Comforts Of Home

about 2 or 3 weeks ago I purchased a control board for my pioneer lopi wood pellet stove. when I received the board, the stove tech installed it, and everything worked except the auger that feeds the pellets to the firepot. at that point he wired the auger direct and found that the auger did work. I then called comforts of home to let them know that I would be returning the control board for a replacement. the man said he had never received a faulty board from this company and told me several things to try to get the auger to work, to no avail. so I asked them to exchange it for one that works, and for some reason, their not willing to exchange the $160 circuit control board.Product_Or_Service: control boardDesired Settlementone pioneer lopi control boardBusiness Response Customer purchased a control board December 20, 2014. Customer called back on December 30 stating the auger would not feed and wanted to return control board. I have serviced and sold Lopi pellet stoves for 20 years and have never had a new control board that was bad from the box, all of the boards are tested and certified prior to being shipped to us. Because we service and sell these stoves I tried to help the customer. As a side note, I was very curious why the customer bought a part from us. We are a very long ways from her location. She indicated she did not want to pay the cost for her local dealer. These stoves should be handled by a dealer and serviced by a certified dealer.I could not figure out why the customer was buying a part from us, we are long way from her and a local dealer would be able to take care of her situation. The customer explained that she did not want to pay for a service call and had someone who could fix the stove. I was trying to help and did not charge her for any service time. In my conversation with the customer I explained that the control board was not bad. she had another issue that was causing her stove not to feed. There are several issues that can cause the stove not to feed. I was trying to help [redacted] figure out why her stove was not feeding. I can tell from experience that many consumers try to blame a part that is working fine the stoves are a system and need a proper service tech. to test parts and diagnosis what is needed. This can be very difficult over the phone. In my conversation with the customer I told her repeatedly to unplug the stove and that we would need to jump over the vacuum switch and plug the stove in but the jump wire would need to be protected because we would be working with a LIVE circuit. [redacted] assured me that they had jumped the wire properly. She plugged the stove in and over the phone I could hear the control board short and blow. I told her that at this point the control board was blown and would not work anymore. This is the problem trying to help people over the phone. The customer was worried about the money for service but is not qualified to properly service her stove and not wants me to cover her mistakes. We have a policy at the store to never take back electrical parts. This was developed over the years because of situations just like this. People would blow a part and want us to cover it. I feel bad for the customer but I heard the board blow and cannot expect my vendor to take a part back that was good before it went to the customer.