I remained calm.

Because this situation is not worth stressing myself further. Stress is very bad for me, and I am not going to compromise my health over this bullshit.

So, I called the not just worthless, but actively awful warranty company late this afternoon, because OF COURSE they didn't contact me. Once again, I got some perfectly nice, perfectly clueless customer service person - I do not go off on perfectly nice customer service people who just happen to get my call when I call in to ask WTF they are doing with this ridiculous saga that has been going on for nearly a MONTH now.

Nice gal looked up the status of my repair and said she would call the part order people to find out what's going on. Put me on hold. Came back to report that they found the part!!! and the repair company would schedule a time to come put it in. I said, "That's nice, when did they find it? Because nobody has contacted me about anything, I have had to follow up every time." She didn't have access to that information. (Uh-huh.) She reported to me that the scheduler claimed that they tried to call me and they didn't have the correct number for me. I said, "Wouldn't they get my number from you? You just confirmed my number at the start of this call, so you have the right number." Nothing she could say to that. She then called the company who would put the part in, and got their scheduler on the line in a 3 way phone call. It went something like this:

Repair Co: "We can come out on Monday afternoon."

Me: "Great, another weekend with a half-working major appliance! Before we schedule this, I want to confirm that you are sure that this is the correct part," and explained that this would be the third service call, and last time I wasn't told until the tech walked in the door that they were trying to use a part that "might work." I want to be sure that this is the correct part this time before I waste another afternoon.

Repair Co.: "Please hold, I will talk to the tech."

Hold....

A male voice comes on the line, and once again, things go sort of sideways. I asked him if he was sure the part was the right one, and again explained that last time they came out it was with something they were going to try to "make work." This guy couldn't tell me for sure it was the right part - he'd have to have the tech "look at it" in the morning. Huh? Wouldn't it be identified by, oh, I don't know, a Part Number, which would match the appropriate part number for that model of refrigerator? What is the guy going to know by "looking at it" - it was presumably located via a part number, either it's the right damn part or it isn't! I remained calm. I then asked when they received the part, he couldn't tell me that either. He said he would have the tech who will take care of it look at the part and make sure it's the right one. Apparently there is only one person in the company who can figure this out, so let's hope he remains healthy. He said they will call me tomorrow morning, right after the tech gets in. I confirmed with this guy that he had my correct number, and he told me the number they had for me, and it is my cell phone number - so much for the crap about not being able to call me, it is always on, always with me, and has voicemail. It's not just the lousy customer service, it's the blatant mendacity.

But I am so calm, I am a tranquil pool of Zen - I am mentally drafting the detailed letter I will send to the CEO of Absolutely Hellish Service, sharing with him my delightful experience with the follow-up by his minions, and just thank my lucky stars it's a relatively minor issue, and not, say, no air conditioning in August.

And as Gawd is Mah Witnuss, I will NEVER, EVER recommend this company to a client - because, and apparently unlike them, I DO care very much about my clients. Imagine if this was a situation where the A/C went out in the August heat, and an 80 year old heart patient was given this kind of lack of follow-up and runaround? I know that this isn't a life and death situation - it's an annoying problem that has affected my grocery bills and cost me money, but it won't kill me - but a measure of a company's, or an individual's, attention to detail and customer service is in how they treat the "minor" matters. If they can't get a refrigerator fixed in a month, I don't want to trust them with a client's HVAC.

I could launch a related rant about home inspections and the stuff I found here after moving in that wasn't noted on the inspection report, but would have been really nice to know, ya know, because I would have asked to have it fixed. (I like to be there for inspections, but in this case could not.) But that's a subject for another blog post, one of these days.

On a totally different note - my audiobook listen of the month is Stephen King's newest book, 11/22/63. Long ago I was a big Stephen King fan; I loved his early horror efforts like Salem's Lot and The Shining, but he kind of lost me with a few of his later books, and I just sort of stopped paying attention. I read so many great reviews of 11/22/63, I decided to give it a shot. Holy. Crap. It's amazing - it's not "the usual Stephen King," it's not horror, it's a fascinating time travel story. I'm barely a couple of hours into the 30 hours of audio, and I have to force myself to put the damn thing down to get something else done. The dogs are allowed to wander and sniff to their hearts' content if Mommy has her iPod on - I'm absolutely hooked. Maybe I was able to stay so calm with the idiocy this afternoon because half my brain is currently in Maine, in 1958.