Washing Machine Fiasco with Sears

This little light has been the cause of my week long frustration (my close friends have already heard me grumbling about this story). Last Tuesday I was all ready to do a whole pile of laundry, so I put the first load in and let it wash. The washing machine broke half way thru the cycle and the door wouldn't unlock so that I could get into the washer to get the clothes out...the clothes just happened to be all of my children's pants!

So I called Sears for the warranty repair (the washer is not even a year old) explaining the situation that I needed to get the clothes out soon or they would go funky...not to mention that my children no longer had pants for the week. To make a long story short, Sears was very uncooperative and didn't offer any empathy even after I called 9 times & explained my odd situation. They said the soonest I could get a repair would be March28th...that was just unacceptable to me.

By the 9th call to them on Friday, I had 'HAD IT'. So I called their head office and finally talked to someone who could help me. She called the Calgary repair center and set up an appointment for the next day (Saturday) for someone to come out to do the repair. Guess I should have called the head office in the first place...note for next time.

The repair guy came, but couldn't get into the washer because he had to order the parts that were disabling the door lock...and really what's two more days to our already funky clothes! So that was OK, he said he'd come back on Monday...and finally today at 5:00pm the washer was fixed...and the clothes inside were free! Yeah!

When the repair man installed the new parts today, he actually had to 'break-in to' the washer and bust open the lock because this Kenmore model doesn't have any other way to unlock the door. In doing this, he damaged the front panel of the washer and tried getting out of ordering me a new one...but I stuck to my guns and said, 'you break it, you replace it'...I couldn't help that Kenmore's poor design would result in this during the repair.

My advice to any of you who are shopping for a front-loading washing machine...make sure you get one with a latch on the lock so that you can access it from the bottom and open your washer door if the circut board goes like ours did.

I know it's not a big deal that we didn't have a washer for a week...but it was a hassle and I learned once again that good customer service in this day & age is hard to come by. Thanks to my sister & Cory's Grandparents for letting us do laundry at their place.

I made a few trips with the laundry in the van this week!