Gephardt: Who Pays To Return New Treadmill That Doesn’t Work?
Nov 12, 2020, 7:56 PM | Updated: 8:49 pm
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Imagine being told you must pay hundreds of dollars to return something that never worked.
It happened to a Salt Lake City woman who received an expensive treadmill that did not work from the start. Which raised a question: If a product doesn’t work and its manufacturer or distributor cannot even guarantee when a replacement part should be sent, should a customer have to pay to send it back?
When COVID-19 struck, Katherine Grider opted to quit her gym and invested in a home gym. She bought a NordicTrack treadmill from Utah-based manufacturer, ICON Health & Fitness.
It wasn’t cheap; more than $3,000 in all. A tidy sum for a machine that apparently, didn’t work.
Katherine Grider turned to Matt Gephardt and the KSL Investigators to get a refund for a treadmill that never worked. (KSL TV)
Grider said she contacted ICON Fitness.
“I was told that it’s most likely the motor and that this could happen during shipping,” she said. “So, they shipped us out a new motor.”
Her husband installed the new motor, but the machine still didn’t work.
Grider said ICON offered to try sending her other parts but they couldn’t guarantee when they would arrive or even if they would fix the issue.
“I finally was like, ‘I’ve got to return this,’” she recounted. “I’d already started making payments to the finance company for a machine that didn’t work.”
That’s when Grider said the ordeal went from annoying to outrageous.
“They read me all the fees. I think it was $746 for a machine that never worked -to return it to them,” she said.
With that, she decided it was time to call the KSL Investigators. We reached out to ICON Fitness on Grider’s behalf and asked, is it fair to charge a customer just to return a product that hasn’t worked?
This time, they relented.
In a statement, ICON Fitness wrote, “When processing this return we found that an error had been made. We apologize to the customer and those affected by this.”
Just like that, Grider got her money back.
“It’s just been kind of a nightmare,” she said.
Investigating this one, we found other complaints about new ICON exercise equipment that did not work and the company slow to send replacement parts.
Their response was COVID has slowed down the supply chain.
