Back in May my first office chair broke. I liked it so I ran back to OfficeMax and picked up another one. In a moment of weakness I bought the $20 MaxAssurance agreement since the last one broke.
I got the chair home and after two weeks it broke. I went to the OfficeMax site and MaxAssurance is not on the main page. Typing in MaxAssurance in their search engine yields 0 results. After a while I found the page and went through claim process. Denied because the part is not covered by the warranty despite the fact it’s listed in the warranty. So much for automation.
I call them, make a claim, they send a third party contractor to my house, he confirms it broken and says that he’ll order the part and it will take 4-6 weeks to show up. I’m glad I have a backup office chair.
Today Google calendar alerts me it’s been 6 weeks. I call the service guy and he tell me there’s no way he can track the part (I mean he only ordered it) and to call OfficeMax MaxAssurance. I call them and suprise suprise there’s no record that the part was ever ordered. The OfficeMax support rep apologies profusely and says she’ll look into it.
About 15 minutes later she calls back and tells me she has bad news. Not only was the part not ever order ordered but it’s not a part they keep in stock and they have to order it from the manufacturer with a likely delivery time of 60+ days. I tell her that I understand it’s not her fault but I’ve been without my main office chair for 6 weeks already and another 2 months is unacceptable.
So I took it back to the store and the manager cheerfully swapped it out with no questions or paperwork.
Update (7/20/2006): The new chair has the same problem. It appears to be a design defect.
Update (8/10/2006): Today I got a letter with an apology that they were not going to be able send me the part and a gift card for the full amount of the chair, max assurance and the tax.
With our recent layoff, we have a size-C Aeron taking up space in the office. I’ll make you a deal on it.
We’ve had great luck getting ‘em repaired. In both cases, they sent over a repairman who brought the part and fixed it for us. They really are great chairs.
— John Hattan Jul 18, 02:59 AM #
Hey i live around Seattle and i work at an officemax. The actual maxassurance program isnt even done by Officemax, it is a third party ordeal, but we try to completely back it up. It is defiently always better to bring it to the store if you just want the same item. I have been there just over a year and i have never had my manager turn away someone who bought an MA if they just wanted to swap it out. Sorry to hear you had a bad experiance with it though.
— Chris McB Oct 13, 12:55 AM #
Thanks for the feedback; I was ultimately happy with the transaction but was unhappy with the process. OfficeMax was great but MaxAssurance sucked.
The problem is even though they may be separate companies from the customer perspective they are the same. From my perspective I bought a chair and warranty from OfficeMax.
It’s OfficeMax’s responsibility to make certain the MaxAssurances feels like it’s part of OfficeMax. Because anything that MaxAssurance does badly reflects on my perception of OfficeMax.
I still like OfficeMax but I’ll never buy a MaxAssurance warranty again…
— Bryan Mau Oct 14, 03:24 PM #