Nice dishwasher to the left, huh? Well, here’s my story about how long this took to get. It’s installed now, but that’s just the end of the story. It begins like this…
Back in April, we received a recall notice from our dishwasher manufacturer (Maytag). It seems that the JetDry reservoir was leaking on many of those (or other brand) dishwashers. It would leak onto the wiring harness, causing fires in many cases. Of course, we should stop using it immediately and contact them for both replacement parts and recommended dealers. We have been using this every day since I installed it long ago, not long before my employer stopped selling appliances. It was dependable, quiet, and certainly not dangerous — not until the reservoir started leaking on the wiring. We contacted Maytag, received the new part (inner door and new wiring harness), then contacted the dealers listed who was closest to our home out of the three possibilities.
A few days later, a technician from the dealer came to make this simple swap of door and harness, but ended up shorting out the main circuit board and apparently the heating element. Of course, he indicated that we would be the recipients of new components to get it working, after he tried once to tell me that I would have to pay for the heating element. Of course, I reminded him that it was working when he walked in the door, and certainly expected that it would be working at no additional charge when he completed his work. After speaking with his company, they ordered the part and a new technician showed up to replace the part. He refused to actually install the part until we paid for it (which I had zero intent of doing), so drove off in a huff. Okay, now we were getting PO’d.
After multiple calls to the service company (they knew our phone number by now), we finally talked to the owner who assured us that this type of rude behavior would be dealt with in the strictest of manners. Yeah, right. She also assured us that she would have the parts replaced at their cost. Maytag sent us several other parts, and their technician came back to install them. No good. Another round of calls to the service dealer left my poor wife just fit to be tied. At this point, she initiated calls to Maytag. Now, let me assure you that if you can ever get through the phone tree at Maytag, you are a better person than I.
The trick, it seems, is to just never press anything. The phone system then presumes that you don’t have touch tone service so will finally let you talk to someone. We finally spoke to someone in their executive response center who was somewhat sympathetic after we explained that we had been without a dishwasher for over two months due to the incompetence of a representative service company. They came to the determination that they needed to review the situation and get back to us. After no call backs, we tracked down the same person at Maytag and she determined that the only solution was to provide us with a replacement dishwasher (cheaper for them). She would call us back with details… and the saga continues…
Many voicemails later (another month had gone by), we finally spoke to another human being. It seems that Maytag Executive Response person #1 had left for maternity leave. No one was picking up her voicemails — it was just allowed to collect without review. This person actually provided her extension so we could reach her directly. She provided us with a model number for our review (to ensure that it would be acceptable as a replacement), and told us that if we agreed, it would be 3 – 4 weeks until our replacement would be able to be installed. Of course, it would be installed by the same company that fried the original dishwasher…
Earlier this week, we received two boxes from Maytag containing parts (a pump and logic board). This after they had the new dishwasher order in process. After calling Maytag again, they sent us one return label for one of the two parts. My wife determined that she was holding those parts hostage until the new dishwasher was actually installed. This was the only thing she could do to provide some sense of power in this whole fiasco. We also had a voicemail that the new dishwasher had arrived at the dealer.
When she called the dealer to arrange installation, the dispatcher told her that they didn’t install the dishwasher. She about came through the phone. The dispatcher put the phone aside to talk to the owner who told her that they would do whatever the customer wanted. Zero cost, all parts and labor included to get this done. I finally think that they wanted to be done with this mess as much as we did. Of course they hadn’t been doing the freeking dishes by hand for the past 4 1/2 months!
Yesterday, they were to show up between 1 and 4 to install. Of course, 4:00 came and went as you would expect. Finally, at 5:00 they called and said they were on their way. They remove the old dishwasher and found that the hose would not work (the old hose, not the new one), so had to head to Home Depot to get parts. When I got home from work, the old dishwasher was sitting in the front yard (very attractive), and the new dishwasher was unboxed and in the middle of my kitchen. To make a long story even longer, they finally finished their installation at 7:00 last night.
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