JedFonner.com

I’ve spent about 4 hrs now on hold with Logitech technical support. I received a Logitech Harmony 676 Remote as a wedding present, and I was hoping to use it to unify all the devices currently connected to my TV. Unfortunately, the device arrived broken, and getting it replaced has been an utter nightmare.

On Tuesday, I called Logitech Harmony technical support. It took about 15 min to get through to level 1 support. They stepped me through all the basic troubleshooting steps that are on their support site and which I’d already done myself. After about 10 min of that, they realized they’d need to transfer me to “level 2″ support. Alright, I figured now we’d get somewhere. Wow was I wrong.

I spent about 45 min on hold waiting for level 2 support. I couldn’t wait any longer and had to hang up. A little later I called back, and had to wait 15 min for level 1, then went through the SAME steps with the level 1 support technician. When he finally believed me that I needed level 2 support, he put me on hold.

After an HOUR of waiting, I finally got to a level 2 support technician. He quickly diagnosed the problem: my remote was broken and I needed a replacement. Now this is where it gets even worse.

Instead of transferring me to their warranty department, the level 2 support technician took down all my contact info and said he would email it to the warranty department and they would “contact me within 2-3 business days”.

Well, 3 days later, no word from the warranty department. So I called them and after another 30 minutes on hold, I finally got to speak with someone, except guess what, they don’t have any record of me speaking with a level 2 technician, and they can’t send me an RMA until they hear from level 2. Un-frickin-believable.

After more waiting for another level 2 technician to confirm what the last one said but forgot to write down, the warranty department is finally able to send me an RMA, provided I fax or email them my gift receipt. Then they’ll mail me a new one, and I have to pay to ship them back my broken remote.

Update 9/11: After emailing in a scan of the gift receipt 2 days ago, I still hadn’t heard from them, so I called today. After 20 minutes on hold, I was told that they were waiting on me to approve a small issue: instead of shipping me an exact replacement of my unit, they were going to send me a later version since mine was discontinued. Now, I specifically remember being told about this the first time I spoke with the warranty department, and specifically said this was OK. For some reason I guess, they needed to double-confirm. And when were they going to let me know about this? If I hadn’t called, I never would have gotten my replacement. Man, you really have to hound these people.

Overall, I don’t think Logitech could have made this process any more painful. I’m pretty much fed up with them. If anything else goes wrong, I’m going to return the device to Amazon for store credit. And I highly doubt I’ll be buying any more Logitech products in the future.