Customer Service/Workmanship/ Efficient

So some of my recent blogs have been about customer service. The Good. The Bad. The Ugly.

This one would probably fall between bad and ugly.

My wife and I bought a new set of appliances for our kitchen. The usual. Refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave and gas range.

We bought them from a local store wanting to help the smaller business owner instead of the big box stores. We did a lot of research and a lot of shopping.

Our decision came down to purchasing General Electric products.

So we anxiously awaited their arrival a couple weeks ago after the new granite countertops had been installed.

Delivery guy shows up on time and installs everything. Looks good. Happy wife. Happy life.

That night my wife is trying out the gas range and learns that the 8,9and the 0 on the keypad are not working.  Wouldn’t you know it, she wanted to heat the oven up to 400 degrees but 411 or or 377 would have to do.

Then we load the dishwasher up and fill the ‘rinse agent’ holder up with Jet Dry. Five minutes later we have Jet Dry on our hard wood floors. Seems like the Jet dry holder didn’t hold.

So on Monday morning I call GE and speak with a woman who is there to help me according to her introduction. This I would learn would only be the first person I spoke to because she didn’t know about dishwashers. So after talking to woman #1 for 5 minutes, I got to repeat the entire story to another woman. I told her about the oven and then spent ten minutes trying to explain to her where the leak in the dishwasher was coming from and what we had done…(more on that later).

Good news, we can have someone out on Wednesday morning. I actually thought that two days was not too bad in the grand scheme of things. Of course he will be there between 8am & noon so I got to schedule me day around that.

About 10:00am customer service calls and gives me a recorded message telling me that the repairman is en route to my home for the appointment. Ten minutes later the doorbell rings.

Scot is here to fix my problems…That is what he tells me. Nice guy. Identifies the dishwasher problem and tells me he has the part in the truck to fix that. Replaces the entire plastic container that hold the soap and the rinse agent. The original part, which he shows me, it is missing an entire corner of this plastic housing. Broken off somewhere. In any case, replaced and problem solved.

The digital display on my gas range however was not so lucky. Technician Scot identified the problem by pressing the buttons and telling me that I needed a new digital display component. No problem. I’ll order it and it will be sent Fed Ex. I’ll be back here next Wednesday. You do not have to do a thing.

Man this is sounding good. Don’t have to call and make an appointment, I am on his radar screen.

Later that day, I come home and I see a delivery an my doorstep. It says GE on it. Holy crap Batman. The guy is here at 11:00am and the parts show up by 5:00pm. That is sure some efficient system that GE has. American know how…company pride…customer service look out they are kicking butt and taking names…

Oh did I mention that the parts that were shipped were for the dishwasher…Oh and they were the wrong parts…Oh they came after the repairman was here. Oh well I guess no butts were kicked and no names were taken.

Flash forward to Friday. Another delivery shows up at the door. This was my electronic display.

Flash forward to Wednesday. So here I am working in the office. 8am-12pm is my time frame for Scot to show up and get the stove working. 8am not Scot, 9am no Scot, 10am no Scot, 11am no Scot.

Finally, I thinking that Scot telling me last week that I wouldn’t have to do a think was too good to be true…I know you won’t believe it, but it was too good to be true.

12:00pm I call GE’s 1-800 number. After making my way through the phone landmine called customer service I get Connie on the phone. Explain to her the issue. She looks at her screen and tells me that I have an appointment on Saturday to get it fixed. I very calmly explain to Connie that I have plans for Saturday. Made arrangements to be home today because that is what Scot told me. She then says that she will try to get to dispatch and see about getting someone out today. Can you please hold. It may take a few minutes. Sure Connie, thanks for your help.

10 minutes pass so I know that Connie is working hard for me. OK here she comes to give me the good news…dialtone. We have been disconnected. Surely Connie will call back since the automated phone tree asked me for my phone number and Connie confirmed my number….2 minutes…5 minutes…10 minutes…damn it Connie isn’t calling is she?

So I get to go back into the start of the system again….Press 1….Press 3….Press2…..let me connect you to an agent…..Music….all agents are helping other customers your wait will be approximately 3 minutes.

Hello this is Nina can I get your phone number…Are you freakin’ kidding me. So I explain to Nina that I was disconnected. She tells me that I will have someone there today between 1:00pm-5:00pm. I ask Nina why Connie didn’t call back and she explains that this is only an inbound call center,they cannot make outbound calls. To say my head exploded is an understatement. General Electric… Jet engines, multi-billion dollar company…technology leader, their call center cannot dial out. Classic.

So doorbell rings at about 1:30pm. Roy is here to fix my problems. So I let Roy in, explain to him the issue. Give him the parts that were sent and head to my office to empty my inbox.

At least it looks nice...

15 minutes later, Roy tells me that after replacing the component pieces we are back to the say place. It has to be the ribbon cable that connects the pieces together. That is the only common thing. So Roy I’m sure that you have the ribbon in your truck right…Nope that will have to be overnighted, but it is after 12:00pm so it won’t get here until Friday, but I can’t guarantee what time…Monday is a holiday…So Roy and I have a date a week from today to replace the ribbon cable connector.

Roy started leaving and I said here are the parts that you just replaced. They still should work according to your diagnosis. You can just throw those away. We can’t use them

This to me is just a classic example of a big company tripping over themselves time and time again. Two brand new appliances out of four that don’t work right from the get go. Three phone calls(so far) to customer service…Three repairman visits(so far) calls…Three pieces of shipping…Wasted parts. Hello landfill here we come.

Come on General Electric. You need not look very far to understand why your profits are below expectations or why customers grow frustrated with you. I am writing this blog. I have no idea how many people will read it, but it is a punch in the nose and someone who reads this may decide that LG appliances are the way to go.

I guess the good part is that they are keeping customer service operators, shippers and repairman employed.

BTW, when I went and took this picture of my gas range, Roy didn’t even set the clock to the right time. Nice attention to details.

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