3 posts tagged “bandai sucks”
And, less than a week after I file a complaint with the BBB, their reply:
Dear Trudy,
I sincerely apologize for not replying to you sooner. Our policy is, once we have received the defective product from you, we will ship out the replacement product.However, since I have not responded to you with instructions or within the 7 days window, I will gladly ship the replacement discs (Vol. 1-8) to you FedEx, next day, so that you guaranteed the copies early next week.
At your earliest convenience, please send back your copy of the defective Escaflowne (discs only, no packaging), standard mail, to the following address:
Bandai Entertainment
Attn: Customer Service
5551 Katella Ave.
Cypress, CA 90630
Once again, I apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused.
Regards,
support@bandai-ent.com
It only took them almost a month to respond to my numerous e-mails and phone calls. It would have been nice if they contacted me with this information, about, oh, say, three weeks ago? How long does it take to copy and paste an address in an e-mail and hit the send button?
Apparently, too long for Bandai Entertainment. I'll ship the DVDs out tomorrow and report back when the replacements finally manage to find their way back here.
After numerous attempts to contact Bandai since my last blog entry, I have filed a Better Business Bureau report against them. Hopefully, this will be enough to incite them to take action.
But I'm not going to hold my breath waiting.
On August 4th, I bought the Bandai AnimeLegends Escaflowne set at my local Best Buy.
On August 7th, I realize that most of the disks have flaws in them. I write Bandai's Customer Service with the following response:
To Whom It May Concern:
I recently purchased the "Anime Legends" DVD edition of the Escaflowne series. Years ago, I had originally purchased the series in clamshell VHS sets, but because I still enjoyed the series so many years later, I decided that it was imperative that I purchase the "Anime Legends" copies of the DVDs, which were highly affordable--even on my limited budget.
I was surprised to discover that the numerous flaws in these DVDs. Episodes would play in almost twice their speed; some episodes simply wouldn't play at all. As affordable as this product was, I would not pay $35 dollars for DVDs of this caliber; these flaws made it difficult, if not impossible to enjoy the series the way I did when I watched them on VHS, all those years ago.
As a result of the flaws on these DVDs, I will no longer be purchasing any Bandai products. I hope that in the future, you work to produce a product that is both affordable AND high-quality.
Sincerely,
[My Name Here]
On August 9th, they reply with the following message:
Dear Customer,
I’m sorry to hear that you have purchased a defective product…
Would you like a replacement for the Escaflowne Anime Legends discs?
Regards,
By then, I discovered that Bandai knew about the defective disks, but for some reason, they were still sitting on shelves. I craft the following reply and send it to Bandai only a few minutes later, on August 9th:
To Whom It May Concern:Yes, I would like a replacement set.My phone number is XXX.XXX.XXX.My address is:[My Name Here][My Address Here]
Please let me know if you require any further information.Regards,[My Name Here]
Yesterday, August 23rd, I had not heard from Bandai since; my DVDs did not come in the mail, and the customer service representatives did not bother gracing me with a reply. So, I call customer service. I get their voice mail. I call them again. I get their voice mail. I call again, I get the voice mail. And after about a half dozen times calling customer service during their office hours at various different times, I give up and leave a message with my contact information and my problem.
They didn't bother returning my call.
I'm going to call them again tomorrow, but I find Bandai's entire charade absolutely outrageous. They knowingly provide a product that is defective, then instead of recalling the defective product, make it an absolute pain in the neck to have it replaced.
When I purchased the AnimeLegends Escaflowne Set, I was also pondering purchasing the Earth Girl Arjuna DVD set. But after all this hassle, I doubt that I'm ever going to buy Bandai DVDs again.
