I’m annoyed. The el-cheapo adjusters on my Sears/Kenmore dishwasher have broken. (Part numbers on stamped on the piece are W10350376, W10350374 and W10350375. How do I know it is broken? In addition to not holding on the wheel, I can see that the prongs have sheared off on 3 out of 4 of the little wheel holders Beyond that, I can compare to the one unbroken wheel which still retains it’s prongs:
The Warranty in the manual reads: 
For two years from date of purchase, any part of the dishwashwer that fails due to defective materials or workmanship will be replaced free of charge. After the first year from the purchase date, the customer assumes any labor costs associated with the replacement of these parts.
Now, it is my view that I have diagnosed that this part is broken. Anyone could see that this part is broken. And I would like them to send me the part free of charge. It would seem to me that this should fall under the designation of “any part”. Once they send it, I would be perfectly happy to do all additional labor to pop-off the plastic bits and replace it. It seems to me that would involve no labor.
However, Sears/Kenmore seems unwilling to do this. In fact they seem to be representing it as “impossible” to do. I’ve volunteered that
- I am willing to send them photos. But evidently “they” don’t look at photos.
- I’ve volunteered that I am willing to drive this down to the service shop on Ogden, in Downers Grove, where– presumably– a trained Sears technician could look at the thing and see that it is broken. Evidently that is also “impossible” or “can’t” be done or some such. As far as I can tell, impossible is defined as “not their policy”.
I would be willing to do all sorts of things: Take it to the Sears store at the Mall. Record numbers stamped on the broken parts. Show photos at different angles. Make a movie. What have you.
Their policy seems to be that a technician must come to my house to inspect the machine and fill out a warranty request. This visit would then be deemed “labor” and I would have to pay for it.
After some time during my first call, a rep at Sears is willing to knock the price of a visit from roughly $90 to roughly the cost of the part. However, this is actually unacceptable to me as it means I am out of pocket the cost of the part which is under warranty.
I think the fact that this is broken is totally obvious, could be diagnosed by a 6th (or possibly 4th) grader, and I should not have to basically pay the cost of the part disguised as labor simply because they have decided they “need” the technician to look at the thing in my house.
Maybe I’m wrong and should just buy the part– but obviously, I’m pretty annoyed that I can’t get a warranty replacement for a provably broken part due to this ridiculous policy created by the seller that imposes unnecessary labor whose cost the customer pays. It seems to me that they simply have created an policy where any and all breakage of even the most trivial parts covered under warranty results in Sears/Kenmore exacting by charging for absolutely unnecessary labor. This is, of course, a useful method of improving the “value” of extended warranty services– which Sears/Kenmore also sells and profits from.
But it’s ridiculous. This trivial little piece of plastic is broken. They could just drop a part in the mail and I could fix it. There is no good reason why costs should be escallated to involve my making an appointment, waiting for a service technician, letting him into my house, my showing him the broken part, him seeing it’s broken, and “diagnosing” the problem, filling out a form and then to “save” me further labor charges handing me the part which I could replace.
Anyway, during the course of my conversations, it turns out the manufacturer of this particular POS dishwasher is Whirlpool. After much back and forth, I’ve been given their phone number. I’m going to phone them now. Maybe they will be more reasonable. Or be willing to look at photos. You never know.
Feel free to exchange stories on your experience with appliances, warranties and so on. I’m now going to phone Whirlpool and see if they are any more reasonable than Sears/Kenmore. Arghhh!!!
Update: Jan 7, 2014. About 12:32
I’ve gotten the attention of @SearScares on Twitter. They assigned a “case manager”. She emailed and asked for my home address and phone. I replied. I’ve heard nothing since. But Sears did send me a request to evaluate the case manager. Here is a screenshot of my evaluation:
Update Jan 9 about 10:14 am.
Adam T with the “Blue Ribbon Panel” has obtained me my parts. He says he will follow up when they arrive. To permit other consumers to learn what worked for me (cross fingers!), I’ll create a post describing what finally worked.
“This trivial little piece of plastic is broken.”
This is why 3D printing will (eventually) be something we all use.
You know, of course, that the replacement parts are going to last just about as long as the originals. I would plan on ordering about a dozen while they’re still in stock.
I don’t normally buy extended warranties. If it fails in a major way during the extended warranty period, it’s likely the fix won’t last either. I had a Philips DVD recorder some years back that lasted about a year before it failed. They always ‘fixed’ it rather than replace it with a newer model that might actually not be defective. I went through the cycle several times before the warranty ran out.
Reminds me of the kerfuffle I had a couple of years ago with a failed impeller unit on a gas boiler.
The impeller has seized (after 15 years in use) and the repair man stripped it down, lubiricated it, and got it going again, all within an hour which was covered by the call-out fee, with no charge for parts.
But he warned me that it was quite likely to fail again. So at his suggestion I took out a combined maintainance and failure contract for a year. Since a service was due anyway, this cost almost nothing since the annual cover costs little more than a regular service.
Sure enough, a few months later, it failed again. I verified that the impeller wouldn’t turn, and called out the repair man. He arrived to look at it, but without the new impeller unit. He then had to go back to the depot, order the part, and come again the next day to fit it. He had also brought along an assistant who did nothing but watch.
I asked why he hadn’t come out with the spare on the first visit, since the fault report already told him what had failed. And he said that company policy was that they cannot take a customer’s word for what had failed, so he wasn’t allowed to pre-order a part without seeing for himself that it was required.
So just through policy, this company decided to waste a 1/2 day of two engineer’s time plus travel expenses, plus delay my family getting heat and hot water back on.
Fortunately, it cost me nothing but inconvenience due to the good advice from the previous repair man 😉
DeWitt
This is to some extent why having them send me the part for free now is something of a matter of principle. Currently, it seems I can:
1) Pay much more than the cost of the part by scheduling a normal service call (~$90), having them send for the $30 part for “free” and possibly ‘installing’ for additional labor costs.
2) Pay the “discount” rate of about $30 for a “discount” visit– get the $30 part for “free” and install it myself.
3) Buy the part for about $30.
Admittedly, I need two parts, so I guess option 2 might get me 2 parts.
Sears is trying to push this onto Whirlpool as Whirlpools policy. But that’s bunk. (I also had a little conversation where the person was saying that Sears didn’t sell it, Kenmore did. Then later, she told me Sears own’s Kenmore. Both things I know… But the author of the Warranty paper work is ” Sears Brand Management Corporation”, which would suggest that they are the ones bound by the warantee language. Whatever agreement they have with Whirlpool…. that’s between them and Whirlpool, not me.)
Sears warranties usually make it pretty clear that Sears (hereinafter “the Screwer”) get to dictate the terms and conditions of fulfilling the warranty including assessing labor costs to the buyer (“the Screwee”).
In part it’s because the deals with the manufacturers are not uniform, in part because they want butt cover, in part because they want to get paid for servicing the warranty and most of all because they want a chance to sell you something brand new to replace the item which, as luck would have it, we happen to have on the service truck. It’s what they do. Adjust expectations and avoid pointless anguish.
If Sears/Kenmore was willing to send the repair guy out on their dime, I’d be happy to permit that. The scheduling, taking time off from work to meet the repair guy and waiting for him to arrive can be inconvenient for some consumers, but it’s not especially so for me. In fact, most repair guys are pretty nice and reasonable.
But appliance companies policies are ridiculous.
George Tobin
I have the warranty right here in front of me. And it does NOT say that buyer (i.e. me) cannot diagnose the problem. It does not describe any limitation to how I can prove that the part is broken. It doesn’t say that I am required to pay for unnecessary labor nor for whatever the heck labor that they deem “necessary” if I am able to do it myself.
I’m almost tempted to file claim in small claims, though financially that is nutso. Here’s why:
1) It costs $115 to file a claim less than $250. This is at most a $60 in parts.)
2) I am not yet clear on the law. I’ve googled a bit and ambiguity in warranty language is read against the drafter when enforced. I know I think this does not say that I am required to let them do labor nor to let them hire themselves to implement take the highest cost to me method of diagnosing the problem. But I would need a legal-eagle to tell me if that’s the way the courts would view this.
3) I don’t know whether small claims in Illinois permits a judge to force me to pay Sears attorney’s fees should I lose. (Our small claims do permit one to bring attorneys, and in fact, it seems corporations generally do.)
On the other hand…. I find this “system” by appliance sellers sufficiently annoying that in the event of that I cannot be required to pay attorney’s fees should I lose, I might contemplate suing in small claims court even though the filing cost is ridiculous relative to the part. Arghhh… (Note: I’ve never filed a suit. I think few things are worth suits. But this is annoying.)
Also: should it turn out my case would be strong… I’m seriously tempted to sue. If it turns out my position aligns with actual legal requirements: the publicity about a company being required to provide parts that the warranty sure seems to say are covered without forcing the consumer to pay for labor would be wonderful.
I’ve found numeorus complaints about Sears Kenmore dishwashers here:
http://mythreecents.com/showReview.cgi?id=2625
Someone claiming to be from sears wrote
I’m also tweeting:
https://twitter.com/lucialiljegren/status/420269746341179392
I got this tweet reply
https://twitter.com/searscares/status/420272302119743488
But there is nothing in my spam or pending folders. But maybe I’ll get some sort of reply?
Yeah, sometimes our dishwasher does not function very well.
.
But, my wife just splaps me upside the head, and I get right back to work.
Ironically have just had a similar but different experience with a Fisher & Paykel dishdraw, where the warranty holder (in NZ this comes from the manufacturer) insisted on a visit at their cost rather than just supply the part (a piece of the removable racking that had a tine break).
And we live an hour away from their base.
Energy Star?
Andrew FL,
Energy Star is shown on all Sears appliances (maybe all appliances?) We have all the original paperwork. That was in our file. It has nothing to do with the dispute.
I”ve DM’d @searscares. (I keep reading that as sears scares. I know there is no double s. But still…. )
I have to admit: I prefer to have them discuss their policy about these little parts publicly. I talked to way too many people (at least 7) on the phone this morning. All were polite, but their answer is pretty much: I have to pay for the “labor” someone to come to my house in order to get my “free” warranty part. I’m annoyed.
lucia,
I did a quick search and in at least one jurisdiction, the filing fee will be automatically included in the judgement if you win. I’m betting that’s standard practice. I suspect that the only way you would be charged more than the filing fee if you lose would be if the claim was ruled as frivolous, which seems to be unlikely. Even then, since it is small claims court, I doubt that the defendant could claim attorney fees.
I don’t see the down side in at least sending a letter stating that you will order the parts and then file a small claim for the cost, including shipping, if Sears does not honor their warranty in a timely fashion.
Then there’s always Judge Judy or something like that. Our local paper won’t accept letters to the editor that might offend their advertisers (not how they word it, but that’s the effect).
lucia (Comment #122305)-I’m curious because I’ve gotten the impression that a lot of these newer appliances designed to save energy seem to be of lower quality and more frequently need repairs. You are right that in terms of a warranty dispute, it is not relevant. *Why* it broke matters less at this point than *that* it broke.
Lucia,
I had so much trouble with Sears dishwashers that when the second one failed again I bought a Bosch model. Not only has this been no trouble for a couple of years, the dishes/glasses are MUCH cleaner than from the Kenmore.
You should be able to find the item number of the piece you want by searching the on-line manual and simply order that.
On my first Kenmore the flimsy masticator broke and the serviceman elected not to replace it saying it would only break again. Writing Sears, asking why they put the device in if it wasn’t necessary, they confirmed a masticator was necessary, hence the second machine.
Adrian Ashfield,
We almost bought a Bosch. But we were swayed with the whole “buy American” thing. Also, Sears is in Illinois so sort of a reason to support in state businesses, right? Well, mistake.
Andrew FL,
I don’t think this part is involved in any “energy savings’ aspect, or if so, barely. It is a small plastic part. If we inspect it, we can see that the problem is that the prongs are just too weak. I’m sure that if I get a set of these, they will break again within a a few years and we may need to treat these as “disposable”. But — really– they aren’t technically a “disposable” part- unless someone starts defining everything in a dishwasher from the front door, the handles and so on “disposable”. It is a piece that holds on a wheel that lets you slide the upper carriage in and out.
All: I told the “@searscares” guy I will be posting their email here. It is my view that people will be interested to learn sear’s policies with regard to these easy to diagnose small but essential pieces that often break and which– owing to their stooooopid policies of “requiring” a technician to “diagnose” mean consumers costs are escallated unnecessarily.
Lucia,
I too have been frustrated by plastic parts that fail in normal service, including parts in cars. The issue is almost always insufficient strength margin in the design. That being said, the conditions in a dishwasher are particularly harsh for lots of polymers (high temps, wet, high pH, and even higher temps during the drying cycle). I have had similar failures on the rack supports on a couple of different dishwashers. Beyond the parts+service warranty period, I just order the part (sometimes you can find a less expensive non-OEM version) and install it myself.
This kind of warranty contract is pretty common, I think. Sears is not going to make a ton of money on the labor charge for a warranty repair call in the second year, but they don’t want servicing the warranty in the second year to cost them much money either. They could no doubt eliminate this kind of failure (eg. substitute stainless and it woud last for ever), but they don’t want to increase production cost too much. IIWY, I would just pony up the $60 and be done with it… and maybe avoid Sears dishwashers next time.
BTW: I posted my email on twitter. So, Sears should be contacting me by email. I’m going to go exercise now. We’ll see if I get an email by the time I’m finished!
lucia (Comment #122309)-Fair enough.
I am unpersuaded by “buy American” because I actually understand how trade works. Uh, no offense. 😉
My experience has been varied when it comes to obtaining replacement parts under a warrantee, but mainly the manufacture either needed no evidence or a brief note on what actually failed and/or returning the defective part. Sometimes the manufacturer was explicit in wanting to obtain the defective part as part of their quality control and making a better part/product. Those manufacturers I salute.
In your case I would purchase the part and install it myself and for satisfaction tell everyone I knew and would listen how I felt about the manufacturer. It is rather obvious that if Sears requires a service person to confirm the defect and charges for that service it is in effect attempting to make money on producing/selling poor quality parts.
For what it is worth every female in my family including daughter-in-laws would take the tack you are on – and the more persistent ones would eventually get satisfaction.
You have reminded me that I have to do some work of my own on a refrigerator problem (a Whirlpool) whereby the drain tube for auto defrost freezes up before draining completely. Eventually you end up with water leaking out onto the floor. It was repaired once out of warrantee. I had it repaired by a local repair person who pushed the heater coils further into the drain hose. He charged $125 as I recall and his fix worked for 2 or 3 years. I have since heard that this is not an uncommon problem with newer model refrigerators and thus I am going online to determine if this might be a recall issue. The repair guy did tell me that it does have something to do with their better efficiency. I would fix the part myself but getting to it is no easy task.
First email,
My reply is
Note: phone number and address redacted on advice of Les Johnson.
Kenneth
That is an option I have taken in the past, limiting my grousing to people I know is “meat” life. But I have decided I will grouse on electronic forums, show images and so on. I know that google does regularly visit this blog, and so the images of what is broken, how simple it would be for me to fix with no need for a technician and so one will be “googleable”.
As with a few other threads, I can also keep comments from auto-closing, and so others who have gripes about quality, service or warranty will be able to add their gripes.
On the one hand: If Sears wants to have this policy knowing that many customers will just suck it up and transfer even more money for parts and labor to Sears, I guess they can. (Or maybe it will turn out they can’t.) But either way, I would prefer for consumers to be aware of this. Some will still buy Sears. Some won’t.
SteveF
Or Sears could just suck it up and send me a part.
One of the difficulties here is that dishwashers have many, many small, insignificant parts. Quite often it is easy to diagnose what is broken. Anyone can see what has gone wrong in the photo. I realize they would make no money by sending me the part, but on the other hand, it wouldn’t cost them anything either. And while I am, in a sense, wasting my time and being aggravated pressing them to deal with this fairly, and I could just spend the $60, I don’t see why they can’t just not waste their own staff time and money on this. They could avoid all that by just sending me the part.
Of course if I do not get a part out of them I will never buy an appliance from sears again. And I have often bought from Sears over the years. Way back in the 80s, I bought a washer dryer. Later in the 90s, we bought fridge, downdraft oven, microwave in Richland Washington. When we moved here in 2001 or so, we bought a fridge, dishwasher, and oven. They weren’t all Kenmores– some were Maytags. We’ve bought higher and lower lines depending on current need.
We’ve also bought car batteries, craftman tools, table saws, and so on.
But if Sears does not do right on this when I ask them to do so I know I will never buy at Sears again.
Rest assured: I can be very pigheaded on the ‘never buying from again’. I was offended by Pier One imports in the 80s when in grad school insisting that they would not take a check from a student unless I gave my parents phone number. (I was past 21, a grad student, had put myself through college, had good credit had never bounced a check and so on. It was their policy that I had to give them my parents number because I was a student at the University of Illinois.)
I told them to cancel the purchase and that I’d never buy anything from them. In fact, while their stores do well, I won’t even go into one. Likely, I’m no longer in their demographic, but I was at the time I decided to do this. I understand they do well and I don’t object to others buying there. I’m never buying from Pier One. And if I don’t get satisfaction here, I am never buying from Sears again. Not a car battery. Not tires. Not snow blowers. Not carpet cleaners. Nothing.
lucia: I really think you need to redact your phone and address….
Lucia, remind me not to piss you off!
As someone who has occasionally tackled stupid policies, I’ll be watching this saga with interest and looking for new strategies for future battles.
You have managed to get past the usual first frustrating hurdle – you are apparently corresponding with actual human beings. It also seems that they actually work in the New World and speak your language. You’re on a roll!
In the past I have found it useful to scatter lots of CC’s around – consumer advocates in newspapers, politicians, corporate CEO’s etc. It pays to let them know early that you are a resourceful and likely persistent SOB! If you can get actual personal e-mail addresses or phone numbers of corporate brass, good on you.
Political Junkie,
It turns out there is an ongoing twitter war between @BrianSozzi and @Sears. With luck I can get him to retweet. Who knows?
On the “at least I have someone who speaks my language”: I did get transferred to the spanish language help on the 3rd call of the first try. I answered “Me llamo Lucia… And if you speak slowly, I understand Spanish. ” She switched to English.
Everyone is very “polite”– but the deal is: they aren’t going to send a part under warranty unless I pay for useless, pointless, unnecessary service.
The 4th person had an endless stream of reasons why things were “impossible”. It is, evidently simply “impossible” for Sears to get a part from “the manufacturer” without a technician coming to my home. Well… no. It maybe against Sears policy. And the woman on the phone may not be authorized. And possibly, she might get in trouble if she gets her boss to come over and/etc.
But as far as possible goes, it’s possible for the head of Sears to call Whirlpool, write a check and have them send me parts. I”m not demanding that, but it is certainly possible for someone to send me a part.
Sammantha B.
Social Media Case Manager
Sign of the times – glad you got some traction on this!
Ouch. I want any ‘service interaction’ to be positive, but memorable? Surely you want a quick in-and-out fix that can be forgotten about within minutes.
Any chance of finding a local machinist who can make a functioning replacement out of stainless?
I have had some luck doing that.
The trick is getting the right price…
Sweet Old Bob,
Making the entire part out of stainless would be overkill. The problem is the sort of “spindle” part the wheel sits on. One needs to pull the top rack in and out– and when loading, items will be placed in the top rack. The weight of the top rack rests on the wheels, which transfer weight to the sort of “spindles” which then transfer to areas with larger cross-sectional areas. But over the ‘long term’ the spindles clearly cannot hold the weight of items one puts in the top rack and eventually, they just shear off.
The weight/weak plastic issue is likely aggravated by the fact that this particular dishwasher gets very hot when drying. (I mean very. ) So, possibly, the spindles soften over time– or embrittle or something. Possibly, dishdetergent attacks also. In anycase, three of the little ‘spindles’ have broken.
I tend to put light items in the top rack– wine glasses, cups saucers stuff like that. I don’t put pots up there– they wouldn’t fit anyway. But even these relatively light things they do weigh something.
Anyway, I doubt if I could find someone to make stainless steel replacements one off for the price of just buying the existing plastic replacements. But otherwise, metal replacements might not be hugely expensive if that’s what they made and especially if metal was used judiciously.
Mind you that SteveF is correct that dishwashers are harsh environments. But I still think it’s attrocious that Sears/Kenmore won’t just send me parts without forcing me to pay for totally unnecessary labor.
lucia,
If you have a small piece of the polymer, you can probably tell approximately what kind it is. If it’s denser than water, it’s probably PVC. Less dense than water and burns like a candle, it’s probably a polyolefin. If it burns with a smoky flame, it’s probably a nylon. Polyester is unlikely because it’s easily attacked by the strongly basic dish washer detergent. It could also be ABS (acrylic-butadiene-styrene), I guess, but I’m not sure of the distinguishing characteristics of that polymer.
Clearly somebody was cutting costs either on the design of the mold, using a cheaper plastic than design specs called for, or maybe just running the molding operation too fast.
Another possibility is that there was damage during assembly. I would look very closely at the new parts before installing them.
Lucia,
“Not a car battery. Not tires. Not snow blowers. Not carpet cleaners. Nothing.”
.
I don’t take these kinds of things so personally. 😉
.
Having worked in a big corporation for many years, I know that there are too many bureaucratic rules, procedures, etc, and that these are as often as not contrary to the interests of the company. So after a while I figured it wasn’t worth fighting every battle against organizational stupidity. I did ultimately end up quitting and starting my own businesses when the situation became too much, but it wasn’t so much in anger as in regret. Sears has a long history of decline, and there is no doubt this kind of episode hastens their decline… Still if they are selling a tool I need at a competitive price, I’d still buy from them.
Certainly, a mildly entertaining little saga and a relief from the climate wars
But (and please don’t assume I’m unsympathetic):
1) you are still without a working dishwasher. This will persist for the duration of the squabble, however it is finally resolved
2) I’ve made the assumption that the backbone of Sears’ policy here is that “self-fix” may be mis-applied and Sears then will still be up for Warranty claims on the same issue – stating the obvious (even with photos) doesn’t negate this for them. And they have to mitigate the cost of the technicians, contracted or fully employed
3) Sears don’t give a rat’s a**e if you never buy from them again. In a mass market, the individual consumer literally doesn’t matter. Exposing this to mass publicity is only as effective as the demographic such publicity reaches. I agree that posting this will give a Google hit but this is limited … how many people will do a Google search on this when purchasing a dishwasher ?
Underlying my apparent cynicism here is a large set of very long experiences with Warranties on everything from motor vehicles to a simple coaxial cable
Nonetheless, I wish you luck with this. I empathise with your frustration
DeWitt,
Maybe too hot for PVC. I’d bet ABS or a filled polyolefin. The temptation for the widget supplier is to add filler to the max… and hope the part doesn’t fail in service. Bids based on specified performance often end up being unprofitable, so rather than go bankrupt the supplier cuts corners. This was a huge problem for US car makers 30 years ago, and contributed to a reputation of poor quality; they would beat suppliers down on price…. then got what they paid for.
SteveF,
Among other things, all these types of items can now be obtained at rival places and often at better prices. Craftsman used to be primo. But now, we can get good prices on DeWalt, Rigid and lots of other brands. Why look at Craftsman if Sears company doesn’t stand behind their product when something does go wrong? That is: why risk it?
Right now I’m very annoyed/angry with Sears. But that wouldn’t be enough make me stick to the decision not to buy at Sears. But I pretty much figure that if Sears won’t replace these small parts still under warranty, they’ve probably decided the way they are going to profit is by making big ticket items with multiple small parts each of which tend to fall aparts (and a few of which will fall apart) and pretend to price it fairly or somehow claim that you shouldn’t expect things to stand up– unless you buy the “extra” warranty. Then later it falls apart and the cost falls on me, the consumer. It will be wiser to buy a well made product that won’t fall apart.
Also: if it’s a non-Sears brand, I know I can get it somewhere else at a price as good or better than Sears. So why even bother to go to the Sears store? I’ll just be skipping the experience of buying at Sears.
FWIW: I never went to Sears for underwear or clothes which are items that I don’t really expect any sort of warranty for. Generally, you can look at construction and figure out if the thing is going to become a “tosser” after you stain it, wear it out in a ‘fair and square’ sort of way or if it’s just a piece of junk that will unravel. So there really no ‘decision’ on those things. I doubt Sears is ever going to turn around on clothes; I’ll continue not to buy them.
ianl8888,
Sure. And that’s why I also oferred to take the entire top rack Sears service store on Ogden avenue in Downers Grove where their technicians can inspect it. It’s a fair sized service store, and they will accept drop off of things like vacuum cleaners, carpet shampooers. Sears will then repair these for a fee. One would think permitting the repair person to see the top rack and the broken parts would be sufficient to give them confidence that the part is repaired.
Also: if they wished to log repairs, or wished to re-inspect after I’d installed the new part. I have no problem with that. Or even if they say they’d only replace the little part once time… maybe that would be ok. But the fact is, they won’t replace an obviously broken part even once and will not permit a path to showing the part is broken that does not involve paying them “labor” for the “repair”. That’s not right.
BTW: Maytag permitted that sort of service when we owned a Maytag dishwasher. We would carry the broken part and tell them what we needed to order. Then we would come home with the fresh part and replace it. Maytags stuff sometimes breaks, but their warranty policies are not unreasonable.
If the prongs are too weak you can wrap a wire around the plastic tynes on the new dial.
What Political Junkie said!
(note to self- be polite here…very, very polite)
The Craftsman warranty on replacement of broken tools only applies if they have the identical tool in stock. Close doesn’t count. I ran into this on a half inch drive socket wrench handle, that in the end turned out to not be broken.
Re: SteveF (Jan 6 18:45),
Gee, that sounds exactly like the business model of a current large volume, low price department store that starts with a W.
Eli
On the broken ones, the prongs have sheared off! But I’ll go with any tips you can give. Right now I’m just running when the lower rack is full.
Lucia, I think in your case, if you remain persistent, motivated by some anger and are able to reach someone at Sears with enough authority to pose a common sense question about why they simply would not send the part to you and not require a witness, you could succeed.
Unfortunately that gets the job done for you and probably as an exception, but Sears will remain a failing enterprise because of obviously failed policies like this one. It could also mean that Sears as an enterprise has simply quit trying to satisfy the customer and are in the mode of giving up the ghost.
I usually fail in these encounters if I do it by phone because I am a very impatient person and tend to show my anger to some lower level person that will never be able to help me anyway. I am much, much better when I can send email and even snail mail.
My internet search on my refrigerator problem indicated that it is a prevalent problem and that a lawyers group is signing up people for a class action suit. I will not depend on that for a solution as a class action would probably result in something like a small discount on the next purchase I make from Whirlpool and a tidy cash sum for the lawyers.
Re: Kenneth Fritsch (Jan 6 19:27),
The tidy cash sum for the lawyers is a near certainty. However, even a trivial return to the class members is far less likely. Zero return is a much better bet.
DeWitt,
“Gee, that sounds exactly like the business model of a current large volume, low price department store that starts with a W.”
.
A little different I think. The car makers were pounding their parts suppliers, and so undermining the quality of their own final product. Unless Walmart’s suppliers start making junk versions of their products just for sale to Walmart, they won’t be able to cut costs the same way. I think the Walmart approach is to maximize their profit at the minimum profit their suppliers can live with. Lots of suppliers (like Apple) just walk away.
And another case of why Sears is slowly collapsing. I started distrusting them when they began slapping their “Craftsman” brand on their power tools. Their Craftsman hand tools had a life time “no questions asked” warranty. So they tried to exploit their hand tool reputation to sell their crappy power tools that had minimal warrantees.
Sad case of financial types taking over a company and driving it into the ground by “increasing profit per item” and destroying the reputation the store was built on. The General Motors path to ruin.
The same part for $16.00 here: http://goo.gl/4C49zT
Will J. Richardson,
Great!!! I still want to make them send me the part. But I know that I can get it pretty cheap if I fail!
Lucia,
Further to my earlier comment, the Bosch is almost silent. I didn’t realize just how noisy the old washer had been before. Had to check to see if the Bosch was actually running.
Some Sears personnel go out of their way to be helpful. Much depends on who you get.
According to Consumer Reports, an expensive Sears machine is one of the better ones. The models we got were just built down to the basics and better models do in fact work better. It maybe urban legend but I’ve heard Kenmore and Whirlpool (& possibly Maytag) washers are made on the same production line. So I still buy some things from Sears.
Anyway, lots of luck!
Adrian Ashfield
We bought an “expensive” Sears machine. In addition to various “deluxe” features it has the stainless steel tub and door and so on. We had consulted Consumer Reports and saw the Sears/Kenmore got good ratings.
On the loudness issue: This machine is pretty quite. That’s a feature I do like about the machine. It also gets the dishes clean.
However, not withstanding the stainless steel interior, small parts are made of el-cheapo plastic. It’s not much good to have a stainless stell interior of functional plastic parts break long before the inside of the machine could stain or discolor. (Anyway, I could deal with a discolored interior better than losing functionality of the entire upper rack because a small cheap plastic piece sheared off. )
Manufacturer: This one is made by Whirlpool. One excuse given for not honoring the ‘manufacturers’ warranty was the it’s the “manufacturer’s” warranty so I needed to call Whirlpool who made the machine. I was given Whirlpools phone number.
As an excuse for not sending parts under warranty saying it’s Whilrpools warranty is a crock. The warranty is written by Kenmore/Sears– and in fact, Sears indicates itself as author. It is not a contract between me and Whirlpool but rather me and Kenmore/Sears.)
It’s also worth nothing that even if Whirlpool makes the machine, that doesn’t necessarily mean Whirlpool is fully involved in decisions about making a particular machine. So decisions affecting quality might differ and be dictated by some agreement between Kenmore and Whirlpool — though I don’t know if they actually do.
I think I have a new twitter handle to add to tweets.
@ChrisBrathw8
A sign of the times, I guess. Companies like Rolls Royce reputedly make little or modest profit on sales of jet engines, but rake it in with the service contracts.
Perhaps it might be worth finding another avenue within Sears by taking the upper rack to the service center, and seeing if you can get satisfaction there without telling them about the previous. Of course it may turn out to be a wasted journey if you get the same response.
You are doing the right thing escalating and being a pain in their butt. It has been my experience that they try to get the easy money from customers who are too frustrated to take things further than one or two phone calls/postings. Eventually the right person will take charge and try to shut you up by doing their jobs and meeting their obligations.
Of course you’ll just end up with another cheap-o (yet over-priced) part. In this situation I often try to engineer a form/fit/function replacement which amazingly is usually less of a hassle, and pretty much always works better than the original. Get parts off McMaster Carr and they’ll probably be at your doorstep in a day or two.
Hmmm..
Well, Sammantha B.’s schedule is
I should get an acknowledgement she received my email any time now!
Michael Hart, the difference with Rolls Royce is that they mainly lease their engines to airlines and are paid on a flying hours basis so they have an added incentive to ensure they are low maintenance (RR covers the cost of maintenance themselves/within the flying hours contract). Any lack of availability of the engines is severely penalised.
Lucia, a clear and polite message to the president of the company about the problem sometimes gets results. For example, several years ago as a relative was nearing the end of life in hospital our family was strongly and rudely advised by a staff nurse to pull the plug against his expressed and documented wishes. A letter to the hospital’s president quoting the facility’s mission statement about patient and family care being their primary concern earned written apologies.
Different circumstance, yes, but the principle is the same — tell the guy in charge why you are unhappy and why it looks bad for him. Sears isn’t doing well enough to abuse its customers.
Hi Lucia,
If the washer part issue isn’t resolved intelligently, I’d replace the whole thing. Look at it as a vector of a terminal virus which has infected a formerly competent corporation.
We’ve moved ashore after 10 years cruising. On the boat, I was responsible for everything that was screwed up. Now, occasionally, it could be someone else.
We had nothing (except “legacy” hi-fi, a complete Sun IPX setup), paintings and photographs – all in storage). We rented a two bedroom with private garage, and except for two pier one bookcases bought everything at Ikea and had it delivered – heavy stuff carried to second floor where we are.
The apartment was new. It had the right number of GFCI outlets but they were randomly distributed such that some of the wet locations weren’t covered. Manager thought it was hilarious and took care of it only to report later that this was how all of the 180 apartments had been done (well it is south florida).
The third party folks who delivered the Ikea stuff agreed with Janet that someone had omitted one of the legs for the hi-fi (media?) cabinet. They said Ikea knew about it and would ups one to us. After a week, it hadn’t showed up. We called, were told that our contract required that we reconcile anything like this within 24 hours. What contract? “The one printed on the back of the receipt for picking (not Earl Scruggs), shipping and delivery”. I conceded the logic of the 24 hour rule, but pleaded ignorance of the “contract” unsigned as it was and was told that their attorneys had determined that my signature on the little lcd screen was sufficient. The supervisor i was then shunted to, told me that issues like this could only be discussed in person at the store – an 80 mile round trip for us. I balked and noted that we had spent $3.5k with them and thought that sending us the $10 part for which we had already paid shouldn’t be impossible. It came a week later by ups crudely packaged, hand addressed by the Sunrise store manager. It must have gone all the way to him. I never talked to him.
Comcast did our internet, and TV. We paid for 50 mbs internet, but the signal didn’t have much oomph. The router had been installed within the steel communications cabinet. I called Comcast, got an intelligent person who switched me to a tech who agreed that it was a pretty amazing installation. They came out and did it right with no more provocation from me.
we had verizon cell service on one Moto Razr V3 and AT&T Gophone on the other. Good Verizon signal, but negligible AT&T (this is in very urban Delray Beach, FL. AT&T didn’t work on street out front either. I drove to where it did work, called and was told that two cells were down and they were working on it. A week later, still no joy. I went to their store and maintenance “hub”. One of the cells was still down and they didn’t know when it would be up again. “Our maintenance people are very busy.” So screw AT&T. They wouldn’t give me back the $80 prepay – I owned the phone- but they would transfer the credit to my mother in law. I then bought a Moto X from Verizon and attempted to port the AT&T number to it. When it showed up, I did all the stuff to enliven it. Nothing worked. After an hour (mostly on hold) talking to the usual sorts, I was turned over to a guy who said, “I can see what the problem is. Do this and call me back at this number. You’ll get me and i can finish the fix.” I needed to get an account number from AT&T for Verizon to check the ownership of the number to be ported. Makes sense, but this process wasn’t described anywhere I could find. Gophones didn’t seem to have account numbers and we couldn’t find one anywhere. Called AT&T, got it, called the Verizon guy back – got him with no hold and were online in seconds, and with the old at&t number.
FWIW, Verizon generally screws up the monthly bill something fierce whenever you add or upgrade a device, but so far have always been quick to fix it often without being prodded.
There are other stories associated with drying our feet, but ….
Many resolutions of problems I’ve had over the years have required “breaking” some rule established to barricade the firm from one form of customer abuse or another. The important issue is whether you, the customer, can get to someone who can waive the rule. If you can’t, it means that the company doesn’t trust any of its employees. This means that either they don’t know how to hire, or don’t know how to manage – it’s one or the other.
Except for the government (where I have no choice) I won’t continue any relationship where I can’t talk to an intelligent, “enabled’, person if the need warrants.
regards,
john
j ferguson, “We’ve moved ashore after 10 years cruising.”
Probably good timing. The FWC is on a mission to “clean up” Boot Key Harbor. The clean up seems to involve a great deal of “courtesy” inspections at odd hours of the day.
Gary,
I will likely end up writing to the president of Sears. Obviously, one difficulty all consumers have is not taking notes during the first phone call and of course, not recording phone calls. One of the reasons I want to switch to email is to have a precise record of what Sears does going forwards.
j ferguson,
The difficulty with the “replace the whole thing” route is that dishwashers are large ticket items. It is ridiculous to buy a new dishwasher every 2 years. That said: You can bet that if I need to buy replacement parts, I will buy from Whirlpool, which charges 1/2 what Sears does. More importantly, they are not Sears. It’s true they made the dishwasher and in some sense should not be “rewarded” with business. But I don’t know the precise arrangement between Whirlpool and Sears, and given the range of what may be, Kenmore could be the one driving quality standards resulting in poorer versions of parts in the Sears machines. But beyond that: at least Whirlpool is upfront that they are the manufacturer of their machines. I’m pretty sure if I called them, I wouldn’t someone in their office telling me that I need to contact some other company to cover the “manufacturer” warranty (which states it is written by Sears.)
Oh– on this
When it became clear I was just going to be told “impossible” again, I consistently requested talking to a superior. That’s why I went through 4 people on my first call and I think 3 on the second. (On my first call, I think the batteries in my handheld home phone died because the phone call was cut off while the Sears rep I was speaking too was mid-sentence. At first I thought she’d hung up– which would be odd mid-sentences. But it occurred to me it could be my handhelds won’t deal with hour long calls!!)
Hi Lucia,
Years ago someone told me to hang up on someone in the midst of a sentence I was delivering. it messes with their minds.
I gather you were ultimately able to find someone reasonable at Whirlpool.
The part is also available at Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Whirlpool-W10350376-Rack-Adjuster/dp/B00A8O0FG2
Customer comments read
I love this solution (at Amazon site)
Goodness! The IL Attorney General’s office does not know whether a judge in small claims court can award attorney’s fees to a defendant who wins?!!!! I realize they can’t know everything, but I would have thought this would be a simple legal question. Yowsa!!
Re: SteveF (Jan 6 20:28),
You think, at least in some cases, they don’t already do this? I would always check the manufacturers’ exact model number to see if it’s a Wally World special edition or the same that they sell at other stores.
J Ferguson,
I haven’t found anyone at Whirlpool. One of my readers found the part on sale on line. Whirlpool sells much more cheaply than Searsdirect. I found it at Amazon as well– also sold much more cheaply than Sears.
The discussion at Amazon is interesting. 🙂
How to repair
Re: lucia (Jan 7 09:06),
I seriously doubt that cyanoacrylate glue is a long term solution in the severe dishwasher environment.
DeWitt–
I agree. But it seems replacement parts may not be long term solutions either. My plan: Get Sears to replace the current ones. Afterwards, buy future replacements from Amazon. Or figure out some sort of home solution.
I agree with DeWitt re: the cyanoacrylate in a hot wet environment.
The small claims approach was never going to work out as a practical or financial matter. Besides, Sears’ lawyer would print your comments here and submit them as evidence of actions that void the warranty. Crazy glue?
It would not be acceptable to remove the device and take it to a store because you may have installed in upside down for all they know. Devices with plumbing have to be diagnosed if not fixed in situ.
You are asking Sears to assume warranty liability based on the diagnosis done by somebody with no official qualification for dealing with that appliance nor a relationship with sears or the manufacturer. Unless the judge were a regular reader of the Blackboard and thus aware of your extraordinary gifts, your position on this issue is a loser.
Be temperate in your dealings. If they were willing to take out Roebuck, what chance would you have?
George Tobin:
I did not use crazy glue; above I do not say I used crazy glue. My broken part– and the entire upper rack — is sitting in my living room. I am not going to do anything other than research, comment and photograph until I have this matter resolved. Also: if this were to go to court, I would take the upper rack with me. The judge could inspect the part and easily determine that no crazy glue had been applied to the part.
That said: I might try to figure out how to contact some of the people commenting at Amazon to get testimony that their parts broke too. This could be useful evidence to indicate that the part is badly designed or manufactured.
You know what: This is nuts. Among other things, Sears permits users to install the entire dishwasher (which is delivered with the racks installed.) Nothing in the language says that users who purchase and install it themselves lose warranty coverage. If Sears were to make such an argument, I think they should be required to actually make it in open court. Then customers will have advance warning that Sears routinely sells machines in a way that encourages people to instantly nullify the warranty. But I don’t think they will make that argument.
But beyond that: if they suggested I had installed the dishwasher part upside down, I would simply counter reply that I had not installed that part at all. The broken part was factory installed on the upper rack which was also factory installed. Also: the dishwasher was working prior to the wheels breaking. Also: I would point out that the upper rack is designed to be removed– so they anticipate ordinary users will remove the upper rack from time to time.
While it’s true Sears could present any speculative evidence they want, there is a limit to what they can get a judge to believe.
I don’t think a judge or jury would buy a speculative defense that for all they know I installed the rack or part upside down. Judges may not be an extremely handy crowd, but most know that ordinary consumers can tell whether their rack was installed right side up. Moreover, they know that appliances are designed to be used by ordinary consumers. So a Sears defense that somehow, one needs to be a “Sears trained technician” likely won’t get very far. (Beyond that a reader sent some law that indicates that they certainly can’t insist the person inspecting must be Sears trained. )
As I said: I am looking into what is involved in small claims. I’m not sure I will do it even if I don’t get the part. But your suggestions do not give me the impression that a judge would
DeWitt,
“You think, at least in some cases, they don’t already do this? ”
I guess it could happen, but I doubt it would be common. The manufacturers have their own quality reputations to protect. Which is not to say that Walmart does not sell a fair amount of junk… Walmart and lots of other stores do… but I don’t expect a ‘poor quality’ Nikon camera to be specially made for Walmart, nor that Kendal Jackson Winery makes a ‘poor quality’ Vintner’s Reserve 2011 especially for Walmart. Lots of people don’t like Walmart putting local retailers out of business; I get that. But Walmart really does offer lower prices for the same products most of the time. For identical items, I usually see a difference of 15%+, and sometimes 30%+.
Yes, quality customer service has gone down the rat hole over the last 20 years or so. Once great companies who had outstanding reputations threw it all away by simply failing to take care of their customers when a problem arises or failing to engineer their products around normal expected use. How much would it have actually cost Sears to just say yes and send you the parts? $12 maybe including packaging and shipping. Molded plastic parts are extraordinarily inexpensive to make and it would have bought them perhaps $200 in good will and customer loyalty. Bad form and a foolish business practice.
In my own appliance saga, I have been a life long fan of Maytag. They were never the most advanced technology but they worked as advertised, didn’t require a lot of repairs, and lasted well beyond expected 10 yr life span. If something did break, I could diagnose, find the part and repair it inexpensively. This all changed around 2000 or so when they got out of manufacturing and had everything produced offshore. Now they were merely a marketing company and had no interest in you after the sale was made. My 2003 Maytag fridge was a dog on day one which barely kept things cool and had wide temp swings. I repaired it a 1/2 dozen times over it’s life for minor issues and when the compressor finally failed last year I sighed with relief. I had a similar experience with our 2003 Maytag Dishwasher which cleaned below standards and would develop software errors that required power-down and a reset sequence. Just dumb.
Lastly, in 2005 my wife really really wanted a new NG range with double oven made by Maytag. I warned her that our recent experiences had been less than great but… we want what we want. The range worked fine, the lower oven worked pretty well once calibrated (off by 30 deg from the factory), the upper oven always had wide temp swings and then went 100 degrees out shortly after the warranty expired. A new board was required that cost $450. Ummm no thanks. We ignored the upper oven for several years until the lower oven failed in similar fashion. At least the board was less on Amazon at $280 and we had 2 working ovens again for the holidays. Happy wife.
I now have a working 2005 era Maytag double oven again, a new Samsung fridge made in Korea, which is by far the best performing fridge I have ever owned, and a Bosch (German engineering made in the USA) dishwasher that is exceeding expectations for cleaning and quiet operation. Time will tell how well they hold up and if their customer service is good or bad.
Let’s hope that going forward, smart companies realize that good customer service may be the best marketing investment they can make because it generates both loyalty and referral business. Social media and the internet may actually encourage this.
ivp0,
” smart companies realize that good customer service may be the best marketing investment they can make because it generates both loyalty and referral business.”
.
That and a very solid initial design and quality manufacture, which generate even more loyalty than good customer service. Ask Floridians how much they liked their Honda generators after the hurricanes in 2004 and 2005; ‘passionate love’ is not too much of a stretch, because those generators never fail.
.
The frustrating part is that the failures of very simple components (like an injection molded part) are almost always either due poor design or poor manufacture…. avoiding these problems is almost free (how many more pennies would a three times more durable roller shaft on Lucia’s rack adjuster cost?), while the repair costs after failure are hundreds to thousands of times greater. It is just STOOOPID engineering, for which there is no excuse, unless someone higher up is pressing the engineers to make the parts a couple of pennies cheaper.
Honda generators are a great example Steve. They are smart, quiet, easy to use and bulletproof. This has commanded incredible customer loyalty and almost “cult” following among users.
Not quite there yet but getting close. With your luck Lucia it might just be worth it for other things as well 😉
An easy, low-cost way to get into 3D printing
http://www.kurzweilai.net/an-easy-low-cost-way-to-get-into-3d-printing
3D printing is neat, no doubt. One could also go with subtractive manufacturing in that price range, pick up a Mini Mill and associated goodies, and mill the part out of aluminum or something. I haven’t found an excuse to buy one yet, but coming up with some reasonable rationalization to do so is definitely on my to do list. 🙂
Course, you could do all sorts of crazy things. You could mold the part and cast a replacement. You could get the part machined or 3d printed by a third party. At the end of the day though, it’s doubtful that there’s a good solution that beats just eating the cost of the replacement part. Unless you can convince Sears to give you one for free or find one on ebay or something similar.
Mark Bofill
This is the plan. Because my interpretation of the warranty is that it requires them to replace broken parts up to 2 years from date of purchase. We bought in April 2012.
Lucia, I have a couple relevant experiences for you.
1. I had the same parts (both sides) brake on my dishwasher about six months ago. I guess because it was a simple plastic part I never thought about calling service tech but I was worried that I would have to replace the whole rack. I found the part on amazon, paid $30 for the two with Amazon Prime second day free shipping. Install was easy. Me happy and wife very happy.
2. My Sears repair issue. Our Kenmore dryer (actually made by Whirlpool I found out) stopped heating a few weeks ago. I went online to diagnose and found some, I thought, reasonable advice. Turns out dryers are a rather simple device, but with a lot of switches, thermostats and a control board. The blower and all the major parts seemed to be OK. Thought I found the the culprit, what I thought was a bad thermistor. Took it out an drove to my local Sears parts outlet, showed them the part and they sold me a new one for about $25. Put the new one in the dryer and still no heat. At this point, with my wife getting rather impatient and doubting my DIY skills, I had to bite the bullet and call Sears for a service call. They told me it would be a minimum charge of $68 for them to show up and diagnose the problem. So I am thinking this is the labor charge for the first hour and it can’t take more than hour for an experienced tech to diagnose and fix and it is probably a bad switch or thermostat or something that would cost less than another $50. Turns out I had to be working out of town the afternoon that the tech arrived. Turns out I was correct about how quickly the tech could diagnose and fix the dryer (5 minutes). Turns out I was completely wrong about the labor charge. My wife has the tech call my cell phone from our house. The cost was $180 for labor plus $45 for the replacement part (a small relay switch), plus tax. Or I could not have him make the repair and just pay the $68. I said, you want to charge me $180 labor for 5 minutes. He said Sears has a set price for the labor to replace that specific part and he has no choice and it doesn’t matter how long it takes him, it is still $180 labor. He was nice enough and was only doing what Sears mandates, as far as I can tell. I felt like it was bait and switch, pardon the pun. I reluctantly gave him the go ahead. Then to poor salt on my wound, the Sears parts store refused to take back the thermistor that I had purchased originally and did not need. They said their policy is once the electrical component is installed in the unit, it can not be returned. I got very upset and asked to speak to the manager and explained that I had to install it to determine if it would fix the problem and that it was only installed for 5 minutes, yadda, yadda, yadda. He said it doesn’t matter how long and it is policy and it doesn’t matter that I paid a dam Sears tech over $200 and that they could of tested the original part in the store and tell me if it was bad. That last part set me off. OK, them why didn’t you tell me that when I brought the original part in; why didn’t you test it for me then. And if you can test it to make sure it works, why don’t you test this new one that I am trying to return. If it tests OK then you should be able to accept it as a return. After a heated exchange and him going on and on about their policy, I left the store in a huff blabbering something about never going to Sears ever again… Anyway, that is my story and I wish you well in your quest.
Tom:
Can I send your story to @BrianSozzi at beluscapitaladvisors.com ? He’ll be interested!
Sure! Share all you want. Felt somewhat liberating to share it with you.
I feel your pain. However, cut your pain loses now and take the knocked down visit cost offer. Either that or take your broken part on a road trip. Tour all the Sears around until you find a nice helpful sympathetic person.
What the warranty says is pretty clear, with the reasonable assumption that they are doing the work. Therefore, you need to find someone who can be persuaded to see it your way.
Also, the part is obviously broken and obviously poorly designed, but is it obvious that materials or workmanship were defective? They could just say it wore out under normal use (or worse, abuse). Companies always claim the exclusive right to determine that.
It’s not worth spending your time and effort on such a small part. If you still want to try, you can try BBB. That does get their attention, although results are doubtful.
“Buy American†isn’t a good strategy. Look at what happened to American car makers. Buy American gave them an easy pass until the competition passed them.
BTW, there are companies I have promised myself to never again deal with and I have kept to that even long after I have forgotten what the problem was.
Ledite
Your cost argument is wise– and as you can see, I’ve noted above that the difficulty with the “sue” route is that it is economically ridiculous given the part. However, I’ve been reading up on warranty issues and it seems to me that many of the assumptions you are making– and which appliance companies try to convince us are true– are or may be violations of federal warranty law.>
For example, you write:
Thanks to some people who have emailed me privately, I have found a little more on warranty law. And it appears that if the warrantee does not cover at least a portion of the labor, then the warranty cannot dictate who does the labor.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2304
My impression is that Sears is trying to impose the “duty” that I permit their technician into my house to inspect– and that I pay their labor in filling my “duty”. Given that I can bring the product to them, this is a ridiculous “duty” and I’m reasonably sure that no “rulemaking” proceeding has found this necessary.
I”d be happy to bring them the broken part.
My warranty says they will replace the broken part “free of charge”. This law says that if the warranty says they will replace it “free of charge”, they cannot force me to pay any of their costs. As I would prefer to be mailed a part, there is no labor requirement. My interpretation: Then can’t just create required labor costs and force me to pay them.
On to (Consumer protection act.)
http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/700.10
After 1 year, my warranty covers no portion of the labor charge. I am required to pay them. So, the warrantor (i.e. Sears) is prohibitted from creating a condition that precludes me from chosing who will do the labor. That is: if the language of the contract is read to suggest that Searsdoing the labor is a condition for my getting a free part then the warranty violates this federal law.
Of course: INAL: but that’s how it seems to read.
There is another provision that says that the warrantor (here Sears) cannot say they have the exclusive right to determine whether something is a defect. Need to find that.
I need to figure out how to put these together. But– based on my reading (which could be mistaken) I’m pretty sure that your reading of the “warranty” (which is the way Sears reps on the phone represented the matter) violates federal laws on warranties.
Found it!!
http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/700.8
So: the warrantor does not have exclusive right to determine what is defective.
Hi Lucia,
You may now find yourself again where you started; trying to find someone at Sears who can understand this, or is permitted to understand it.
I’m looking forward to reading this as it evolves. What you’ve found is really useful, to us all.
john
I’m an engineer working for an electrical manufacturer. Once in a while I get a call from a customer with a saga similar to yours. I figure that by the time they get to me they’ve been through enough and if it was a common or stocked part it would be available from one of our distributors. So if it’s from the plant my office is in, I just walk downstairs, grab the part and put it in a courier envelope to them at no charge. If it’s from a different plant, I call one of the engineers there who ship me the part to send to the customer.
I don’t understand why companies have such painful service policies and practices. I guess they don’t like people’s business.
I bought a refrigerator from Sears once, which had the handle broken when the Sears guys delivered it. No problem, I said, I’ll just order another handle. Turned out that “handle” didn’t exist as an item in the Sears inventory: instead, it consisted of 18 non-integrated inventory items which together made “handle” apparently without any directions for how to do the assembly. After waiting two months the manager of a local Sears store finally decided to cannibalize one of his floor models to get me off his back. A small vignette of how Sears is sliding into the Athabasca Tar Pits of modern economics.
Scott,
It’s guys like you who establish some companies in the hero class. I used to fix cameras when I was a kid in the ’50s. I didn’t have manuals and didn’t know what the broken (usually stripped gears) parts were called. I’d take a polaroid photo of the place in the camera where the part went, and another of the part itself with a ruler next to it, send the photos and a blank check with “not to exceed $10” written on it off to the importer. I never got an official response to any of these, but always did get the part in the mail from someone in a position like yours who sympathized with me. And no, the checks were never cashed. I did get a note from the guy at Ernst Leitz saying that they were forbidden from doing what he was doing, but since I’d figured out how to get the camera apart, he figured I’d be able to get it together again.
More recently, I tried to replace a delaminated LCD in a Garmin GPS only to find that the LCD in question was sold only to Garmin. Garmin wouldn’t sell me a new one and the guy said that they used to sell parts to end-users but gave it up when the cost of helping the repair along by telephone went over the top. It could be that this is what worries Sears about Lucia’s self-do-it repair.
This is what the internet is all about. Complain away, these folks do not like the bad publicity and it gets out now.
@searscares has tweeted to tell me that there is some misunderstanding because my casemanager has emailed. That said: I have not received any subsequent to her asking for my address and phone number (which I sent in my email reply.)
I have resolved to record any phone conversations. As one must get permission in Illinois, I have a little script set up to make sure I ask first.
Unfortunate handle. At a glance it reads ‘sears scares’ to my eyes.
Mark Bofill
Mine too. I’m very tempted to write @SearScares when tweeting. Twitter handles are case insensitive. But I’ll try not to do that.
Lucia: “I have resolved to record any phone conversations. As one must get permission in Illinois…”
I was curious about this. There’s a good discussion here. By “good” I mean clear, without legal jargon. I can’t vouch for its accuracy.
lucia:
So you figured (correctly) that the small claims route was not economical but are instead looking at a federal claim?
Cheaper (free!) to file Magnusson-Moss warranty law complaint with the FTC. As someone who used to work for the Dark Side, I know that it can be costly just to generate pro forma replies if the feds decide to inquire on behalf of a consumer complaint…certainly more costly than a service call to fix the damn thing. Remember that in our system, the process is the punishment.
George,
Posting what the law is doesn’t mean I’m going to file a claim. Saying a route is not economical doesn’t mean I can’t take it.
Useful info. I’ll have to see how I file that.
Right now, I’m just trying to get the “case manager” on the phone/email or something. Obviously, I have to be able to prove they refuse to fill the warranty before I can file a complaint.
Yes. And to some extent, I think Sears’s process is the punishment for consumers who want to get parts under warranty!
I’ll google how to file a complaint!! 🙂
Video on how to file a complaint:
http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/media/video-0054-how-file-complaint
My boring twitter stream today mentions each attempt to call the case manager. I did get this tweet — about an hour ago.
I tried to phone again 15 minute ago. Alas!
🙂 How many dollars do you suppose Sears has spent so far in paying people to fool with this problem?
Well, maybe it’s not so important that nobody makes it past the wall, so long as everybody doesn’t make it past the wall. Far be it from me to doubt the calculations of the bean counters.
HaroldW,
Yes. Illinois requires both parties to consent to recording. I’m in Illinois, so is Sears. I’m not quite sure how their recording saying they might record works under the law, particularly not to the extent that
(1) it’s a recording and the only method of opting out seems to be to hang up and not talk to Sears.
(2) consumers need to call these various numbers to discuss their warranty with Sears.
So, it’s a bit odd that their “system” ends up seems to require customers to permit their recording if you want to discuss the warranty.
I won’t die if I have to hand wash a little longer. So, at least for now, if Samantha won’t consent to recording, I will permit only sufficient conversation for her to either say they are sending my two parts. If they say no, I will request a case manager who will consent to my recording. Don’t know the law on this, but it would seem unfair to me that their system is set up to record consumers while they would not permit those they are recording to record them!
Mark
Possibly. Particularly if Sears to insists on the principle that they can force you to pay for labor in order to get the warranty part. I think that’s not permitted. Of course, I may be wrong, but my reading is they can’t require that. So I am going to push this.
One of the reasons for the posting/tweeting etc. is to make the communication as transparent as possible. If the position Sears staff presented to me two days ago is correct, Sears should be willing to say so in public and consumers should know what that warranty language means.
Moreover, one of the reasons I care about this– disproportionate to the $40 in parts (if bought at Amazon, not Sears) is that I’ve experienced similar things before. Moreover, this is the policy that drives people to spend on expensive “extended warranties” and — equally bad– can motivate people to buy a ‘new’ machine for no other reason than that these “cheap” little pieces break constantly. If Sears had to replace these cheap pieces for free under warranty for the full two years the warranty says it’s covered and could not defray the cost by making you pay for “labor”, they likely would be very motivated to make sure the machines they sell do not include pieces that get described as “designed to break” by customers at Amazon.com who need to buy replacement parts.
That said: I can think of other reasons I am not getting emails or phone calls from Samantha:
1) Maybe the “system” truly is munching the emails she sends.
2) Maybe my phone is broken to incoming calls.
3) She may really be away from her desk or dealing with others a lot.
4) Etc.
So there are lots of possibilities.
Lucia,
I always treat those messages that play while you hold for an operator as granting permission, particularly if they say “This call may be recorded for quality purposes.” I typically say “Thank you” into the phone, although I never have made such a recording.
Funny!! However, given the possibility things could get contentious, I prefer to get explicit permission.
This is the cost of cheap. Buying cheap crap, then complaining when it breaks is a lot like defending the poor performance of a GCM.
We paid $821.09 + 67.74 tax. This was supposedly 15% off the normal price.
One other thought: you might find that an OLDER model may have a sturdier part that fits/works .
Seems like they always try to make things “cheaper”…
Lucia
This is my community garbage collection centre. There is a curtain running on rails to keep out cats and tanuki, but the brackets aren’t fit for purpose. They break at the base. I’ve had a rummage in my offcut bin, and come up with something unbreakable. A few cuts, three holes, a little filing and job jobbed. I now understand the difference between a smith/mechanic and an engineer. One fixes stuff, and the other has their contract lawyer on speed dial 🙂
If life were only so simple. There’s plenty of expensive crap out there, and plenty of cheap stuff that “just works”.
On the brighter side, I guess we’ll finally get to see which wins, irresistible force or immovable object…
Hector, nice job! A much better use of moment of area, and you taught me a new word as well… Japanese racoon dogs, indeed…
Matt
I’m a Matthew too. We need to stick together. Here‘s the super-secret Matthew code, known only to you, me and the innertube.
By the way, the photo in the consumer reports article titled “Kenmore quietly tops Bosch in our latest dishwasher tests” is the machine we own.
I posted this at sears review page:
I’ll be watching to see if it appears.
Re: lucia (Jan 9 07:40),
I keep telling people that Consumer Reports isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and they look at me funny.
Many years ago I bought a used Toyota with an automatic transmission even though I prefer manual based on the glowing reviews and frequency of repair reports in that rag. The transmission broke a couple of years later and required a lot of money to replace, even using a transmission from a salvage yard. Toyota had a policy then that they would only sell parts at retail, pretty much closing out the transmission repair/replace national chains.
I then heard that the particular failure that I experienced was actually fairly common. I traded it in on a new Volvo which lasted for several hundred thousand miles before I replaced it. I haven’t paid any attention to Consumer Reports since.
I don’t subscribe, but do get copies from the library before buying. I am now dubious. Do you know how they accumulate repair statistics? Their method may be very flawed. The nice thing about Amazon is that people who are motivated to comment do so. People can also update their review. So if they like the appliance at first, but it later breaks, they can add that to the review.
Mind you: This cheap plastic part seems to be shared by many brands. So other brands may be crummy too.
I can say: My machine is quite. It gets dishes clean. The space between tines…. I have trouble fitting in my cereal bowls.)
But the good points are unimportant if the upper rack is unsupported. It’s currently sitting behind my chair so that it can show in any video recordings of phonecalls with service I might manage to make.
Matt:
Cheap and inexpensive are two very different qualities.
Lucia: Good Housekeeping also rated the Kenmore above Bosch with these caveats:
Cons
Racks are not especially flexible or large
Customer service was among the least helpful
Read more: Kenmore Elite Ultra Wash Dishwasher 665.1394 Review – Good Housekeeping
Follow us: @goodhousemag on Twitter | GOODHOUSEKEEPING on Facebook
Visit us at GoodHouseKeeping.com
Re: lucia (Jan 9 09:35),
They survey their subscribers. According to this article, the response rate is low and there appear to be lots of other problems as well. As you can see from the sidebar, CR is not happy with them.
Looking across the kitchen Eli spies that he too owns a Kenmore dishwasher, but one without knobs:)
I just looked at the rollers for the top rack of my relatively new Maytag dishwasher. They’re retained by plastic tabs too, but there are four of them and the lips on the tabs themselves are smaller so there’s almost certainly less strain on them during assembly. I’m also betting that the failure is the result of improper assembly. The wheels are probably crammed on either without squeezing the tabs together or not squeezing enough. That could flex the tabs in a manner that they weren’t designed to handle.
If you look at the wheels, is the inner surface tapered so that it could be assembled by just pressing them on? Looking at the pictures above, it looks like probably not and one would likely need some sort of tool to squeeze the tabs when putting on the wheels.
My parts are shipped. Fingers crossed!
RE:
DeWitt Payne (Comment #122433)
“I keep telling people that Consumer Reports isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
Many years ago I bought a used Toyota with an automatic transmission even though I prefer manual based on the glowing reviews and frequency of repair reports in that rag.
I then heard that the particular failure that I experienced was actually fairly common. I traded it in on a new Volvo which lasted for several hundred thousand miles before I replaced it. I haven’t paid any attention to Consumer Reports since.”
******************************************************************
De Witt,
Perhaps your sample size was too small. One negative experience does not condem the brand or CR I suspect. Toyota and CR are certainly not perfect but I find both very useful.
We run a fleet of trucks in my company and have probably owned 50 Toyotas, 20 Nissan, 12 Chevys, and 6 Fords over 30 years. The Toyotas consistently run much longer with far lower fuel costs and repair costs. They are also in the shop less so fewer days of lost revenue. We did have 2 with trans issues about 10 yrs ago but they were rebuilt and continued to rack 250k miles before retirement. Recent Chevy trucks have also been very good but use more fuel and have slightly higher incidence of repair. Ford have consistently been our lowest performers and we currently have none in our fleet.
Every product has warts and some have a lot more than others. How they deal with customers when they pop up matters.
Lucia,
I am on vacation with only my Android to type, so I will not worry about imperfect grammar or spelling. A number of thoughts.
1. Whether you could owe attorney fees if you lose should be an easy question to answer. Bing “are attorney fees owed by a consumer if the consumer loses a small claims case in Illinois.” This would be a good start, but wouldn’t give you a definitive answer. You could look up consumer law attorneys in Chicago yellow pages, and I would suspect that virtually all of them would offer an initial free consultation. I would try that because many consumer protection laws provide for businesses to pay attorney fees and even though your damages may be small, the attorney could be paid his or her hourly rate. You should simply ask the attorney whether you have a claim for all of the hassle and the minor damages, and as part of the discussion you could ask whether you could be liable for attorney fees.
I have other points to make and may make them later. Right now I have had all the typing I can take on my Android tablet.
Lucia,
“My parts are shipped. Fingers crossed!”
.
Time to declare victory; unlikely they would lie about that.
apparently the part is shipped comment was posted while I was typing my comment. Sorry for the now extraneous comment I posted above. Congratulations.
Never buy warranties. It makes no mathematical sense.
As a manufacturer I knew what the MTBF of all my products was.
Why? well so I could price the warranty to make money.
Next time you buy an appliance or anything ask what the warranty costs. Put that amount of money (if its monthly for example ) into
a rainy day account.
An exception might be a thing so valuable that the loss of it would be really awful. Like your life. but for appliances, cars, gadgets, phones etc the warranty is priced to make money at the known MTBF for the system.
Scott Basinger (Comment #122397)
January 8th, 2014 at 10:35 am
I’m an engineer working for an electrical manufacturer. Once in a while I get a call from a customer with a saga similar to yours. I figure that by the time they get to me they’ve been through enough and if it was a common or stocked part it would be available from one of our distributors. So if it’s from the plant my office is in, I just walk downstairs, grab the part and put it in a courier envelope to them at no charge. If it’s from a different plant, I call one of the engineers there who ship me the part to send to the customer.
##################################
Yup. I’ve done this. works like a charm. I would usually add a note like “please dont tell anybody or my boss will fire me”
He of course knew about it.
Lucia, could someone at Argonne National Laboratory propose that a one-year study be funded for examining the societal benefits of improving the currently inefficient interactions which now occur among consumers, consumer advocates, product retailers and producers, material scientists, structural engineers, component reliability technologists, and lawyers?
Sometimes you have good experiences.
My daughter installed a Moen faucet that began dripping a half year later. It was not possible to buy replacementparts (they have lifetime warrent), but when mailing them they send free of charge the needed replacement parts.
I had never thought it would be so simple.
Beta
Argonne doesn’t just have funds to fund things. Researchers write proposals to government agencies. So, presumably, some researcher at Argonne or a university who thought that was interesting and fell in his research area could write such a proposal. Eli Rabbet could propose it. (But it’s not really his area, so I’m sure he he’s not interested in writing any such thing.)
Whether any agency would fund it is another matter.
SteveF
Agreed! It’s all done except UPS getting stuff to the door.
Some companies are very, very good about warranties. Others not so much.
I suspect, but do not know, that companies that focus on reliability tend to honor warranties quickly and easily. Those with poorer reliability tend to resist honoring them.
Of course, the difficulty in getting warranty replacement parts could just be poor management. I don’t know if the first people I talked to at Sears just don’t know what warranties do cover, or what the language means, or what. But either way, their interpretation was– to my mind– incorrect.
But this is why warranty service needs to be discusses in public so consumers know which companies warranty departments send someone through an obstacle course and which will fill expediciously.
Hmmmmm….I am pretty certain we have the exact same model, just installed. It was gift from a family member who bought an extended warranty along witht he dishwasher.
I am troubled to see that sears would be so “postal” about something as small as what you just outlined.
Their policy as you describe it raises very serious questions about their commitment to customer service.
Look on the side of the adjuster. The part will bear the stamp
W10350376 in addition to at least two others.
I find the machine washes well. Some cycles get have horrifyingly (to me) hot dry cycles. I use “smart dry” or whatever that is.
Mine is also quiet; I like that.
It’s easy to clean the filter– and useful to remember to do so especially if you run the horrifyingly hot dry cycles because otherwise crumbs in the filter may ‘toast’ which is not a smell you’ll enjoy. (I tend to suspect W10350376 will fail sooner if you run the hot dry cycles.)
With an extended warranty you will– presumably– be able to get this part and labor under the warranty. The main sticking point was on Jan 6, everyone I contacted wanted me to pay for labor to get the part under warranty. I think the extended warranty covers labor, so that wouldn’t be the issue for you. To the extent, that parts should have been covered anyway, the extended warranty is probably redundant. But if you would have hired someone for labor, maybe that’s ok. OTOH: you tube is filled with people showing how one can pop these snap in plastic parts. Takes about 5 minutes– in fact, less overall work for the consumer than sitting waiting. (I know people often don’t consider “waiting” at home “work”, but your stuck at home. Heck, in El Salvador, lines were often long. People hired others to wait in line for them!! Really!! So, some aspects are waiting– albeit low skill.)
That said: for me, the dispute resolution process seemed like “the mushroom treatment”. (i.e. @searscares fed shit. “Samantha” ‘s non responsiveness was “keep in dark” )
Be sure to keep all paperwork handy!
Re: ivp0 (Jan 9 10:48),
Did you read the linked article? It’s very likely at all the vehicle frequency of repair data is, to put it kindly, statistically invalid. I suspect that their appliance test data is equally flawed because of a small sample size. And that’s not to mention that the long publishing lead time means that it’s unlikely that you will be able to find the exact model tested. And if those test results mean anything, they only apply to the model tested. My Toyota problem wasn’t the only reason I stopped reading CR, it was just the last straw.
Steven Mosher’s comment above confuses me. Why would companies profitting off warranties mean it “makes no mathematical sense” to buy a warranty? Warranties are, for all intents and purposes, insurance policies. Of course companies will profit off them. That doesn’t mean insurance is a stupid thing to buy.
Some insurance policies are bad deals, but many are good ones.
Re: Brandon Shollenberger (Jan 9 17:15),
We’re specifically talking about extended warranties here. In that case you have it exactly backwards. Most extended warranties are bad deals, some may be good, but on average, you’re going to be better off self insuring.
DeWitt,
Given that machines have shared parts I suspect what we really need is data on how often particular parts fail, and then we could identify which machines — both new and old– contain those parts. This particular part is made by Whirlpool. Based on complaints it’s used in multiple brands. This part will break pretty much in whatever machine it’s in.
That said, I have no idea how any consumer group could keep statistics on which parts break– especially if most consumers hire appliance manufacturers to do the labor. I’m sure the appliance manufacturers know which parts break.
I forgot this detail: When I said, I just want the parts not the labor: they guy said, “Oh you just want the rack adjuster”. I wish I had been able to record because I don’t think I’d actually explained what was broken to him. I wish I knew exactly how much info I’d given him on that because I thought “whoa! This guy knew just what part I’m talking about.”
Later the guy told me he used to work in parts. (I think looking through comments we can see that people working in parts tend to be more willing to send parts than people in the warranty department or service. Hmm… why is that? Hypothesis: maybe because when you tell them part X broke, the recognize part X is a part that constantly breaks? Or maybe they are just nicer. Or just not trained to say “Niet” to everything? We can only speculate. 🙂
Brandon–
I suspect what Brandon knows is the extended warranties are overpriced. This would not be surprising. After all:
1) They are heavily pushed at point of sale.
2) You get reminders after the sale.
3) They lock you into using a particular company for labor even though many handymen could do the work more cheaply.
4) This is not the first time I have experienced warranty people telling me I need to use their labor to get the part. Also, in the past, I did sometimes give in and bought parts once I knew what was wrong.
Also: I have used the companies labor when I couldn’t diagnose what was wrong. (Our filter on our old maytag dishwasher broke while under parts warranty. It was a bit mysterious to me. I watched the guy fix, and you did have to sort of know what might be wrong, take apart a bunch of stuff, get the torn thing out and so on. It tore once more while under warranty. The second time I removed it, took it to Maytag and they gave a new one; I put the new one in. No problem.
But note: in the first case, I wanted the expertise and wanted to hire the Maytag guy for the first torn filter. For the second one, the gave me a replacement: no question. I had to give them the torn one, but not a problem.
But anyway, I suspect what Mosher means is the extended service agreements are consistently knowingly over priced. And for most people, setting money aside and paying as things breaks makes more economical sense. A broken filter, wheel etc is generally not going to break the bank.
DeWitt Payne, your choice of what to quote is misleading, especially combined with your response. You create the impression I was talking about a disjoint issue.
That aside, I was responding to a blanket statement – that it “makes no mathematical sense” to buy a warranty. The proportions we’ve mentioned are irrelevant to that. So long as one accepts there are good warranties (that weren’t already excluded), Mosher’s statement is wrong.
lucia, I say I agree Brandon knows that, but I don’t like referring to myself in the third person 😛
Teasing aside, I agree extended warranties are often overpriced. There are other reasons to avoid them too. For example, the warranties can be handled by third parties who do substandard repairs. I’ve seen that with car repairs several times. I’ve even seen people charged for “services” their warranty didn’t cover during a repair for something covered by their warranty.
I get warning people off buying extended warranties. I rarely buy them. I just don’t get how one concludes buying them “makes no mathematical sense. I certainly don’t get Mosher’s explanation for why it doesn’t. It seems like he’s using a non-sequitur to justify an exaggerated position.
I generally won’t buy extended warranties. However, I can certainly think of cases where I would. I’m looking at buying a used car in the next few months. Buying warranty on that could be wise. I’ve also bought an extended warranty on several electronic devices that were good deals (especially one for a phone that covered things like dropping it in the sink).
I agree with you and DeWitt Payne. You guys aren’t saying what Mosher said though. What he said just confuses me.
Well done Lucia. The squeaky wheel does get the grease, as I have explained many times to my family.
If time is not of the essence I recommend a different approach to save your time. First report it as you have done and give the company a chance to fix it. But if that doesn’t work write a snail mail letter to the President (use his name.)
It seems real letters going to the head office are harder to ignore. It’s also possible the managers don’t even know the problem exists.
Adrian,
When a major appliance breaks, time is nearly always of some essence. It doesn’t kill me to hand wash dishes. That said: I prefer to avoid it. That’s why I own a dishwasher. I could write the president of Sears and wait.
Or, it seems to me I could do everything in parallel. If I do that, I might risk the possibility that the problem would be solved before the snail mail letter arrived and so waste some of the executives time. But possibly that’s not something I should worry about. 🙂
In this case, I would have written the letter on the afternoon of the 6th of January. Possibly, it would have arrived the 8th. In terms of verbal aggreement, the ‘official’ part my problem was solved the 9th. The parts are evidently now shipped– the searsdirect.com email tells me so. I should get them soon.
Note: I say the ‘official’ part of my problem is solved because it is solved in the sense that I have an agreement they will do what is necessary to comply with the warranty they wrote and gave me when I forked over money for the appliance with this warranty made part of the sale. Of course, I still feel I have a gripe that it was so difficult to get them to comply and the initially refused. (Four customer service reps at the first number provided in the warranty said “No.” when they should not have done so. That is: Assuming my interpretation of the warranty is correct– and I think we have established it is– four Sears reps refused to comply with their warranty on my initial call. )
Sears forecasts Q4 loss of $250 million-$360 million as holiday sales fall
In a blog post, CEO Eddie Lampert said the results “are not nearly what we want them to be.”
“They also overshadow all of the work that’s being done by our associates, our vendors and the other businesses we work with, along with everyone who is developing better ways for us to serve our members,” he added.
ref http://chainstoreage.com/article/sears-forecasts-q4-loss-250-million-360-million-holiday-sales-fall
Thought you would like the bit about “everyone who is developing better ways for us to serve our members.”
Adrian,
In other words: Sears lost a lot of money. But Lampert (head of company) thinks people are working hard do things that will attract $$ paying customers.
I do like him calling them “members”. As if someone “joins” Sears.
They have a points program. And you can register on their web pages and forums. But I don’t interpret getting ‘points’ or registering at a merchants forum or some such to mean I have become a “member” of Sears. “Points” programs have existed forever — especially for things like coffee. After 24 coffees your next one is free. Whooo hooo!
I prefer to be viewed as a “customer” who is buying things from a “merchant” not a “member” who has created some sort of “affiliation” or “bond” by joining some sort of “club”. That Sears might wish to foster the fiction that my buying a dishwasher means I’ve become a “member” of their “club” strikes me as a bit presumptuous on their part. On the one hand: It’s not something I pay much attention to when I buy. On the other hand, I can’t help but laugh at a President who seems to have either internalized his one fiction or or worse pretends to believe his own fiction about “membership”!
I’m biased but feel large companies like sears have gone downhill being run by salesmen, lawyers or accountants instead of engineers. Their focus on short term profits tends to be fatal for a company in the long run, even as they make huge bonuses.
It wouldn’t do any harm to let Lampert know of your experience.
Re my earlier comment, don’t bother write. I have just read this
http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2013/12/04/with-investors-bailing-is-eddie-lamperts-sears-doomed/
ps. from wiki.
Lampert’s investment style can best be described as “strip and sell”, often focusing on selling properties of retail companies and parting them off rather than investing money into them. Lampert typically holds his investments for several years and usually has between three and fifteen stocks in his portfolio. His investment was once drawing comparisons to the financier Warren Buffett.[2] Lampert is considered responsible for forming and merging Kmart and Sears into Sears Holdings.
Lampert’s earnings in 2004 were estimated to be $1.02 billion, making him the first Wall Street financial manager to exceed an income of $1 billion in a single year.[8] In 2006, Lampert was the richest person in Connecticut with a net worth of $3.8 billion.[9]
Lampert’s earnings in 2006 were estimated to be from $1.0 billion to $1.5 billion.
In December 2007, columnist Herb Greenberg of Marketwatch named Lambert the worst CEO of that year. [10]
In March 2012, Lampert came in at No. 367 on the Forbes world wealthiest people list with a net worth of $3.1 billion. [11]
In a May 2012 Forbes magazine article, contributor Adam Hartung described Lampert as the second worst CEO/Chairman of a large publicly traded American company, saying he “has destroyed Sears” after taking over “once the most critical force in retailing” when “same-store-sales kept declining, and the stock fell out of bed dropping into the $30s in 2009 and again in 2012.” [12]
In January 2013, it was announced that Lampert would take over as chief executive officer at Sears after Louis D’Ambrosio stepped down due to family health matters, which took effect in May 2013.[13]
Adrian,
Sears owns companies.
The problem is Sears the store should be run by merchants. There is more to merchandizing than accountants, sales or legal.
That is people specializing in selling products made by others. Kenmore and Craftsman the brands are a weird sort of thing. Because they ‘look like’ appliances/ tools to shoppers and are treated as ‘appliance/tools, they should be dominated by an “engineer/merchant” or “merchant/engineer” if there is such a thing.
I do think that the company has been taken over by people with a short term outlook. This is very bad for anyone who sells large ticket appliances– especially those that are not “electronics”. Electronics have become an exception because the rapid pace of technology motivates people to buy new even though their old stuff “works”. We bought a new flat screen tv. Did our old tv “work”: absolutely. But it doesn’t get 3-D or high definition etc. The old tv was… uhmmm 7 years old?
The changes in washer, dryers, dishwashers etc are mostly not going to motivate someone to buy new to obtain the new features. My 2000 Neptune washer/dryer are in the basement. As long they clean and dry clothes, I’m not buying new. I would buy new appliances if (a) the old ones broke or (b) I was remodeling the kitchen. At this point, when (a) occurs, we’ll probably buy from Amazon, install ourselves. That’s what we did for the microwave oven!
Adrian Ashfield,
No wonder the vp for PR was so upset at the @BrianSozzi the financial analyst who slammed them early this week!
BTW:
This was why I would have preferred email. However that was stymied by my Case Manager not responding to email. I would have liked to record for the same reason– but Sears records but won’t give customers permission to do so.
Lisle (The arboretum village) is superb about maintaining village trees. Once, I left the house around 2 pm. Got back around 4 pm. When I got home, I though: That ash tree looks odd. Half of it’s missing.
While I was away, the ash in the parkway had broken in 1/2 due to wind. The half that broke off. It had already been hauled off. My neighbor told me what had happened. The tree had gotten hauled off in time to not delay the kids returning home in their school bus!
I’ve had exactly the same parts break and have replaced them. Installation was a bit tricky, because a surprising amount of force was needed to snap the subunit with the wheels onto the rack.
The plastic piece that holds the wheels in place doesn’t stand up to the heat of the drying cycle, becomes brittle in a year of two, and eventually fails, allowing the wheels to come off. I checked and found that the current models in the store still use exactly the part as that failed us. Most large appliances are made in China these days and I doubt that Sears and the other big US brand names have the capacity to build any products for themselves these days. Now that China has an de facto monopoly on production, I suspect that their government has secretly arranged for all manufacturers to make products for the West that will fail within a few years, keeping employment in China high.
This conspiracy theory arises mostly from frustrations with basement dehumidifiers, which now rarely last more than one or two seasons – despite the fact that similar equipment in air conditioners, refrigerators, and older dehumidifiers lasts for a decade or more. Many models with different brand names have the same components and a little research showed that newer brand names were US fronts for the Chinese companies that manufacturer for the big US brand names. Is this a sign of my conspiracist ideation?
Since the plastic is clearly not up to the task, I suggest a workaround to prolong the life of the parts: don’t use the dry cycle. It’s an energy hog anyway.
DeWitt,
I rarely use the heated dry cycle! The only time I use it is by mistake.
Frank, not Mexico for white goods?
I’ve been hearing lately that at least some manufacturing is starting to move back to the US because energy costs here are low. Cheap labor only goes so far. Of course, if the greens somehow manage to ban hydraulic fracturing directly or indirectly through draconian limits on CO2 emissions, that won’t last.
DeWitt,
I think this part failure issue is design more than manufacturing. Depending on how you look at it either
a) inappropriate materials were selected given the part shape and anticipated function (temperature, jiggling during use and so on.) If the part was made of stainless steel, it probably wouldn’t fail. or
b) the shape of the part is inappropriate– that is the dimensions of the I beam/prongs etc. need to be different given the material they wish to use.
That said: There may be some interaction between ‘manufacture’ and ‘design’. I don’t know how these appliance companies currently divide work and don’t know to what extend different design decisions are dictated or influenced by the ‘manufacturer’. (There always must be some feedback. After all, a designer needs to know what can be made. But the issue here is responsibility.)
Re: lucia (Jan 16 08:13),
I agree. The design of a similar part in the Maytag washer, also manufactured by Whirlpool, is much more robust. I am tempted, though, to buy some spares just in case. Because my upper rack isn’t adjustable, the parts don’t cost as much. Of course, by the time I have a failure, I’ll probably not be able to remember where I put them.
“Of course, by the time I have a failure, I’ll probably not be able to remember where I put them.” 🙂
Heck, I have more than once bought spares and after they were installed I found spares in the drawer I forgot I had even bought.
DeWitt, Niels –
Thank you for reassuring me that I am not alone in losing my … um … whatever it is that one forgets with.
I didn’t even bother with the warranty because I expected the hassle. My problem is I am now replacing my 4th one of these pieces on a dishwasher that isn’t 5 years old yet. They are such crappy plastic the entire shaft (such as it is) breaks off and there is no way to Mickey Mouse the piece with some stainless steel washers, bolts and nuts, so I am out $30 each year to keep the top rack in place. The rest of the dishwasher is fine but this one part (two if you count both sides) is driving me nuts.
I’ve had this part fail 3 times on my KitchenAid dishwasher in a little over 2 years. I’m thinking about trying the do-it-yourself fix described in this youtube video: http://youtu.be/EZ_f48FJBP8
I am replacing this part for the second time in two years. The first time it was under warranty, which means we had the joy of washing by hand for two weeks before the repair shop got around to us. Nice warranty!
Did you know this page is the 2nd-highest ranked on the Internet when you search for “W10350374” on Google? Awesome.
Evan,
Great!! It’s not likely to be a frequent search. But people need to know the part fails.
re: W10350374
Glad we have the extended warranty on ours.
although I may order some parts just in case.
We wash dishes about once per week now with kids moved out and everything, and so far it has been a great dishwasher.
I’d like to hope it could last as long as its Kenmore predecessor, ~20 years.
I’ve had mine fail twice – one on each side – within two years of purchasing. My wife got the exact same runaround on the phone. Sears said we could pay $40 to have the technician come out, but that’s ridiculous when the part is $15. Granted, I am not happy about spending $15-30 a year to maintain my $800-something dishwasher.
@John – Thanks for the video. I think that will do the trick as a permanent solution.
@Lucia – What was the step that finally got them to replace? You said you talked to a person who used to be in parts and he knew what you were talking about. Or was it the long letter you wrote that described the parts? I want Sears to replace my parts regardless of if I find an alternate solution.
Paul,
I just kept calling — trying different numbers and different people.
Yep. And I think this violates the FTC fair trade act (I can’t remember the precise rule.) The act I’m thinking of (it’s federal) prohibits people from forcing you to use and pay their technicians to get your part. (They can force you to use their technicians if they pay for the technicians– but basically, they can’t make a ‘warrantee’ mean guaranteed paid business for them in exchange for your ‘free’ parts.)
This is the sort of thing where consumers need to know more about the governing law and someone needs to start discussing these sorts of violations.
Re: lucia (Oct 22 05:52),
I believe it’s the same sort of rule that forced Kodak, back in the chemical photography days, to separate the sale of film processing from the sale of the film itself. It’s an antitrust issue.
DeWitt,
I think that’s part of the motivation. But it’s also the fact that if warranties can act that way, the seller has the power to basically make them void. I’m not saying a seller does this, but such “warranties” would permit them to ‘charge’ labor costs sufficient to cover the cost of parts and just call it ‘labor’. So for example:
Assume:
(a) a handy man would charge $15 for a 10 minute visit to install the part in your house.
(b) the handy man would charge you $10 for the part.
(c) total= $25.
Under the warrantee.
(a) the warrantor could decree that house visits are $60.
(b) they “give” you the warrantee part for free ‘under warantee’.
(c) your “warrantee” replacement costs $60.
If the warrantor gets to decide the cost of labor and can force you to pay their labor to get a part you don’t have a warantee. That’s a totally deceptive practice.
The only way to remedy this is to not permit the warrantor to structure warrantees in this way. In fact the law says they can’t. But Sears reps are trained to represent it that in the 2nd year, your “warantee” works in that second way. But that’s not allowed — or at least I think it’s not.
One must press them. Ultimately, I think one can complain to the FTC. Most people won’t. Too much bother for a $10 part that takes 3 minutes to install.
We have the same dishwasher last December and use it once per week or less. Thanks to lucia’s reporting on her dishwasher adventures I check the rollers on the dish basket regularly. so far no problems. There is alarge Sears distribution center about 2 miles from our midcentury modern bit of paradise so I have hopes that if/when the prblem occurs I will get a good swift resolution. I am in the midst of working out some complaint karma with AT&T over their incredibly poor inconsistent service. My son wants a new phone and is still on our family plan (the last of family subsidy for the kids). We have traded upgrade eligibility on numerous occasions with no problems at all. This time AT&T decided to make the process bizarre and frustrating. They would tell us the trade was done and no problems, etc. then the point of sale people would deny that anything was done or could be done- that eligibility had not been transferred. Being a doting father I intervened, but in the midst of a frustrating day at work. I earned my bad karma yesterday when some sweet young lady asked me for the fourth time to tell her what AT&T had done to make this confusion happen. I replied, as I had the other three times, that since I don’t work for AT&T I have no idea what they had done to my account beyond telling me everything was ok for the upgrade. On the fourth time I added, to my shame, that she was reminding me of a box of rocks. It got much worse when she mentioned that maybe I was getting a bit personal to whcih I replied “I apologize for insulting the box of rocks.” To which she responded by being very quiet. I asked if she was still there, she said she was getting me some help. It was silent again and sounded as if she had hung up. I asked outloud if she had….not very politely. She colly answered that she was in fact still on the phone with me. She then sweetly said everything was ready and not to worry. I believed her. The result is no my son has his new phone and my phone number has been cancelled. When my son found out I have been liquidated, he got with AT&T to point out this was not supposed to be the case. But that I might lose all of my SIM chip data. So I am heading in to the local AT&T sales office to get things fixe….hoping that my service karma is now worked out.
Well a bit of one-on-one with a service rep in person at an AT&T store got all phones back in order, and all SIM data restored. An apology to the poor service rep passed on through the store service person was in order and delivered.
So Mrs. hunter gets son’s old iphone, son gets new iphone, and I get to think about a way to buy a decent android to replace the nearly obsolete phone now in use.
And the dishwasher is still in good shape…..
one on on gets it resolved is a heck of a lot better than one on one leads you to… nowhere.
lucia,
Yes, for me and my cultural background, dealing with things in person seems to be much more comfortable, even if I spend a great deal of time engaged on the phone in my work. Thanks for tolerating the long post on this.
$11 Fix – Stainless Steel Spindles
Necessity Breeds Innovation:
After the second time break, I decided to circumvent the future 4 hour window for service calls that will haunt me every 6 months until I buy a new dishwasher. The part for the first fix was identical to the original which is a fine example of sub-par engineering.
Materials Needed:
(4) Stainless Steel Socket Cap Screws – 5/16″ x 1″ (Dome Head)
(4) Stainless Steel Nylon Lock Nuts – 5/16″
Tools Needed:
1/2″ Wrench or Socket
5/32″ Allen Wrench
Step by Step Instructions:
1) Feed the screw through the wheel & insert into the slot next to the broken spindle. Your thumb in the photo above is indicating the precise slot to insert this wheel loaded screw.
2) Tighten the nut as far as possible with wheel still spinning freely. Do this (4) times and your back to arranging glasses & mugs in 10 minutes.
Photos:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/17z8kfmtb4n9f51/2014-10-24%2020.26.30.jpg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u5l71be28q4iffb/2014-10-24%2020.33.57.jpg?dl=0
Whirlpool W10350376 Rack Adjuster
We read the reviews on Amazon for this part but then placed an order today because it was better to spend around $40 to fix our $700 1 1/2 year old dishwasher than it was to buy a new one. Since it was going to take 7-10 days to get the replacement part my husband took zip ties and threaded them through each wheel and around the part as a temporary fix. It worked so well that we cancelled our order! After reading the reviews on Amazon, we figured the zip ties will last longer than the parts for $40. Maybe the manufacturer of these dishwashers should invest in zip ties. They’ll last longer than the cheap plastic they’re using.
Now I see the solution above for stainless steel screws. That will be our fix. When my husband took this apart he said that these were so cheap, they’d just break again. I will be calling Sears to register a complaint. The quality of this part is ridiculous.
Cheap part, keeps breaking… use zip tie fix.
Sears, kitchenaid, frigidaire are same diswashers with same problem
Yup, I have the same dishwasher by Kitchenaid. I’ve already replaced the upper rack adjusters. I just ordered the lower rack “transfer wheel assemblies” as all the wheels busted off, one at a time. They are cheap pieces of junk. I would like to come up with a wheel that doesn’t have that plastic to plastic assembly that when the wheel “axle” busts off, you don’t have to replace the whole assembly.
Our plastic roller carrier just broke in exactly the same way. Just past the 2 year warranty on new parts. Kudos to your planned obsolescence dept Sears. Can you say “class action suit”?
I found the best fix was to get a 1/2″ stainless steel fender washer from Ace hardware which fit exactly into the roller. Then bust off the remaining plastic spring that held the roller in place to allow room for the zip tie to go on both sides of the roller pin. Then thread a zip tie through the washer leaving the zip tie head on the outside of the washer, around the back of the roller pin and then back through the other side and back through the washer. Cinch it up and cut off the excess so as not to hang up on the guides. The zip tie head was large enough to keep the washer in place. Washer cost 25 cents. Total cost 1$ plus zip ties.
Seems to be good as new.
One of the memsahib’s Kitchenaid mixers just crapped itself. Drive comes from a horizontal motor in the top, through a bevel gear and down through a shaft. The shaft is splined into, and drives a white metal casting holding a planetary gear set. The shaft turned itself out of the casting, and the gear set (interference fit) dropped into the mix.
Splined shaft driving white metal casting for a “pro” quality mixer? I’ve come across some cynical borrox in my time. This takes the gateaux. I’ve tried to persuade the good lady to give up on US products and re-equip with Japanese. Unfortunately, that means investing some cash she doesn’t have.
test htaccess rule. Does it jam me up?
We have the same dishwasher and have had the stinking thing replaced once already and it’s broken again after 6 more months. Have had the dishwasher for less than two years. What a piece of crap. I wish I would have never bought the stinking thing.
Paula, How often are you using the dishwasher? In no way is the question one implying you are to blame. I am just wondering about its service stamina. Our dishwasher (same model, I believe) is now well into its second year and we have had no problems at all. But we are empty nesters who only use the dishwasher weekly or less. We love how clean everything is and how quiet it is. We do have a five year service agreement, which is hopefully worth more than the paper it was printed on.
I appreciate the self-help repair ideas and will use them if needed. But fortunately (knock on wood) we are still nominal in all aspects. I do like the removable cleanable filter screen. I think it helps cleaning and keeps my home plumbing in good working order.
Hi,
I had the exact same problem with the same part in my Kenmore dishwasher. As an engineer, it is clear to me that the original part has not been designed properly. The pins are very week. Anyway, I was told the same thing as you that I have to pay for ridiculous technician labor. Given the part is supposed to be under warranty, this is a clear case of misleading the costumers and ripping off people by Sears. After calling Sears couple of times, I decided to order the part from a supplier and pay for it myself. This would have been cheaper than paying the ridiculous technician time for doing nothing. Screw Sears. I am not going to buy anything from them anymore. If you end up suing them, count me in.
Another retail experience, this time banking.
My mother-in-law passed 100 (years, not mph) in March. She’s pretty sharp but has started to pay $10.40 bills with $104.00 checks so we needed to make some adjustments in how her Wells-Fargo accounts could be handled, namely enabling my wife to manage her financial affairs including the checking account and the safe deposit box.
We started with the safe deposit box. It was rented by Jan’s mother and father. Father died in 2005 and was listed as deceased. He could not be removed from access to box, nor Jan established with access rights without a death certificate. The bank admitted to having had a copy but it couldn’t be found so they needed another one. As they repeatedly say at these places “No problem.” This always means “no problem” for them, not “no problem” for you. We had to return with another death certificate. We were able to do this and the shuffling of access rights was accomplished.
Then we wanted Jan to be able to write checks on the account. This looked easy until the the Patriot Act reared its ugly head. Jan’s mom had to provide identification to prove she was the same person who had had this account for more than 50 years and through several changes in ownership of the local bank. Voila, her old driver’s license ought to work, it was from 2009 and met the Homeland Security ID requirements, but alas was expired.
The bank couldn’t accept this as proof of who she was because of the expiration even though it had a picture, and despite what you might think your looks don’t change all that much between 94 and 100 (most of the damage is already done by then). They needed an active ID because this is what the Patriot Act requires. But that’s not all.
Since she had now failed to be able to identify herself she could no longer write checks for more than $1,499 on her own account.
Fortunately, she likes riding around in cars so we can take her to the local DMV and get her non-driver’s license and then get the other things done. But note this:
Had she not come in to request change in access to the lock-box and checking account, she would have continued to be able to write checks out of her account for any amount that would clear
just as she always had.
I can’t tell how much of this nonsense is incompetence on Wells Fargo’s part and how much well-intended stupid stuff from Congress, maybe some of each, but it does lead to two conclusions.
Wells Fargo should have stuck to ponies and stage coaches which they were really good at, and Congress should have given more thought to the Patriot Act where it applies to people over 100.
Those of you with elderly parents should give serious thought to what you cannot now do, but might want to be able to do after they have become incompetent or perhaps not sufficiently mobile to be waltzed over to the DMV for a picture. If anyone is interested I have a number of other areas of your relationship with your elderly parents which could be imperiled by not getting their permission while they are able to give it.
You may find out some of these things on your own, but if you do, you’ll wish you’d thought the whole thing through at the time.
Yes!!! I have Kenmore dishwasher 665.13949K010 (Kenmore 586-1) and the top rack adjuster/slider assembly has broken THREE times!!!!!!! Each time, it was because the very poorly-designed wheel axles broke. I paid for the first set of replacements, but the second set broke within the part warranty period, so Sears PartsDirect.com replaced them for free. When they broke a few weeks ago, I discovered that the replacement part has been redesigned, so the adjusters are now metal and the wheel/axle assembly is much sturdier. I bought part # W10712394 from Sears Parts Direct – for $37.03 plus shipping. I also found a coupon code “90055” to get a 10% discount. The part number is a kit that has adjusters for both sides, so you only need to order 1. Make sure to know your appliance model number before ordering.
BTW, I called Sears to complain and the customer service rep had the nerve to say “Oh – the manufacturer says it’s not an issue”. I realize that this is co-branded, but if the appliance says “Kenmore” on it, then Sears should stand behind this. I loved Sears but this one experience has soured me.
The part in question is known to be very unreliable. I am getting ready to replace it again after only a year, but with the redesigned part this time. I wonder if there could be a class action suit to regain some of the money lost purchasing replacement parts for this very fragile part.
I also have the Elite Ultrawash and the top rack wheel pins broke again. This is the 3rd time in 3 years. First time I too being an engineer, saw that the design was flawed (wheel pins too weak). Called Sears and got a big run-around before they blamed it on Whirlpool (OEM). Called Whirlpool who said that no one else has ever complained about this problem before (liars). Gave me a big runaround. Stood my ground and said cover it under the warranty. They said no. I said I’ll file with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), they said go ahead. Filed with the BBB. 1 week later Whirlpool called me and said they would ship me new parts if I take down the BBB complaint. I said sure. I got the 2 assemblies in the mail and I refuse to take down the complaint. It is still there. I’m screwing them the same way they screwed me, lied to me as well as all other dissed customers. As I said part failed again one year later. “No problem with the part”!!! A Yugo Auto engineer could have designed a better part. Sears and Whirlpool can kiss my …. Maybe we could get a class action suit…except the lawyers would take their 40% and we would get $1.50 each.
Ray N,
All sorts of small parts on mine are breaking now. Mines no longer under warrantee but the number of items breaking is ridiculous. I can find less expensive outlets to replace the small pieces. But mostly I advise people to not buy one of these dishwashers. Dishwashers should certainly last longer than 2 years without having part after part after part break.
The small parts are absolute crap.
I used the zip tie process as mentioned here. It works PERFECTLY! zip tie the wheel to the bracket. all is good now. i am buying two larger ones to secure the top of the rack to the bracket. Nice!
This is a class action kind of defect. Less than two years. I’m on my third set of upper rack arms. Can’t replace the broken handmade items that broke last time the rack fell. Kenmore Elite sucks. My display lights are half working. Already had to replace the drain check valve.