Complaint Review: Abe's of Maine - Linden New Jersey

You'll see Abe isn't so Honest and according to my research has been ripping off customers for years and that their advertised “FREE SHIPPING” is anything but.

My wife and I purchased a top-of-the-line LG OLED (model # 55E8PUA) from Abe's of Maine.  Unfortunately, it turned out that its display had been damaged in shipment or was defective....no one knows for sure when it occurred, but it was not operational when we attached the HDMI cable and plugged the unit in for our first time.   We discovered it late on a Friday night after business hours and Abe’s would not reopen until Monday morning.  So, beginning that Monday morning our worst fears were already starting. We found that it was nearly impossible to get through to Abe's of Maine's customer service so while we continued to make calls to them throughout the day, we also decided to look Abe’s up online.  Here we found an epiphany of complaints against them.  Check out this link:  https://www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/abes-of-maine.html

During our internet expedition we also discovered that the name of the company's contact person for the BBB was a Ms. Lisa B.  From thereon we concentrated on getting in touch with her. We made attempt after attempt to reach her, leaving messages when we would occasionally get through to her voicemail.  When we did finally speak to Lisa B., she seemed very defensive and really showed no interest in anything that we were trying to explain to her regarding the damage to the TV.  In fact, it seemed like the only thing that she did care about was trying to convince us that we were somehow responsible for that damage.  She would consistently talk over us and didn’t seem to want to hear anything that we were trying to explain to her.  She essentially told us that the $120 insurance policy, that their salesperson, “Hondas” had talked me into after the order had been placed, expired after I accepted the delivery.

I had discovered, after speaking to an authorized LG Service Tech, that damage to a multi-layer display such as this one may be detected by using a flashlight and viewing screen surface from and angle. Indeed, doing so revealed to us the crack that was in the upper right corner of the display. We see no way that such damage could have been detected without performing this procedure.  In retrospect, I really wish that I had known about this before I accepted the delivery! 

Again, we tried to call their "Customer Support" department numerous times only to hear the voice guidance bark out their hours of operation time after time, then we were put on hold and eventually the recorded voice came back on and said "goodbye" and disconnected the call.

I was growing quite weary of this and discovered that if I went through their sales line that this wouldn't happen as the sales staff would transfer your call to Customer Service if you were nice.

Lisa B. was not helpful in any way but finally told me that she would contact their "supplier" to see what they could do.  I didn't hear back from her for a day, so I called Lisa Bereby and she explained to me that her "supplier" had agreed to send out a repair person to inspect the damage to LG OLED 55E8. Lisa promised me that she would re-contact their "supplier" at my request in order to get the name and phone number of the repair person to give to me so that I might arrange a convenient time for them to come out to inspect. I never heard back from Lisa or anyone else on this matter. We are now moving in to the second week since the TV was delivered and are no closer to a resolution than we were when we started calling Abe’s of Maine on Monday, January 28.  Since the time that she had promised to get back to us on that day before end of business, “one way or the other”, with the technician’s contact info, we haven't heard a word from Ms. Bereby, her distributor, his "TV repair technician" or anyone else connected with Abe’s of Maine.

The manufacturer, LG won't do anything for us because, probably un-surprisingly, Abe's of Maine is not an AUTHORIZED LG DEALER.  This company conduct is just so wrong on so many levels, running an unscrupulous operation in broad daylight is despicable.