Circuit City should be riding a wave of positive public relations with its policy of accepting returns of soon-to-be-orphaned HD DVD players, now extending its original 30-day limit to 90 days.

As reported by Engadget:

Hot on the heels of news that Circuit City may in fact be offering up a hush-hush trade-in program for HD DVD purchasers comes official word that said retailer is tripling its standard return window in order to appease early adopters. According to company spokesman Jim Babb, it's looking to "take care of [its] customers" by lengthening the return window from 30 to 90 days for all HD DVD player purchases. When returning the unit, users are given store credit...

I have to rate Circuit City's actions here as an extremely savvy way of building customer loyalty. Although there's no doubt a financial cost to Circuit City for taking on this policy, the impact, in view of the relatively small number of HD DVD players sold to date, should pay off in multiples in a fairly short time.

The question now becomes, will we see Best Buy and Wal-Mart, along with the major regionals, adopting similar policies? If that's going to happen, we should know in a few days.

I still think this is something that Sony should be doing on a top-down basis, as the company and the Blu-ray format are both in need of positive PR. But as it stands now, it's looking like this will go down as an opportunity missed for the slumbering electronics giant.

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