Buyer Be Warned on Sceptre Monitors

February 10, 2001 my Fiancé purchased 2 monitors, of the specified model mentioned above, from a local computer store (CompuSmart). One of these monitors was for myself for a Valentine's day present and one was for her mother.

This past May 11th, 2002 (Saturday at about 11 pm) the monitor that became mine turned itself off, so I turned it back on and thought nothing of it. 15 minutes or so later it turned itself off again and would not turn on any more. So, I boxed it up and took it back to the store on the following Monday, May 13th, 2002. On May 24th, 2002 I received a voicemail on my cell phone and went down to CompuSmart to find out what was up with the monitor (I had a 15" spare that I was using). I was informed at this time that they could not get an RMA out of Sceptre and that if I wish it to be repaired that I would be looking at $100 in labour, $69 in freight (covering both ways) to have it repaired (plus taxes as well), as it would have to be shipped off to Sceptre's warranty depot to be repaired. This monitor has ONLY 1 year parts and labour, 1 year on CRT and 3 years parts on everything else (BUT on the outside of the box is nicely stamped 3 year warranty).

So, I decide to try phoning Sceptre Customer support to see if anything can be done about this. I am kindly told that it is off of warranty (mind you, you must remember that the monitor is only 3 months over warranty from the date of failure (and I kept the slip from the computer store that states when I dropped off and picked up the unit)) and that there is nothing they can do. I ask to speak to this fellows supervisor, thinking that if I go up a level in customer service I might be able to get my point across to someone who can actually do something besides say "NO". Low and behold, I am dropped to the supervisor's voicemail box. Since it is almost the end of my lunch hour at work, I decide not to leave a message because I really don't want him to phone me at work. I do write down his 4 digit mailbox id so that I can contact him at a later time and just go straight to talking with him. Well, later that night (Sceptre's offices are on the west coast which means that I can phone until about 7:30 local time and he should still be there) I try phoning. Straight to voicemail. I wait a bit longer and try again, same thing, no answer, straight to voicemail. I try once more and sure enough, same thing. About this time, it is about 7:15 pm local time and I decide to try again next week realizing that I will have to wait until at least Tuesday to phone as it is Memorial Day in the US on Monday, May 27th, 2002. So, Tuesday comes and I phone several times during the day and all I can get is his voicemail. By May 30th, I am starting to think that all these people do is avoid people and HIDE behind the voicemail box. I figure since the gentleman is hiding out behind the electronic mail box that I would try giving him an e-mail, further more it is much easier to track who said what. Well as luck would have it, my ISP must have a bad record for the DNS entry for Sceptre, as my e-mails bounce. So, I use my account at Canada.com to send a message. It goes through and does not bounce!

I receive a response back the next day from the fellow May 31, 2002. Here is the contents of the message that I received:

P73V has 1-year labor & 3-year parts warranty, and the warranty terms and policy are printed on the Sceptre Warranty Card inside your new P73V monitor box. Since it was purchased on 2/10/01, it is out of the original 1-year labor warranty now, and unfortunately, Sceptre has no control about how much CompuSmart will charge you for the repair. Regards, Patrick