For his son’s 13th birthday, Carlos Medina bought a new GoPro 6 video camera from a Fry’s Electronics store in San Marcos.
The family gathered around the dinner table as his son tore open the box when, several minutes later, Carlos noticed his son was fumbling with the camera.
“While I am having dinner, [I see that] he’s having a hard time trying to put the battery in,” Medina told NBC 7 Responds.
He asked to take a closer look at the battery and the camera.
“I realized that it was the wrong battery. I looked it up and I realized it was for a GoPro 4, not a 6," Medina said. "Then, I started looking at the camera itself and I realized [the camera] was a 5, again, not a 6. The box said a GoPro 6. Inside was a GoPro 5 and a GoPro 4 battery.”
Medina said he called Fry’s and the store told him to bring the camera back to the store.
Once there, Medina said he showed a Fry’s employee pictures that he took of the unopened box before he gave it to his son. He also showed pictures of the battery and the camera and neither matched the box it came from.
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“They said they couldn’t do anything about it,” Medina said. “I would have to go through the manufacturer, which is GoPro, and they printed out a phone number.”
Medina told NBC 7 Responds the Fry’s employee said they had seen other instances of errant packaging with GoPro cameras.
Medina said he called GoPro’s offices the following morning.
“They wanted further proof that the GoPro inside was not something that I put inside so I had to send further pictures and luckily I had pictures of the box before it was open,” he said.
Medina said GoPro told him it would look into it. Medina, however, was worried that this was a bigger issue and he may be out the $500 he spent. More importantly, his son’s birthday would be ruined.
That was when Carlos contacted NBC 7 Responds.
We reached out to Fry’s and GoPro. The following morning Medina received an email from Fry’s.
“They said to go ahead and put the old one in a box and ship it to them," he said. "That they would send me a GoPro 6 with the battery.”
A Fry’s spokesperson told NBC 7 Responds, “We're happy Mr. Medina received the product he wanted and that Fry's and GoPro were able to rectify the mistake."
NBC 7 Responds called GoPro shortly after receiving Medina's complaint. A spokesperson from GoPro said the company did not get the message and resolved this case on their own.
“Mr. Medina’s camera was replaced within days of him contacting us," Fry's said in a statement. "We believe this is an isolated incident.”
Medina told NBC 7 his son now has his new GoPro. Carlos has been filming his son’s baseball games and that they are happy with the camera.
