Leapfrog

Full review
Purchase Experience:
I ordered a Leapster L Max and a Dora wildlife adventure game for it for my 4 1/2 year old from Santa for Christmas 2007 on November 24th. It was the first and last time I will ever purchase from Leapfrog.com. The site itself was a fairly typical online shopping site--easy enough to find things if you know what you are looking for and with the 25% off Christmas sale and an online coupon and free shipping offer it was the best price by far. My only complaint on purchase experience is that it seemed like the server was bogged down and it took quite awhile to load pages compared to other sites.

The package came fairly quickly and the box for the game appeared to be unopened and in good condition. I wrapped it and put it aside to stick under the tree Christmas Eve.

Defective Product Received:
We've had a mixed experience with Leapfrog products in the past. We have a globe that has worked very well and the kids love, but we went through two my first leap pads both of which broke after a few months of heavy use and I have a Little Touch Learning System for my 14 month old which works fine but doesn't interest him in the least. But, there was a lot of publicity for the L Max--it was featured as a gift suggestion on a few local news shows--and my daughter had seen it and it was the only thing she asked Santa for.

When my daughter opened the L Max from Santa Christmas morning, she was very excited. We unwrapped it, put brand new batteries in, turned it on, set the country and she sat down on my lap and started to navigate the toy using the touch pen. As soon as we went to the list games section, and selected one the screen shut off and no matter what button we pressed we could not get it to come back on. The instructions were no help at all. They just said to put new batteries in if the game doesn't come on, so I put in new batteries (even though the ones I had just put in were also new) and tried again and still nothing. It's like the whole game shorted out in less then 3 minutes of use. My daughter cried for a good part of Christmas because Santa brought her a toy that didn't work.

Can't Get A Hold of Someone To Exchange Defective Product:
I went to the site to try and figure out how to return the defective L Max for one that works. It said to send an e-mail to the same address the order confirmation came from or call a 1-866 number. I called the number and got a message that it was not their normal business hours (not surprising since it was Christmas evening), so I sent an e-mail. A few hours later I received two automated e-mails, one saying they will contact me in 2-3 days and another opening an account on their support site. When I went to their support site and logged on, they had my e-mail entered, but no other information that was helpful.

My daughter woke up the day after Christmas and asked if Santa came back to bring her a new toy yet. I told her Santa was working on fixing it. Since 3 days to even begin the exchange process seemed ridiculous, I called the 1-866 number in the morning. I was on hold for 2 hours before I had to give up. I called again in the afternoon and after another 40 minutes on hold, I finally got someone on the phone. She had no information, no ability to help, no idea how to exchange the product and told me she doesn't determine whether a product will be exchanged. She told me that someone who could help me would call me back that same day. They never did.

I called again this morning and after another long hold experience got the same thing--someone who could not authorize an exchange, had no ability to help me and told me someone would call me back. They still haven't.

It has only been two days, but I have never had any issue with any online site trying to do something as simple as exchange a defective product and a toy manufacturer should realize that when they don't promptly resolve issues, they are disappointing a child. By contrast, one of the toys I got from eToys.com for Christmas was working fine, but was missing a part. I sent an e-mail to eToys.com Christmas evening right after my e-mail to leapfrog.com and by 10am the next morning, I had an e-mail back from eToys apologizing for the missing part, telling me to keep the original shipment and that they have shipped a replacement to me premium shipping, no additional cost or trouble to me. To me, eToys' quick a response is at the exceptional range of the customer service spectrum, but not being able to get someone to tell me that they will exchange the product and xyz is the exchange procedure is horrible. On their site Leapfrog.com gives a return address but warns you not to send anything there without prior return authorization which you can't get because you can't contact anyone who will give that authorization in a reasonable timeframe. Based on the experience I've had so far I would NEVER recommend this site and I question the quality control on their products.

I will update my review if and when I get a response. I'm hoping that I don't have to resort to disputing the charge with my credit card company, but based on the lack of service so far and the description of similar experiences the other 2 other reviewers had with Leapfrog.com, I'm suspecting I may.

UPDATE:
On the third day of calling Leapfrog.com and not getting the promised call back, I reached another customer service rep who explained the procedure was that a product specialist was supposed to call me back to take me through some troubleshooting steps and if that doesn't work, they will make arrangements to exchange the product. I told her I had been calling for three days with no call backs. She promised someone would call back that day.

When once again, they didn't call back as promised. I called for the fourth time and this time I actually got someone capable of doing something and recognized that Leapfrog.com was being less than responsive up to then. The service rep who picked up the phone, "Josh", took me through some troubleshooting steps--exactly the same ones that are printed in the toy's instructions and that I performed on Christmas day. As was the case on Christmas day, none of them worked--the machine was completely dead. Josh then said he would issue a request to ship me a new machine with a return shipping label to send back the broken one. He said he would call the next day to confirm that the new Leapster had shipped and provide a tracking number. This would have been a satisfactory conclusion if I could end the Leapfrog "customer service" saga there.

The next day, I didn't hear from Josh. At the end of the day I called just to confirm the package was on its way. The person who answered this time, "Whinney", said no, there is no new machine on its way to me and it is against their policy to ship a replacement based on a phone call. Leapfrog.com's policy is they have to mail a return shipping label, the customer needs to send in the broken machine, their factory needs to confirm it is really broken and they can then issue a request for a replacement shipment. My reaction was that's ridiculous. It will be over a month to get their defective product replaced and she said yes, it would likely be 6 to 8 weeks more (that means keeping my daughter waiting for her Christmas gift until March). She said that if we don't like the policy, we should send an e-mail to the company complaining. She asked for some numbers off the machine and said she would have the label sent to me. I was more than very annoyed. My husband called and tried to reach a supervisor and got the same story. We decided we would call our credit card company following the New Year's Day holiday and dispute the charge. Meanwhile my daughter continued to ask when Santa was going to fix her toy.

The day after New Years I got a call from "Josh", the original helpful customer service rep. He said he had had a car accident and was out of work so had not been able to contact us back until then. He said he was calling to let me know there was a new machine on it's way to us, and yes, the other rep was correct that it was against their policy to send a new one before we sent the broken one back, but he arranged for an exception because we were having so much difficulty with Leapfrog's customer service. I hung up hoping he was right there was a machine on it's way, but suspecting I would only receive a return shipping label.

Well, I DID get the new Leapster L Max on Friday Jan. 6 and it works great. We wrapped it and put it under the tree last night (which is still up) with a note from Santa to my daughter apologizing for the late gift. She was very happy and spent the day playing with it. It really is a very nice toy now that we have one that works.

Note, I updated my original rating for Leapfrog.com from 1 star to 2 because the issue afterall this was resolved in a reasonable timeframe due to Josh's efforts, but the fact is Leapfrog.com's return policies for defective merchandise are not customer friendly and there was far more aggravation and time spent on my side than should have been necessary for a simple exchange.