14 Apr Exorcizing the soul of a new machine
“I’ve never considered myself a moron before,” writes a hapless dishwasher owner in Portland Hills, Dartmouth, “but my blind faith in Sears proves I should have my mittens tied together with a string, and I should only eat with spoons, as I could easily lose an eye if I tried a fork.”
The unnamed customer is so distraught over fruitless attempts to get the venerable appliance giant to furnish a working dish washer, he’s offering to sell it for the price of the sushi takeout he and his wife ordered Friday night: $57.50. But after 4,300 hits to his viral-bound washer-for-sale ad on Kijiji, no takers.
The owner and his wife built a new house in Portland Hills and installed a new, $800 Sears Kenmore dishwasher. It worked for six months, then stopped draining. After much to-ing and fro-ing, Sears’ South Asian call centre agreed to dispatch a repair person.
[W]e washed dishes by hand for weeks, waiting for their repairman to show up – I guess it took some time for the work order to make it the 15 time zones back to Halifax. Then we have to take 4 hours off from work (the repairman only promises to show up sometime in the four-hour block), burn our gas to get to and from work, only to be told, “we have to order a new drain pump.”
Wash, rinse, repeat:
In comes the part, so we have to book off another 4 hours of work, drive to and from work on our own nickel. In goes the new part, and the dishwasher works, kind of. . . for about 4 months, then it breaks again. Wash dishes by hand for 3 weeks. 4 hours off from work. Order part. Wash dishes for a week. Take 4 hours off. Install new part. Doesn’t work. Order same part again. Wash dishes for two weeks. 4 hours off from work. Part still doesn’t make it work. Order same part for the third time.
At this point we called back the Sears Buddy in New Dehli and suggested that we got a lemon. “Nope. Can’t be a lemon until it’s been fixed 3 times” they say. “It has been fixed 4 times,” says I. “Nope. The last 3 visits have been the same problem, so they only count as one,” says they. I went into the store where I bought it, and said, “You sold me a lemon. Please, sir, may I have another?” “Nope” says they. “We only take your money here. We don’t help you with your problems… call New Dehli. Now shoo, you’re scaring off our next victims.”
Customer thinks about taking page from Kim Jong-un, and “letting my kids starve while I build a catapult and threaten to launch the dishwasher through the window of Sears,” but decides he is too tired. Letter-writing blitz persuades Sears to replace lemon. Identical replacement works for 11 months… and stops draining. Homeowner installs different model from different company: Works fine.
So, if you have the skills and the time to replace the pump in this dishwasher… this baby can by yours for the low, low, everyday price of $57.50. After several months of phone calls, drives home on your work time, and numerous uncalled for bursts of rudeness to your significant other, you’ll have weathered the storm of being treated like a moron by Sears, and you’ll have a dishwasher you can be proud of. And I will have enough cash to pay for the really good sushi we had last night, which helped ease the pounding in my temples after shelling out $800 to replace a dishwasher that’s still under warranty.
Stand by for more price drops.
Visits as of midnight: 23965.
[NB: We do not have Sears’s side of this saga, we’ll be happy to post it when and if it arrives.]
H/T: Jane Kansas