The Fridge, the Continuing Saga.

In this chapter, I'm ready to bring the "war" to home warranty.

To recap:

I moved in here on November 1, no 2. I soon noticed that the fridge didn't seem to be keeping things cold enough, and fresh produce in particular was spoiling much faster than it should. It is an intermittent problem, so it took me a little while to convince myself that it really was the fridge and not my imagination. Mushrooms turned brown alarmingly fast, celery goes limp and sickly, and a salad can't survive 24 hours without getting slimy and smelling "off." The icemaker would make ice cubes, albeit slowly, but the cubes would then form an iceberg in their bin. Obviously, the freezer compartment wasn't staying freezing either.

But I was not concerned, because I had a home warranty purchased by the seller's broker, and even voluntarily added coverage for the appliances myself, because they are all older. The fridge is covered. So I initiated the warranty process to get the fridge fixed on November 15th. And they assigned the issue to Sears. At the time, I thought waiting EIGHT DAYS to get the fridge fixed was unacceptable! (I was so young and innocent then.) So I asked the warranty company to find another contractor. They did. That contractor was able to show up one day whole day sooner than Sears. Sigh. They were not able to fix the fridge on the 22nd. They had to order a part. It was a holiday weekend, blah blah blah. I continued to buy small amounts of fresh produce practically daily, and still found myself throwing out many dollars of spoiled food, but at least I wasn't cooking Thanksgiving dinner! See me being all cheerful and rolling with the punches?

Which brings us to Monday. I didn't get a call from either the warranty company or their appliance repair contractor, so I called the warranty company. They got the appliance company on the line, and they said they had the part. They scheduled the repair for today, Wednesday, the 30th. Okay, this has taken a while, but at least they have the part! Yay!

Which brings us to today. A different repair guy came out, and the first thing he said was, "Let's hope this works!" I said, "HUH?" "I'm sure they told you that the part for this refrigerator was discontinued, so we're going to try to use a slightly different one." No, nobody told me that. Nobody told me anything, nobody from either company ever called me, I have had to follow up to find out what was going on. So, the second repair guy, a very nice guy, worked very hard to put this substitute part into the fridge, and it didn't fit. He called the warranty company from my kitchen and explained the situation to them, and said that the customer (that would be me) was a little aggravated. (I hadn't even begun to get mad yet.) He told me that the company was going to initiate its own search for the replacement part. After he left, I called the company to get some specifics on how long that would take.

The first customer service guy was pretty nice - I explained my situation and my frustration at waiting a week for a part that was being "ordered" only to learn that they weren't able to get it and weren't able to fix it with a substitute. I wanted to know what would happen next. He gave me the number for their appliance ordering department, where I waited on hold for a very long time, and spoke to a young woman who was not particularly nice. I asked how long it would take them to search for the part, and she said, "3 to 5 business days." Okay, so, that brings us to next WEDNESDAY?? Another week of spoiled food and no ice cubes? I asked if there was any way to expedite the search, she said no. I said that I'd had two repair visits already and now I'm being asked to wait another week just to find out whether there will be a third one, and if they can't find the (discontinued) part, what happens next? She said, "Then we will contact you to discuss other options." I said, "How long does that phase take?" (Just trying to calculate how long it will be before I can make a frigging salad and not find myself throwing out expensive fresh produce every other frigging day.) She didn't give me a straight answer. She just kept repeating, "Our process is that we initiate a search for the part. We have more extensive resources than the repair company." We went round and round like this, until, in the interest of my blood pressure, I ended the call.

So, I spent a half hour cooling off, and thinking - wait a goddamn minute. You selected and assigned the contractor - were you informed by your contractor that they couldn't get the right part? So I called back, and this time asked to speak with a customer service supervisor. At this point, we descended into a phone call that should have been recorded and used as a "How to really piss off a customer!" training tool.

I told the story for the third time, and asked, "Was your company informed by your contractor that they weren't able to obtain the correct part for my refrigerator?"
He looked through the notes and said it didn't appear that they had been notified.
Me: "So, let me understand this: Your company selected the contractor, I didn't. Your contractor didn't notify your company OR me about their inability to obtain the part?"

He agreed that this was so.

Me: "And now I, your customer, am supposed to wait another week with a malfunctioning major appliance, wasting money throwing out spoiled food, while you search for the part?"

He: "Yes, we allow 3 to 5 business days."

Me: "3 to 5 days just to see if you can locate one, and then we have to schedule yet another service call to install it?"

He: "Yes, we have to have adequate time to search."

Me: "So, let me restate this. You engaged the contractor, I didn't. Your selected contractor wasn't able to find the proper part, didn't tell you OR me, and then tried to use a substitute, which didn't work. I've given up two mornings for service calls and my fridge is exactly as broken as it started, and now you want me to wait another week while you search for the part? How do you justify asking your customer to put up with the results of YOUR CONTRACTOR'S screw up?"

He: Apologies, apologies, groveling apologies, a promise to contact whoever it is at the warranty company who deals with naughty contractors to scold them.

Me: "Okay, that's nice, but how does that help me, your customer? I didn't hire that contractor, you did. If he'd notified you when he first learned that he couldn't get that part, you could have started your own search process last week, instead you are now asking me to wait basically another week, and none of this is my fault! Can't you expedite this part search process now so I don't have to go another week before I even know when my fridge will work again?"

He: "We have to allow 3 to 5 days."

Me: WHY?

He: Launches into an explanation of their many resources that the contractor doesn't have access to - and they must have 3 to 5 business days, blah blah blah....

Which brings up a fairly obvious question - why do they send a contractor who doesn't actually have the resources of the company behind him?

Me: Okay, I'm just trying to understand how long I'll be living with this and how many more service calls it will take to fix it. Worst case scenario - you can't locate the part. From that point, how long will it take to resolve this?

He: Vague tap-dancing about getting a new appliance, with absolutely no estimate of approximately how long that would take. All the while he's offering those meaningless, soothing the irate customer words they teach these people in training classes - vs. actually empowering them to do the right thing. We prove this a few rounds later.

By now I'm disgusted with the inanity of this conversation, but I offered what I thought was a really reasonable compromise - he expedites the search, I give them until Friday to find the (discontinued) part, and if they don't locate it by then, we move on to a different solution. This is where it gets really priceless:

He: I will make a note for the parts search people to expedite the search.

Me: Great, that's all I'm asking. I shouldn't have to wait days just to find out what happens next. So, if we don't have an answer by Friday...?

He: We have to allow 3 to 5 business days!

ME: So, when you just told me you'd make a note in the file to get them to expedite it, you really didn't mean it.

He: More babbling about the Sacred Three to Five Days!!!

Me: So, the word "expedite" is meaningless.

At this point he desperately wanted to get this unreasonable bitch who didn't understand the Holiness of the Three to Five Day Rule off the phone, but no, we weren't done yet! At the end of the call, like a well-trained parrot, he launched into his script:

"Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

I burst out laughing. "Do you really think you've helped me at all today?"

He practically hung up on me. I just shook my head, still snorting.

This is a highly condensed version of what was a very long phone call - I told him I'd used his company before, that I am a Realtor, that I've always been very pro-home warranty and had actually had a good experience with this company on my personal property years ago, and I'm very disappointed and won't recommend them again. And I'll tell my friends. And I'll be sending an account of this saga to the CEO of the company. I'd have said I'd blog about it, but as this blog ain't exactly high profile, that's a fairly hollow threat. I am just sharing this story for your entertainment.