I offer a tale of staggering incompetence and dizzying bureaucratic nonsense:
In 2001 I bought a Maytag refrigerator. I had no problems for 8 years.
In April I got a recall notice, and Maytag sent a repairman from A&E Factory Service.
After that the refrigerator started leaking out the bottom, with puddles appearing every day or so. Because of the timing, this problem was clearly caused by the repair.
Last week I called Maytag, and they set up another service appointment with A&E, between 8 and 12 on June 23.
At noon no one had shown up, so I called. I was told the repairman would call back right away. He did not. At 12:30 I called again. Same story. At 1:30 I called again, and was told that a different repairman would come, within two hours. At 3:30 I called Maytag and asked that a repairman from a different company do it, and was told that I would then have to pay for it. I declined.
At 5:15, the repairman finally showed up. He said there was no way the problem was connected to the previous repair, though obviously it was. He said he saw no evidence of a leak. (I had actually left a puddle on the floor that morning, as proof, but as the hours dragged on and my daughter stepped in it twice, I finally wiped it up.) He poked around a bit but didn’t seem to have a clue how to address the problem. Then, incredibly, he said I would receive a bill.
I called A&E this morning to demand that no bill be sent. (I did not want another repairman to come; it will clearly be easier to keep wiping up the water than to go through another day like yesterday.) I got to a supervisor, who said that Maytag would have to authorize A&E to cancel the bill.
I called Maytag, got to the first level of supervisor, who said I had to call A&E. (The classic runaround: A says call B. B says call A.) Finally, I got a second-level supervisor, who said she would get the bill canceled.
Every one of these calls, of course, took forever, as I had to navigate the endless menus, the waits to be transferred, etc. (Once when being transferred to a supervisor I got cut off and had to start over.) Literally hours on the phone.
Is this any way to do business?