot blame Escort for sticking to their policy, I'll say that the item arrived in a box without a packing slip or any information about what that policy was. I completely agree, there is some atrocious abuse of return policies in the US and retailers are right to push back on arbitrary returns.

That said, this was a replacement part in a bubble bag (not retail packaged), shipped in a plain brown box. I had opened the box, saw there was only the bare single sensor and never took it out of the bag.. so it would go back to Escort to be put back in the spare parts bin exactly as it was.

The issue was, given I'd dropped a bigger chunk of change on the 9500ci system and the ZR4 already, was it a wise brand/marketing decision to not grant an exception to the policy for a part that would come back as new as it left them, and not cause a lot of stock keeping problems.

I did get a call back from the customer service manager, who'd I'd left a voicemail for asking if indeed they were making this firm stance decision ... and the returned call indicated that they would make an exception in this one case solong as the part arrived in the same pristine condition they sent it to me in.

So after all is said and done, if you can convey, to the right people, the value proposition of an exception, they sometimes do see the light. It is, after all, $200 for a $20 part.