not so fast

Back in May, I wrote about how happy I was with our LG dishwasher:

We were perfectly happy with our KitchenAid dishwasher, but when we did our kitchen remodel the contractor failed to anchor it properly and it ended up not washing dishes well. We replaced it with a Bosch, which was not a great decision. It didn’t have a food grinder and did not do a good job of getting dishes clean. We had a service technician out and he told us that there was nothing wrong with the dish washer – it was the way we were using it. And we were supposed to run hot water before turning it on. Really? Come on! We had to point out to the technician that there were lemon seeds in he sprayer arm. The solution to that was to pull the arm out and clean it out. Right. We ended up replacing it with an LG, and we’ve been very happy with it.

Well, not so fast. This summer we began having problems with the LG. It was making a lot of noise and not getting dishes clean. Fortunately we had a service contract with Best Buy on it. The service man said that it needed a new motor. The motor finally showed up and he installed it. Unfortunately he was not terribly familiar with that model, and he failed to seat a screw properly, which caused a piece to move and block the lower sprayer arm. He fixed that, but the new motor soon started behaving just like the old one.

At the same time, the local company supporting the service contract said that they weren’t going to do that sort of work anymore, and Best Buy did not immediately locate a replacement. Finally after weeks of phone calls and waiting Best Buy said that they would honor their “no lemon” policy and allow us to select a replacement. We found one we liked, a Frigidaire, but processing the paperwork was painful as we stood at the customer service desk waiting for the staff to figure out how to make it all work. Finally, a manager came along who did, and in the end we ended up with a $100 refund over what we paid originally for the LG.

Not a bad reward for having the patience to stand there and wait for close to half an hour.

The Frigidaire is now installed, and working, so far, just fine. But I’m feeling a strong tendency to want to keep knocking on wood.