The following statement was submitted to ConsumerAffairs.com by Hy Cite Corporation:
A Message from Hy Cite Corporation/Royal Prestige
End of Hy Cite Corp. Statement
Complete customer satisfaction is our number 1 priority. Hy Cite Corporation, the owner of the "Royal Prestige" brand, sells its Royal Prestige products through authorized independent distributors. Hy Cite and our distributors are committed to serving our customers. While no business is free from customer complaints, with hundreds of thousands of customers, the number of our customer complaints is exceptionally small. In fact, our customer satisfaction level is extremely high and the response to our products in the home is overwhelmingly positive. Please visit our websites at www.royalprestige.com and www.hycite.com to learn more about our company and to review customer testimonials. They speak volumes about our products and customer commitment.
Our Products
We belive we offer the finest cookware available at any price and, with our 50-year limited warranty, they are a smart, lasting value. Even more important, our cookware is designed to complement your healthy lifestyle. It has been specifically engineered to allow you to cook in a healthy way using moderate heat and little or no water or grease, which can help your food retain valuable nutrients and reduce your fax intake. We are proud to offer our products and excited that more and more people are learning about the health benefits of "waterless greaseless" cooking.
Our Pledge
It's simple. We want all of our customers to be completely satisfied with our products and service. If you have any problems, questions or comments, here is how we can be reached. Please do not hesitate to call so that we may assist you.
Warranty, Merchandise or Delivery: Please call our Customer Service Department at 1-800-279-3373 (bilingual).
Billing or Financing: Please call our Credit Department at 1-800-280-9708 (English) or 1-800-280-9709 (Spanish).
All Other Matters: Please call our Customer Care Department at 1-877-494-2289 (bilingual).
Hy Cite Corporation
333 Holtzman Road
Madison, WI 53713-2109
January 21, 2002
Last summer, Hy Cite Corp. asked ConsumerAffairs.com to put it in touch with consumers who had submitted complaints to us. We provided contact information for 27 consumers and the company recently reported the following results:
We are pleased to inform you that all complaints have either been resolved by us or abandoned by the consumers. We have attached specific details of our efforts, contacts and success at resolving the complaints lodged by the twenty-seven consumers you provided to us. The following is a summary of our efforts.
- To date, we have made efforts to contact all twenty-seven consumers. ...
- One of the twenty-seven consumers expressed that she was pleased with her purchase of Royal Prestige products.
- Sixteen of the twenty-seven consumers responded to our inquiries, which resulted in all sixteen consumers having their issues resolved. Ten of the sixteen that responded had their issues resolved and have signed a resolution letter to that effect. ... Notably, six of the sixteen consumers had their issues resolved either by the sales office prior to our contacting them or they had minor issues, such as warranty replacements, etc., that were handled immediately and we did not feel a resolution letter was needed for the files.
- The remaining ten consumers did not respond to our inquiries or ceased communicating with us to conclude the resolution. ... Significantly, we have discovered that several of these ten consumers have never had an account with us, indicating that they were never customers of Hy Cite Corporation/Royal Prestige.
As you can see by the above summary ... the complaints posted on consumeraffairs.com have either been fully resolved or abandoned. Hy Cite Corporation/Royal Prestige and the Distributors who market Royal Prestige products have always worked very hard to resolve issues when made aware of the problems, as we have done in this instance, and believe we are unfairly and inaccurately portrayed on consumeraffairs.com.
As a result of our specific efforts to successfully resolve those complaints appearing on consumeraffairs.com, the information posted on consumeraffairs.com is false and there is no basis for listing Hy Cite Corporation/Royal Prestige or any of its Distributors on your website. As an organization concerned with consumer affairs, certainly you are interested in accurately portraying companies and recognizing those companies that respond specifically, positively and universally to the consumers' complaints posted on consumeraffairs.com. Accordingly, we request your cooperation in removing Hy Cite Corporation/Royal Prestige and any of its Distributors from your website. In light of the holidays, we request our removal from consumeraffairs.com and other related website by January 11, 2002.
Regards,
Larry Schauff
Vice President-Financing
We have noted the cases that the company says it resolved. Most of the resolutions consisted of payments to the customer. In some cases, the company declared the case "resolved" when the consumer failed to respond or stopped communicating. Not all of the cases appeared on our site and we were not able to identify a few of the cases cited by the company; thus, not all of the "resolutions" appear on the site.
Meanwhile, we have added a number of new complaints that have been received since last summer. As of Jan. 21, 2002, there are 66 complaints in our database. About half have been received since July 2001.
Since the "resolved" complaints are similar in nature to the complaints received during the last six months, we see no reason to remove any of the old complaints. We believe they serve a useful purpose by alerting consumers to the difficulties others have encountered so that they might take steps to avoid similar problems.