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Click here to return to Bill Wood's Blog Pages.The Maytag repairman doesn't exist.Anyone who watches commercial television is likely to have seen the ads featuring the Maytag repairman who has so much time on his hands– presumably because Maytag appliances and their co-brands, Amana and Whirlpool, are so fantastically reliable– that he spends his time fixing other appliances. First, the ads are fundamentally misleading since they don’t tell you that there is no such thing as a Maytag repairman. A company called Servicenet is actually responsible for delivering Maytag warranty service. And they, in turn, use any number of subcontractors, some of whom may not be up to the job of fixing your appliance. Second, the ads fail to convey the extreme overload in the Maytag warranty service system that may require you to wait as long as two weeks after requesting an initial or follow up service appointment. As is so often the case with advertising, the company’s touted strength is actually their greatest weakness. The following letter of complaint will give you a taste for just how bad the reality of that service is. Believe me, the so-called Maytag repairman is so busy trying to fix Maytag family appliances that you should consider yourself extremely fortunate if he fixes yours in a timely fashion. 29 October 2007 Maytag Dependability Plus 650 Missouri Ave. Jeffersonville, IN 47130 Dear Sir or Madam: The purpose of this letter is to request a full refund of the $178.37 which I paid back in March 2006 for extended service coverage on my Amana range. A copy of the certificate of coverage (AM0097607743) accompanies this letter. I purchased an Amana gas range (model ARGS7650SS) from Sears in Framingham, Massachusetts in fall 2000. The range was installed six months later when our kitchen renovation was completed. During the first five years of use the range failed twice. In each case an Amana certified repairer was called and the range was repaired within a week to ten days. Last year I purchased the three year extended warranty described in the first paragraph directly from Maytag / Amana. Our range failed for a third time in mid-September and I called Maytag for warranty service on 17 September. Three service visits, each scheduled as "soon as possible", followed under claim number 2171640. In each case the service technicians from “Supreme Appliance” who were assigned to the repair job were unable to complete the assignment and fix the range. These three visits occurred, on 22 September, 2 October and 15 October. I had substantial doubts regarding the competency of the personnel sent to work on my range; the people who showed up for the second visit, for example, seemed to have no idea how to access the range’s electronics. A week before the 15 October service call. I called Maytag’s warranty marketing department and asked if they could extend my warranty for at least a month given the inconvenience I had experienced up to that point. I was told that they couldn’t do this but that they would try to expedite my next appointment. Despite spending over an hour on the phone and painstakingly following the instructions which Sarah in marketing gave to me, no one did a thing to move up my third appointment. Following the third visit, a fourth visit was then scheduled for 18 October. On this occasion, the service technicians simply failed to show up for the scheduled appointment. No attempt was made to notify me that they were not going to come. When I contacted Maytag toward the end of the time frame when they were supposed to arrive, Maytag was unable to contact the company (i.e., “Supreme Appliance”) to determine what had happened. At this point, I had had no oven for five weeks and had stayed home on four separate days for four or more hours waiting for service. I then called Maytag again on 19 October and attempted to request service from a more competent and respectful vendor than Supreme Appliance. I was scheduled for an inspection visit on 31 October (“the earliest date available”) and was told that it would be a minimum of seven to ten days after that visit before I could expect to have my replacement part installed and, with it, a fully functional range once again. In other words, we could reasonably expect to be without a functioning range until at least 9 November, almost eight full weeks since I first requested warranty service. My wife and I determined that this was simply not acceptable. We had bought a warranty and yet we had no working range. So on 20 October we went out and spent over $2100 on a new Kitchenaid range at Sears (see attached receipt). We did this because we had lost all confidence in the ability of the Maytag people to honor their commitment to us in a timely and professional fashion. The fact is that our Amana range was an unreliable product; add to that the atrocious service I received under the aforementioned service contract and it’s not hard to see why I will never go near another Amana, Maytag or Whirlpool appliance again. I strongly believe that the service contract was fundamentally misleading since no one would purchase such a contract if they were told that it could take up to two months or more to fix a broken range– an appliance that is usually used and depended upon every day of every week. All I am asking Maytag to do is to refund the full price of the warranty agreement. If they do this I will release them from any other claims relating to the failure of the above mentioned appliance. Because the personnel I have spoken with at Maytag have not been willing to acknowledge their obligation to me for failing to provide me with effective or timely service under my warranty contract, I have already filed a written complaint with the Massachusetts attorney general’s consumer complaints bureau. I am copying them on this letter as well. I look forward to receiving an acknowledgment of this letter and a reimbursement of the $178.37 paid for the worthless warranty.
cc: Office of the Attorney General The letter reproduced above was sent on 29 October 2007. It took close to three months longer before I actually received the refund which I requested in that letter. Here is what happened next. On 5 November, Darien from Servicenet called me and left me this message. Listening to this message you would think that my problems had been resolved... But not so fast. Servicenet couldn't begin the process of refunding my service contract until they had first paid their subcontractor, Supreme Appliance, who had bungled the job of repairing my appliance in the first place (see letter above). This didn't happen until 28 November at which point Darien turned the case over to Servicenet's sales department to make my refund payment. I checked in on 7 December just to see how things were going and was told that the refund checks were issued on Friday every other week. The person I spoke with then assured me that my check would either be issued that day or two weeks later on December 21st. Ever friendly, I called the sales group again on 17 December and was told that the check might have just been cut on the 14th of December but more likely would be cut on the 28th of December. Hmmmm... Now I know this may sound a wee bit ungenerous, but I decided it was time to have my contact from the Attorney General's office follow up just to clarify things a bit. On 21 December he spoke with Darien who confirmed that the contract had been cancelled on 28 November and that I would be paid six to eight weeks after that, which would mean the last two weeks January. She then referred him to someone in sales who, just minutes later, pretty much repreated what Darien had said, except that this time the word was that I would be paid eight to ten weeks after the contract had been cancelled, or sometime during the first two weeks of February. So the date for getting my check issued had moved from the 7th of December to the middle of February; just how many refund checks for cancelled service contracts do you suppose these folks are processing? Step back for a moment: These are the Maytag repairmen. This is as close as you'll ever get to seeing that cute little man who shows up on those television ads. Now ask yourself: Do you really want to do business with people who view this as acceptable customer service? Think about this before you buy your next Maytag, Amana or Whirlpool appliance. Finally on Friday 18 January 2008, I received my check. Ahead of schedule by my reduced expectations. The check was dated Monday 7th January and had been mailed a full seven days later. This is not an experience I would choose to repeat for love or money. Meanwhile I am happy to report that Kitchenaid range which replaced our Amana unit appears to be much better designed. (My fingers are crossed.) |
