Small victories

The chintzy printer had barely outlived its warranty when it died, so I was so pleased to replace it with a sleek, black Canon MX882 that was wireless, scanned, faxed, and almost did the dishes for you. So I was most disgruntled when the new Canon suddenly started producing copies with white strikes down the middle of the page, gave me a message the ink was running out when I had just replaced the cartridges and lit up the LED display with a “printer error” message whenever I used it. Hadn’t it been just months since I had purchased it? I called Canon and an agent there spent 45 minutes walking me through various diagnostic tests before agreeing it was just plain broke. If I had purchased it within a year, she said, they would replace it. Naturally, I couldn’t find my receipt so I contacted BJ’s, where I had bought it, and within three hours they had e-mailed me a copy of the receipt with the purchase date – Dec. 3, 2011. My warranty had expired 10 days earlier. I called Canon again and explained that these problems pre-dated my earlier phone call and were well within the warranty period and, well, wouldn’t they take pity on a loyal customer at Christmas time? The agent hemmed and hawed and said they have to go by the purchase date but that he would…. And then the battery in my phone died. I sensed Defeat laughing in the corner somewhere. I called back, got a different agent and explained the whole situation again. “Just a minute,” he said, before turning me over to Muzak. The minute became five, then six, maybe 10 and finally he was back on the line. “Your new printer will arrive within three to five days,” he said. “I love you,” I told him. He expressed no reciprocal sentiment. But it wasn’t my first small victory of the season. Last year, when the plastic lids on my new Anchor Hocking food containers warped and cracked within a week of my purchasing them, I emailed Anchor Hocking’s customer service folks. Three weeks later, new lids arrived – along with new glass containers, too. Bottom line: Have a problem with a product? Try reaching out to the manufacturer. There ARE still some good companies out there that stand by what they sell.