I am starting to agree that it is just Huntsville, hating us. It has been one thing after another.
Last week, we came home late on Labor Day to find our refrigerator was not working. We called Best Buy. They said, "Turn your thermostat all the way down and call us in 24 hours." Not good enough. It was room temperature in the freaking refrigerator, everything in the freezer was thawed out and soggy. I guess when I said, "Everything is THAWED in my freezer" they thought I meant, "The fridge isn't getting cool enough for my liking." So I said, "I want someone to come out and look at my fridge today." And THEY said, "It's a 6-month-old fridge. It can't be broken. Turn your thermostat lower. I'm sure that will get it as cool as you want it." Aaargh!
Finally Andy called and informed them that they were really going to schedule us a service call. So they did - for Thursday. Leaving me to wait 2 days without a fridge. Being kind of a critical appliance, I was hoping for someone to come sooner, but after the first punk I talked to, in a way I was just grateful to be getting anyone at all. (ha ha ha. Joke on me.)
In the interim, it started making this BRRRRRRAAAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK noise. The first time I heard it, I was in the back running the vacuum. You could hear this noise outside, over the vacuum, probably across the street.
So yeah, we waited two days. Thursday rolled around, and no technician. When I called Best Buy, they said that no one had ever scheduled a service call for us. Are you kidding me???? So we were like, you better get us a fridge PRONTO. They actually dared to say this: 1) someone could be out here on the 23rd. and 2) they gave us the number of a local appliance repair shop that does LG refrigerators and told me that my best bet was to call them and "hope and pray" that they could help me sooner than the 23rd.
So we hoofed it down to the store where we bought the thing. Here I am frantic. I can't keep milk or baby food or anything for my kids, I can't feed my family, we are having to eat at PF Chang's every night. I guess I was foolish to think that just because we bought $6500 worth of appliances from them, that because I paid my $300 service contract for my $2400 refrigerator, that Best Buy might have some small moral obligation toward getting my kids some unspoiled milk to drink. Silly, silly me.
The manager guy actually dared to say to me "Ma'am, you need to step away from your anger and see that there is nothing we can do to help you." They would not give us a refund (outside the 30-day return window, well in our case 45 since we are 'premium silver status members' - ha ha ha), exchange (a comparable fridge couldn't be delivered until October 15 - which was weird enough since we got our current one 4 days after we paid for it), loaner (they don't have a system in place to loan us one.) I'm thinking that since they're not real excited about ours, they should just give us a new one and they can diddle with the broken one on their own time, you know?
When I almost punched the guy and Andy started squeezing my arm in that way of I better shut up and let him resume the talking, the rat face turned us over to a girl who had absolutely no authority to do anything for us except inform us that her managers said they can't help us. Basically they were wanting us to go away and I had no plans to. Finally Andy dragged me away before I started demonstrating my temper.
The next day, I talked to the 3rd party repair center and they came out the same day. Good people. Unfortunately, the part needed had to be ordered. Get this: The LG parts center is a mile from the appliance people's shop. But they don't let them pick up parts there. So they had to SHIP IT UPS, who doesn't run on the weekend. So the part didn't actually arrive until Monday. Half an hour after they got the part, it was in my fridge and the thing was operational. I don't know if I'm relieved that it works, or infuriated that it took a week to get such a simple fix.
We drank tap water straight, and tepid Capri Sun all week long. I was so grateful to go to Piedmont over the weekend. And so grateful to be nursing - the baby girl really didn't suffer like the rest of us. Seriously, you don't know how you need a refrigerator until you don't have one. Now go right now and give your fridge a big hug and kiss and thank it for being in your life.
And don't buy anything from Best Buy that you can't stand to lose. Better yet, don't buy anything there at all.
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wakeful dreamer