Need help with service under warranty

Dcramer
Dcramer Posts: 1
in Customer Service
Bought a Polk Audio Smart Bar & Sub from the Dish Network Technician. He installed and set up - worked great for a while. Totally changed our viewing experience. We started even listening to music in the house because it sounded that great. Within a few months the sub started to sound like the speaker was blown - by visual inspection it did not appear blown. Called Dish Customer service several times - each of these calls was at least 30 minutes to get through - not a problem if it leads to resolution. It never did. They insisted on starting at the beginning each time with "is it plugged in?" Yes, yes, yes...it's plugged in. The problem is that it sounds like the sub is blown. "Let's reset the system - this will only take a few minutes" - yeah right. Ok, we did that several times over a couple of months. The problem is intermittent, so I understand the difficulty in figuring it out. We could work around the problem by turning off the sub and then back online after a few minutes. It might work for a day or a week. So, growing annoyed at this, we called Dish recently and insisted on a different path to resolution - please send someone, replace something, anything different than burning hours of time on chat and phone asking me "if the system was plugged into the wall". So, they point the finger to Polk Audio since it's now past 30 days. (really? You wash your hands on a product that you sell after 30 days when you're touting a 1 year warranty? Another lesson in reading the fine print - interesting) Ok - we bit.. we call Polk Audio and talk to someone with absolutely no customer service training and no interest in being on the phone. He begrudgingly confirmed that the unit is still under warranty but (insert attitude) we'd have to pay to box it up and ship it from PA to the repair center in CA at our expense. No exceptions, no flexibility, no kidding...and to top it off, they asked us to send the part of the system that's actually still working. We called them back again to make sure we were clear about what to send and if we could get a reference return authorization - pretty standard stuff when you're sending something for a repair. This same guy answers at Polk and seemed annoyed for our question. (We just wanted to be sure - something wasn't adding up - I actually do have a degree in aviation electronics - why would you send the only part of the system that was working??? If in doubt, send everything.) So, we have both Dish and Polk pointing the finger at each other, 20 hours of my time over 6 months in troubleshooting and calling about this defective product that is still under warranty and a great system I can't use for its intended purpose unless we shell out another $60-100 to insure and ship a system component without a reference tracking number to a company who doesn't think enough of their customers to provide real service without attitude. There are no local service options and neither party is budging. So after not less than 2 chat sessions and 6 phone calls with Dish, 3 phone calls with Polk Audio, we are using social media as a last resort to get anything that resembles a true response to this problem. We are getting close to the end of our 1 year warranty - 6 months of which has been burned running in circles over this most ridiculous lack of service. Anyone, anyone? Polk, if you're listening - is this the level of respect you show all your customers? Frustrated and telling the world, Dave Cramer 724-562-8590
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