My letter to Richard Sharp, CEO of Circuit City, received a telephone response today from Kim Biller, special assistant to the CEO regarding the Nepliance letter that is circulating to I-Opener customers who purchased units from Circuit City.
Circuit City is now apologizing for the confusing correspondence from Netpliance and for all of the problems it has created for customers like myself. Circuit City has ABSOLUTELY no intention of attempting to enforce any terms and conditions provided by Netpliance, nor will they provide any credit card information or participate in ANY effort by Netpliance to attempt to enforce its contract. The release of customer information to Netpliance was authorized SOLELY for Netpliance to contact customers and inform them of the delay because of the modifications to the unit. Circuit City wanted to give customers the option of cancelling orders prior to delivery of the "modification proof" model to avoid having them coming back to the store in droves as returns.
As far as Circuit City is concerned, any terms and conditions from Netpliance come into force only after you sign up for the service using the I-Opener, which involves providing Nepliance (NOT CC) with credit card information and name and address information. Circuit City could care less whether you agree to Netpliance's terms and conditions or not. Their involvement ends after you give them the $99 plus tax. So, if you never sign up for the I-Opener service using the I-Opener, Netpliance's contract is 100% irrelevent to you, whether you bought the product in March or April.
Bottom Line: CC is not willing to get involved in Netpliance's sloppy attempt to enforce a contract after the fact. As units continue to trickle in, unless you are asked to sign a contract in the store itself for Internet service from Netpliance, what you do with the unit is your affair.
