Hating Hunter Douglas
February 24, 2009 at 11:29 pm | 4 Comments »
You can add Hunter Douglas to my personal shit list of companies I’ll never do business with again. Our bedroom blind has failed twice now in six years. Both times, the same latch clutch pooped out. Mind you we paid a premium in 2003 for the Hunter Douglas name in part because the blinds have a lifetime warranty. But what they really meant was lifetime up to two years. See when the blind broke in 2005, the repair was free. This time, they charged us $44. Claimed that cords are wear and tear (even though the latch broke not the cord) and only warranted for two years. Funny how the written warranty makes no such exclusion.
Wonder how much they’ll charge us for repair three. Given the track record, you can check back sometime between 2011 and 2013 to find out.
Update: I complained directly to Hunter Douglas and the company came through in spades. See April 20 update.
Mark, I was wondering how the repair was made. Did someone come to your home and fix it, or did you or someone have to take the blinds down, take/ship them somewhere and wait weeks for the repair while you went without?
That would really piss me off!
It was the latter. I took the set down and dragged it back to the dealer, Home Depot. (A Kafkaesque experience worthy of complaint in and of itself.) Then we lived with a sheet covering the window for several weeks.
The “lifetime warranty” on my Lazyboy cost $60.00 when repairs were necessary.
On the other hand, it WAS repaired.
The Hunter Douglas warranty is pretty much worthless for me because the consumer MUST use an independent HD dealer to return the product to be serviced. The consumer is then subject to the pricing discretion of the dealer. In my case, this charge was 1/3 of the original cost…not much of a “lifetime” warranty deal for a “high end” product that is under 8 years old…in my opinion.