After officially closing all U.S. stores on March 8th, 2009, Circuit City has re-opened with a new online store at http://www.circuitcity.com. The newly re-launched online retailer promises lower prices, wider selections, faster shipping, and 24/7 customer service.
Circuit City today isn’t the same Circuit City we knew before the bankruptcy. The company is now under new ownership, the same ownership that owns Tiger Direct and CompUSA – Systemax. Systemax purchased the Circuit City brand, trademark, website, and other assets.
The purchase also included customer records that the original Circuit City owned. This leads to many privacy issues and Systemax is giving users the opportunity to Opt-out and NOT have their personal information transferred to Systemmax, or the ‘new’ Circuit City as we know them today.
Opting Out of Circuit City’s New Ownership Transfer
To opt-out you will need to head over to the CircuitCity.com Opt-Out Page and fill out your email address that is associated with your personal information. Once you have submitted this form you will be sent an email with a confirmation link to click. After clicking the link be sure to click the button at the bottom of the page that you wish to opt out. Apparently, that’s all you have to do.
Besides the privacy issue of customers being transferred to the new ownership and having to opt out of the transfer, there are other issues that seem to be apparent. There is a new Privacy Policy that you should probably take a look over and then there is the new return policy that actually might make you want to think twice before ordering from the new Circuit City.
New Return Policy
CircuitCity’s return policy states leaves a loophole that says if they don’t want to refund or replace your product then they don’t have to and aren’t liable – “Returns will be for store credit or refund at CircuitCity.com’s sole discretion.” Basically, if you have a broke product that you just spent $1,000 bucks on that no longer works, they may not even take it back and may not even replace it no matter how many days since you bought the product.
One of the worse returns policy is that you CANNOT return any products of “Compaq, IBM, HP, Toshiba, Epson and others.”. It goes on to state that these are “not returnable to CircuitCity.com FOR ANY REASON.”. WOW – talk about a stern return policy. This is beginning to sound a lot like an eBay transaction or classified ad that’s sold as-is.
All I can say is to have your attorney thoroughly read the return policy before buying anything from the new company.