Last year, we needed to buy a replacement filter for our whole house water filtering system. After shopping around and doing price comparisons, both online and off, the cheapest place turned out to be the FiltersFast.com website. We did our homework and found several satisfactory customer reviews about the site and felt comfortable ordering from them.
While browsing the site, we discovered they also carried the water filters we use in our Whirlpool refrigerator and decided to go ahead and get some of those too. We didn’t really need any fridge filters at the time, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to stock up and have some on hand when our others ran out.
The website is easy to navigate and very intuitive. It was easy to find the filters we needed using their intuitive product selection menu. They offer a wide range of filters for many different manufacturers, and their menu system makes it easy to determine which part is needed. At the time we placed the original order, the process went smoothly and we received the filters quickly. Note that this was early 2008.
We replaced the whole house filter and it worked perfectly. We didn’t have a need to use one of the fridge filters we had bought from FiltersFast.com until the first part of 2009 – almost a year after placing the order. We naively waited an entire year before using one of the filters we had bought from this website. It honestly never entered our mind that they would be defective.
Here’s how the story plays out …
We installed one of the filters from FiltersFast and it didn’t work for some reason. The water coming out of our refrigerator had a strong chlorine smell and taste. We had never encountered this problem before. The water coming straight out of our tap did not smell or taste like chlorine, so we knew the problem was with the filter. We removed the filter and the smell and taste went away.
Luckily, I had kept the receipt from the purchase, otherwise we probably wouldn’t have remembered where the items had come from. I logged on to the company website and got their customer service phone number. I called and the phone rang and rang and rang … no one ever picked up. I then went to their contact us page and sent an e-mail complaint using their web form. A couple of days passed by and I got no response. I sent another message via their contact us page and waited a few more days and still got no response. I was beginning to think the company had gone out of business but decided to try calling them again. This time I was routed through an automated phone system and waited for about 30 minutes for a customer service rep to come on the line. Every few minutes an automated voice gave me the option to the leave a voicemail message and have a service rep call me back. I finally gave up and left my name and number, expecting to never hear from them.
About two days later I got a call from the company. After explaining my problem to the rep, who’s name was Alex, I was informed that since it had been a year since the products were purchased that there wasn’t much they could do for me. Poor Alex … I wasn’t going down that easily and asked him if I could speak to a supervisor.
After waiting on hold for about 10 minutes, a lady named Karen came on the line and identified herself as a supervisor. Amazingly, I didn’t have to rehash the story with her because Alex had explained everything before she got on the line. She explained the company policy of 90 day returns and said the only thing that could be done would be for me to send the bad parts back and order a different part number, plus pay a 20% restocking fee and pay shipping costs.
To me, this was not a satisfactory solution for several reasons:
1) They had no other part numbers for my refrigerator model and this was the part number their merchandise selection menu system said was the correct one for my unit when I placed the order.
2) I should not have to pay a restocking fee just because they sent me defective merchandise.
3) I should not have to pay shipping costs to send back a defective product.
I nicely explained to Karen that while I could understand and appreciate their 90 day return policy, my circumstances were a bit unusual. We politely went back and forth for a few minutes on who, what, when, why, etc. Karen then asked me how I thought the situation should be resolved. I said I wanted the company to stand behind their product – and do do so without it costing me any more money. She again patiently quoted me the standard “company policy” reasons as to why my request could not be honored. I politely reminded her that the economy is very bad right now and the company might not want to have a bad mark against them from an unsatisfied customer. I told her I would be very grateful if she could work a bit of “customer service magic.
I’m not sure if I just wore the nice lady down or if I said something meaningful, but finally she relented and agreed to send me one replacement for the filter I knew for certain was bad. She sent it via FedEx overnight and I did not have to send the bad product back or pay shipping fees or restocking fees. I’m not overjoyed that they wouldn’t replace all four of the parts I originally ordered but am happy that they at least replaced one unit. I will have to repeat this entire process six months from now when I replace the next filter if it turns out to be bad … but at least now I know how to get around their customer service department and how to explain my situation.
