First things first: New Clean Sweep.
Now then, dishwasher. On 07/16/2011 we have purchased a dishwasher. It was a GE dishwasher, new model, and we paid $500 for it during one of the big sales Home Depot was having. We assumed that a $500 appliance would last longer than 18 months. Haha! We were wrong.
The dishwasher quits cold turkey Friday before Christmas, December 21st. We have a tech come out, he looks at it for fifteen minutes, and says, “Bad news, your pump is shot. Good news, if you bought extended warranty, it should be covered.”
Why, we did buy te warranty. Here it is right here. After calling the number and being transfered three times, I get to the right department and they tell me, “We’ll send tech on Christmas Eve.”
Me, “Okay.”
Christmas Eve – no tech. This part actually didn’t bother me too much, because I wouldn’t want to work on Christmas Eve.
Tech shows up the day after Christmas. He is surly. He screws with dishwasher for over an hour. “Your pump needs to be replaced.”
Us, “Aha.”
“They have to mail the pump. We’ll put the order in. Five days it will be here.”
January 2nd (5 business days, 13 days without dishwasher) No part.
January 8th (9 business days, 19 days without dishwasher) Part arrives. We call the tech. They tells us, “Eeeh. January 12.”
At this point I’m grinding my teeth, because if I wanted not to have a dishwasher, through Christmas, New Year, and my birthday, and winter break with a large number of teenagers in the house, I wouldn’t have bought one.
January 12, tech comes, complains about the installation, complains about screws being stripped, but dishwasher is fixed. Put a towel by it – it might leak a little.
January 14th, dishwasher runs for the first time. Water is observed on the kitchen floor. No obvious leak. Towel is removed.
January 15th, dishwasher ran for the second time. Water. Where is the water coming from? Kids, did you spill water? Nope, we didn’t. Walk on the floor, oh no, water is coming from under the laminate.
Current state of said floor: puffy. Those swirls you see? Not part of the design. That’s where the floor suffered water damage and puffed up.
January 17th, calling back to Home Depot. Given run around. Finally “we will send tech out Monday.”
Monday = 30 days without a working dishwasher.
At this point I turned into Joe Peshi.
And then I bitched and moaned and vented to Jeaniene Frost, which apparently sounded somewhat like this:
%^%$# $$%()* &&^^%% **&^^% dishwasher! ##$@!44% %^^%%$ &*()*&^%% floor!
They will fix my damn dishwasher. And when I am rich and famous, I will buy a new dishwasher from Somewhere Else. In fact, I will be purchasing most of my appliance at NOT-Home-Depot store from now on. Because we will have to replace the floor or we run the risk of having mold grow under the laminate.
So in the interests of not ending things on a sour note, I decided to show you a picture of a cute cat tree.
The cat tree is taller than both of us. It came in a box and we put it together in about 20 minutes with no fuss.
The cats love it. Best thing about it? It was a hundred bucks on Amazon.
Oliver is closing on 20lbs and he has no problem draping himself over the top towers. The tree does shake a bit when they jump from tower to tower, but no more than an outside tree branch would shake if a twenty pound cat landed on it.
The younger cats really dig it.
Probably all companies have people with horror stories about their service. I suspect someone in Home Depot has gotten well reamed for screwing up the service to someone with a method of telling a LOT of people about a serially botched repair.
Nope, it is not an isolated event. I actually worked for “the big orange box” store both before and after Mr Nardelli left. The only thing that changed was we actually said, “I’m sorry”. I am not a young person and I have worked in many areas of customer service, but this company does not even understand what customer service means. If you get irate enough to mention the word legal or lawyer, they purposely give you a “corporate” number that unless you know the correct extension, you simply go back to their out-sourced customer service center in who knows where. If you complain long enough, but don’t say the “L” words, you might get a $10 gift card, but that doesn’t fix an appliance that could have cost you anywhere from several hundred dollars to several thousand. Don’t expect better service if you are a celebrity, either. I personally know of one instance where they mishandled something for Oprah Winfrey, for goodness sakes!
Complain to your local Better Business Bureau, since it was Home Depot’s original “repair” that led to the damage to your house. With luck, you can get them to cover part or all of the expense. And if all else fails, at least they get a black mall on their record with the BBB.
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First, the cat tree is so very deluxe. I love it. Though I’m sure the cats wonder why it isn’t bigger.
On the dishwasher. What a clusterfuck. And you know, I’ve had great experience with warranties from Staples and Apple. But apparently I’ll be avoiding Home Depot.
Diana Pharaoh Francis recently posted..Meet Krista Ball and Learn Very Cool Things
This is the first time I believe I have ever posted on the site, two things, Thank you both so very much for giving me such enjoyment with the books you write. I love them and they make me giggle which for me is a big thing.
Now the second thing, my 10 year old daughter Sarah insists on calling your big fluffy beast lord Karen and she has asked me for her very own copies of the entire Kate Daniels universe. She giggles at the right places too, and we have spoken about all the grown up things that happen in your world and she thinks you all are great too. It was fun explaining that there were two of you instead of one though.
She agrees that vampires shouldn’t sparkle but enjoys them covered in the gross sunscreen that we slather her poor brother in to keep him from becoming a boiled lobster looking boy. My Sarah is an avid reader and she loves a lot of things, but what she grabs in order to relax and wind down for the night are your books. Thanks again.
Try local dealers. I’ve purchased large appliances from Sears and Lowes, but I always get better customer service from local dealers. Definitely contact HD and let them know you will be contacting the AG of Texas and that you frequently chat on various large websites.
Agreed!
What timing….just bought a washer and dryer from Home Depot this weekend and bought the extended warranty. I read your post a day late. : (. Sorry to hear about what a pain in the neck they have been.
Hi, Kate.
I just emailed you through your blog but I wanted to be sure you received it.
I did reply to your Tweets before but I didn’t receive an email from you. I’d still be happy to help if you can email the full name/phone on the purchase & exactly what HD location it was purchased from with brief details I can reach out to our business partners & follow up with you on this ASAP. Thanks again.
- Nicki (Nicki_Care@homedepot.com)
I’m not certain how often a dishwasher would work in a post-flare Atlanta…
Ilona, maybe you’re experiencing a local flare in your kitchen!
I’m very glad that HD is reaching out to the Andrews…but it might help if you start by using their real names. They write a character named Kate but they are Ilona and Gordon Andrews. That might be the reason for the lack of response…
lol… her Twitter account is probably something like Kate Daniels, which seems normal enough not to look deeper if youre in charge of monitoring tweets @HomeDepot (BRILLIANT way to get it noticed Ilona, good job!) but I too laughed at the idea of a dishwasher in post-flare Atlanta. You could have it work As-Intended when the tech was up, and chant at it when the magic was up. I know theyve never defined how the chanting for cars goes, but Ive always imagined it to be something like “Oh please-start-working, please-start-working, please-start-working, Im-going-to-go-hoarse.”
I have two of that exact same cat tree — one for my own cats and one for my foster cats! My current foster gave birth two weeks ago and keeps trying to put her kittens in the lower “cubby” instead of the various soft fluffy nests I have provided at floor-height throughout the room (she’s a cat, persnickety-ness is expected). I have had to pad the floor around the tree for when the babies fall out. Luckily, they’re old enough and the room is kept warm enough that I don’t have to worry about them past the whole “falling-to-the-ground” thing.
haha I love how Nicki called you Kate :p
About your dishwasher…I’d go with something NOT GE. Unless people give really good reviews for it. Everything that we have ever owned that has been a GE appliance (and I mean EVERYTHING) has broken within two years. Maybe try another brand.
Whirlpool is fantastic.
I could tell horror stories about my GE appliances. I bought three at the same time. Two of them should have come in yellow. I hope all goes well with your flooring.
On the subject of cats, check out the cute Laundry Helper cat:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/acrobatic-kitten-becomes-slam-dunk-sensation-165553116.html
Strange how a little negative publicity will stir the corporate will. I very much like to make like a squeaky wheel, but I generally give the folks I work with a chance to do it right before I begin to make a fuss.
I had a similar experience with Sears and a refrigerator repair. Never use them or step foot in one of their stores again.
You may be able to salvage the floor. Call a fire restoration company and see if you can get HD to pay for it. Just a thought.
Now you just need to add ‘social bling’ to all of your blog posts so I can ‘tweet this post’ automatically… eh, I’ll do it manually. Too good not to share!
Kristi recently posted..Complain, Complain… and Upgrades!
I love it, I shop at Not HomeDepo too, just bought a gas stove and french door fridge, love the kitty tree. My cats would have played in the box
The last time I stepped foot in a Home Depot I was 8 1/2 months pregnant and picking up the final pieces for finishing the nursery – about $500 worth of odds and ends. As my husband was loading all the stuff into the car, I noticed that they had overcharged me for something so I went back in with the receipt thinking they would just refund the difference. No… if we wanted our $50 back, we had to haul all the stuff out of the car and back into the store so they could return EVERYTHING and re-run the bill. Did I mention it was about 10:00 at night and I was hungry? My husband had to pull me screaming from the store.
As a former H.D. employee, I can tell you that extended warranties are pushed, but worthless. I’d advise you to get a lawyer and sue for floor replacement, but as they’re the 2nd largest retailer on the planet, they have excellent lawyers. Good luck with that. However, if you complain to management, and THREATEN a lawyer, they will most likely make good on a new floor. This type of thing happens: H.D. contracts out their warranty work to local contractors, the installers are NOT Depot employees. H.D’s insurance, and the contractor’s insurance (all H.D. contractors must carry $1 million insurance) WILL cover it. Make noise. In all instances in the 6 years I worked for H.D, the squeaking wheel got the grease. They don’t want bad publicity.
Also, GE is crap. LG is one of the best-rated and least expensive. Also, LG products are designed to be simple to repair and repairmen love them. Check it out. Whirlpool is not as good as it once was, and is mostly overpriced.
As a current Home Depot supervisor in a specialty department with occasional dealings in Appliances, I have been privy to many horror stories of botched installs and repairs. I can’t believe that this happened to you, not that I disbelieve you, but rather that they didn’t take steps to make this right. I agree with Gaye, that you need to make some noise, don’t take no for an answer. If the store you bought it from refuses to work to get you the service that you deserve (and with HD touting their service as excellent, then they should bend over backwards to make this right), then you need to contact the district manager team. If that doesn’t work, then you need to contact someone regionally. HD should make this right….asap.
As far as extended warranties go, your mileage will vary. Some people need them and the majority who do are helped, but some never do.
As far as brands, which is best depends on what you’re looking for.
My advice, complain and do so until someone listens. Bad publicity (especially from a writer who can do much to harm to HD’s reputation) is never wanted.
I’m sorry that this happened to you though, especially that close to the holidays. Unacceptable stuff HD.
Love the cat tree, I wish I had a place in my house to put one up that big, my two cats would love love it.
Hmm, I’m really sorry to hear about your kitchen woes, but wanted to share with you that I have had similar issues with Home Depot failing to honor service warranties and warranties of goods installed by its third party contractors. I too have determined that making future purchases, especially of large items, will occur Somewhere Else. Good Luck!