Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This review is for customer service more so than the fan. When it arrived, new out of the box, it made a loud clicking noise as if something was obstructing the fan blade, but inside the motor housing. Rather than ship the unit back to the retailer and get a refund (like I should have done), I called Bionaire directly because there's a large STOP! leaflet included in the box, which says not to call the retailer but to call the manufacturer if anything goes wrong. I'm not sure that this is the right approach for customers. The first customer service rep essentially said, "the unit is DEFECTIVE, cut off the cord and DISPOSE of the unit”, and Bionaire would ship us "an UPGRADED" unit. Sounds like a good deal, right? Wrong. A couple of weeks later, I received a package that had not one but two fans in it. One was a Holmes small tower fan that I had not ordered and didn't want, and the other was a Holmes window fan, that, while similar to the fan we bought, costs half as much, doesn't have a remote control, and has a 3-year rather than a 5-year warranty. When I called Bionaire (or rather, “Jarden Consumer Solutions”) customer service again, they said that I'd agreed to accept the Holmes fans as suitable compensation as they did not have our unit in stock. I explained that I was told only that I was getting an "upgrade", and if the lack of a remote control had been mentioned I wouldn't have accepted the switch. At this point the rep became...combative, and from this point treated me like a liar. It is a valid point that the third-party retailer had my money, so Bionaire couldn't provide a refund, but absolutely wrong that I agreed with plan that they specified which DESTROYED the rightfully purchased and DEFECTIVE fan, and saddled me with two useless-to-me, underperforming Holmes fans. Their potentially unscrupulous policies (…tell the customer they are getting an upgrade, and mark your report as “customer agrees to receive two under-performing fans to get them out of the warehouse”…) leave me with no merchandise with which to get a legitimate refund or replacement, the burden or returning two useless Holmes fans, and the pleasure of checking in with them every two weeks to see if they happen to be stocking the model I bought. Or, in short, it leaves me with $70 of nothing but hot, windless hassle, as I’m pretty sure the second rep, the so-called, and no-last-name “Jared”, knew very well that they will NEVER stock this unit, and they will NEVER fulfill my purchase, and NEVER make right the instruction to DESTROY the first fan. (Now that I think on it, that was certainly there simply to ensure that I couldn’t both get a replacement fan from them and return the defective fan to the retailer. Good one.) So, in the future and as a matter of principle I will avoid products from the Jarden family of products (Holmes, Sunbeam, Oster, Rival, Health-o-meter, Bionaire, Patton, Magic Chef, VillaWare, Crock Pot, Food Saver, etc). I will also return defective products to the retailer and get an immediate refund and ignore the manufacturer’s advice.