Motorola had this coming. A $5 million class-action lawsuit has been filed against the company by a Georgia resident over terrible customer service.
All phone companies have irate customers who are unhappy with the warranty services. But in Motorola's case, the list is unnaturally long, with reports of Motorola not honoring its warranties surfacing over and over again.
Apparently, the company had been both unwilling and unable to replace the customers' Motorola devices. Warranties represent peace of mind for customers – if anything were to happen within the warranty period, the company will replace or repair the model within the promised time frame. But in Motorola's case, it was quite the opposite. As the list of angry customers has grown, so has the conversation threads online. A Reddit user took to the forum to express a rather detailed complaint, which finally drew an apology from the company.
However, Motorola responded to the complaint by issuing a statement which pled delays at the service centers and admitted that it was not its usual standard of excellence.
Now, with the $5 million lawsuit, the murmur of angry whispers has turned into a full-fledged voice that finally holds the company accountable for the alleged poor customer services. In this case, the plaintiff, who is a Georgia resident, slams the company with violation of express warranty, the Fair Business Act, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act and, at the same time, for being "unjustly enriched." He filed the complaint on April 21 for "unfair, unscrupulous, immoral, and oppressive" business practices, which also makes the company answerable to a sea of angry customers, even though it may take years to arrive at the outcome.
The plaintiff, Douglas Lynch, alleges Motorola took months to repair his defective Moto 360 last year. When he finally got the phone back after the excruciatingly long wait tempered with rather unpleasant communication, it was a cheaper model. Apparently, this is not an uncommon practice among the Motorola customer service, and there have been instances of many such complaints streaming in, some samples of which have also been added to the court filing.
Motorola has finally issued a statement that says, "Motorola has a long history of providing exceptional products and services to its customers. We are aware of the lawsuit, and are investigating the claims, which we believe to be without merit," and then goes on to provide the templated lines that give out the business hours and business numbers that address customer complaints.
While callousness of this order from the customer service department of any company is unacceptable, the internal changes and restructuring that followed in the wake of Lenovo's acquisition of Motorola, may have had a part to play in it.
Photo: Gabriel Alves | Flickr
