On Sun, 25 Jun 2006 04:32:23 GMT, "Tom G"
wrote:
"Perri Morgan" wrote in message
. 8...
"Sev" wrote in news:1151185103.575091.160410
@r2g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
Maybe they
were anticipating a lot of service calls; since everything short of
explosive is described as normal operation.
I had the most fascinating conversation today with the helpful people at
Sears. My washing machine, which is little over a year old, stopped
mid-cycle and began emitting a series of beeps. The LCD on the panel
said E10, which I assumed was an error code, so I went through all the
documentation and could find nothing about error codes (though there
were other "troubleshooting" suggestions like checking to make sure the
power was plugged in and the hoses attached, etc).
I called the Sears 800 number, and they immediately began to schedule a
service call for next Wednesday. I said that I didn't need a service
call; that it was likely something simple and if someone would kindly
tell me what the error code means, I could take care of it myself. She
told me that there was no number for tech support -- that the only way I
could talk to a tech support person was to schedule a service call for
them to come to my house. "Are you telling me that your tech support
has no phone?" I demanded, to which she asked, "Do you have an extended
warranty?" I told her I didn't, to which she responded that in that
case, they do not have a phone number. "So what you're telling me is
that they have a phone number, but that you won't give it to me because
I didn't purchase your extended warranty?" I asked. She said that it
was an "internal" number, and no, I couldn't have it. I then asked why
they even bother to display the error codes on the machines if they
aren't going to give customers the information that the error code
references, and again, she tried to schedule a $90 service call.
I told her how delighted I was with my choice to purchase my washer and
dryer at Sears, along with what she could do with her service call, and
hung up. Then I re-set the washer and it re-started and ran through the
cycle without a problem. Guess I'll never know what caused the error,
but. . .that's got to be the most amazing service policy I've ever heard
of. Bottom line is. . .even the simplest tech question costs $90.
The moral of the story is. . .shop with care if you're intent on
shopping at Sears at all -- and for goodness sake, don't buy Kenmore.
At least with any other brand, I could have called the manufacturer.
The reason a phone number would have been available to you if you had
purchased the protection agreement was that, they then would have wanted a
tech to walk you through the problem to avoid a service call that would have
come out of their pocket. If your machine had been under the regular
warranty, you also would have been handed over to someone who would have
walked you through the codes to again try to avoid a service call at Sears
expense. I'm not saying the above policy is right or wrong but unless
I"m not arguing with you, since you said you're not saying if this is
good or bad, but you point out the very thing that is annoying about
this to Perri. Warranty or protection agreement, they would want to
walk the customer through to avoid a service call at Sears expense,
but if the customer is paying they won't even put the error code and a
little bit of walk-through in the owners manual.
People understand why even on Usenet, posters don't want to answer the
same questions over and over again, and why a ng will write an FAQ or
why posters use canned answers, or tell people to search the web.
Perri didn't start out expecting to talk to the service deparatment
for free, and even when he wanted to, he would have settled for one
sentence that explained E10. But noooooooo, they kept that a secret,
and it's almost like they want to encourage service calls when the
owner has to pay for it. That is very annoying, to say the least.
I had something a while back that had a list of error codes in the
manual, can't remember what it was, but the only ones they listed were
codes that came up normally, like "out of paper" or "paper jamb".
Things that represented more serious malfucntions were not listed at
all. I think I was able to find out on a computer ng what the code
meant (but that wouldn't help most people who don't even know
newsgroups exist.
)
they've changed since I retired, at least the person you talked to was based
in this country and spoke pretty good English or Spanish (if requested).
By the way, I scheduled a maintenance check up on a 15 yr old central A/C
system once. After the third time that my appointment was re-scheduled, it
occurred to me that I had used the words "annual maintenance checkup" in my
service request. The tech was assuming that I was looking for the "annual"
that comes with a service agreement and since they are usually overbooked
and they assumed I would be paying nothing for this service, they kept
pushing me back. I called and rather heatedly pointed out that I was
expecting to pay for this service call and that nothing was under warranty
and a tech was knocking on my door a half hour later.
Tom G.