Complaint Review: Panasonic Consumer Electronics - Secaucus New Jersey

Panasonic is knowingly and fraudulently selling defective products to consumers. They will go into cover-up mode and deny all knowledge of these defects to the customer until confronted with evidence to document them. Then they will still refuse to make good on the customer's investment, choosing instead to saddle the customer with old, used, previously abused, and refurbished equipment.

I purchased the Panasonic Fax/Phone Model #KX-FPG175 from a local Staples store in January of 2002. I used it primarily for fax reception. It wasn't until the Staples 30-day return privilege window had expired that I noticed I wasn't able to transmit faxes reliably or at all with this unit.

I called Panasonic's customer service line. They denied any knowledge of pre-existing problems with this unit. Their response was, and I quote, We have thousands of these machines out in the marketplace and we have had no complaints about this unit at all. They blamed everything from the quality of my telephone line to the receiving fax at the other end of my transmissions. All of which was completely bogus and irrelevant, since the machine failed to pull the documents through the transmission path even during the copy function, when the telephone line if on hook. I later found that there is in fact a known factory defect with the Model #KX-FPG175, which Panasonic never acknowledged.

Panasonic only offers two options for defective units under warranty. The first is to send your original machine to their factory repair center, or to accept a refurbished machine in exchange for your original machine under their Exchange Program. I opted for the latter, since I needed the machine for plain-paper reception business purposes at the time, and the time without while it was in transit to and from the repair center would have been inconvenient.

When I received my replacement unit, I found that it had the same transmission defect as the original unit.

This time I sent the machine in for repair to

Panasonic Factory Service Center

2221 Cabot Boulevard West, Suite B

Langhorne, PA 19047

800-211-7262

215-741-0904

Work Order # 11-466635-00

When the machine arrived back, it had several parts replaced, but the fax transmission feature was still non-functional. After once again spending many useless hours on the phone with Panasonic's customer service representatives, I managed to get the machine working for only a short time, a few weeks, but it eventually failed again.

I then filed a complaint with the New Jersey Department of Consumer Affairs. That contact information is:

Hudson County Consumer Affairs

ATT: Susan

Administration Building

595 Newark Avenue

4th Floor, Room 407

Jersey City, NJ 07306

(201) 795-6295

I was referred to Panasonic at:

Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company

Ms. Patricia Moore, Executive Representative

One Panasonic Way

Mail Drop #2F-3

Secaucus, NJ 07094

201-392-6872

Mrs. Moore also denied knowledge of existing problems and complaints about this unit until I confronted her with documentation of same in the form of complaints filed at the Amazon web site regarding this unit.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?W32454082

Still, she was only willing to have me send the unit to another Panasonic repair center for inspection before she would consider any other alternatives, such as a refund or replacement unit.

She mentioned accusingly that the specific parts replaced in the prior, unsuccessful repair indicated that the documents had been ripped out of the unit. What she was forgetting was she was referring the factory refurbished unit Panasonic had sent to me under their Exchange program, not my new unit. So while she thought she was somehow placing the blame for the faxing problem upon me, she was actually indicting Panasonic itself for sending me an abused and malfunctioning machine which had not in fact been repaired at all. She later acknowledged as well that the first repair center does not even test the machines before returning them to the consumer.

Ms. Moore arranged for me to send the unit back to another Panasonic repair center,

Tech Center

7850 12th Avenue South

Bloomington, MN 55425-1001

952-854-8624

Invoice #TC101220

and this time different parts were replaced, specifically a Document Sensor Switch, which effected the changes needed to allow fax transmissions, at least, for now. Since I received it back the fax transmission feature is working.

But through no fault of my own, as a final result, after all my time, expense, and aggravation, I end up with someone else's repaired machine, when I paid for a new machine which should never have had a problem to begin with. This is not fair and will prevent me from ever considering a Panasonic purchase of any kind in the future.

In my opinion, after all the time and aggravation I suffered I should have been given a refund or a new fully functioning machine, instead of ending up with someone else's reconditioned/repaired junk.

As of today, 11/20/02, the fax has begun to malfunction once again, refusing to transmit fax documents and to pull the paper through the transmission slot.

James

Fresh Meadows, New York

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