It seems appropriate on Black Friday to write a post related to shopping. QVC is a great multimedia shopping outlet. They have interesting products at generally good prices. The have hard to find and unique items that you would have never thought about, but there is a little bit of dark lining on their little cloud of shopping bliss. Often what you buy is not really what you think you are buying.
Beware of the “available only on QVC” statement when it is made; you should probably avoid it. What QVC does is go out to vendors, name brand vendors, and create partnerships with them. The vendor then makes a “special version” of one of their products for QVC so that they can sell it fast and cheap. The problem is that if the buyer should have an issue with one of these products, he/she is pretty much out of luck. QVC says to call the vendor and the vendor has no idea of what you are talking about because they dont make that item (except for QVC). Starting to see the problem?
I have experienced two examples of this…
Sharper Image maked the Ionic Breeze air purifier a while back and my wife, being a smoker, felt that it would be good for us to have one since I don’t smoke. We bought one via QVC. The sales rep for the presentation was from Sharper Image, the product says Sharper Image right on it, but this one was made exclusively for QVC. It worked great for a while, but it was hard to clean, and it started doing some odd things (sparks, etc) so my wife called Sharper Image whose customer service department was quite rude to her and basically told her that she was crazy and they they had no record of ever having made such an item. She then called QVC who told her to call Sharper Image… round and round. I think she gave up on that one… it’s still sitting in the corner, useless.
The other example is an Aerobed. Our bed broke just before our last move, so we thought we’d get an Aerobed for our temporary use and then use it as a guest bed afterwards. Once again… Aerobed rep selling a QVC special bed (even advertised to be usable as your everyday bed). We bought it and it was excellent. Six months after we started using it the pleating came undone within a day or two and the bed became and beach ball. My wife is once again going off to battle the Customer Disservice departments. We’ll see how that goes.
My wife and I like QVC. They used to have great customer service, but lately it has really been lacking… it’s still often better than most places though. I am not writing this to badmouth QVC or the vendors, even though I do think what they are doing is a bit shady. I am writing this so that maybe someone reading this will think a little more before jumping in on one of QVCs hot deals. Honestly, most things you see on there you can get on Amazon for about the same price… and at least Amazon sells the real item. Buyer beware!
