I didn’t do it!
Marilyn has decided to make her photo prompt a weekly thing on Wednesdays, and since I rarely post on that day (other than an occasional late edition of Retro Ad Tuesday), I figured why not keep the fun stories that can be told from my backlog of photos coming!
Above you see my cat Biskit after I helped him shed a toupee’s worth of his fur during the hot, hot Summer of 2012. He’s not the subject of this post, though, what he’s sitting on is. That’s my chest freezer I was given by my parents for my 35th birthday in 2010… or a reasonable facsimile of it, anyway. I could now buy all the meat I wanted in advance without having it rot until I left it out to thaw and forgot about it…
They got the freezer at (where else?) Mecca. About 4 months later, I just happened to look at the recall board at work and noticed that my freezer was on it for a faulty capacitor that could possibly catch fire.
Ooooooooh, I better have a look at that for ya!
With the help of my handy dandy daily journal I kept at the time, here’s a timeline of how a simple recall I probably could have just ignored instead turned into one of the most fucked up messes I’ve ever been involved in…
Saturday November 13th: Notice the recall posting at work and confirm my freezer is on the recall list. But it’s my sleeping day, so I wait to call their hotline.
Sunday November 14th: I call the hotline. A nice lady named Shatavia informs me that they will set up an appointment with a repairman for me to replace the faulty capacitor. She will call back with the appointment time tomorrow.
Monday November 15th: I keep the phone at my bedside, and it rings off the hook all day, keeping me from getting a proper nap. Everyone calls my house….. except Shatavia.
Geez, thanks a whole fucking lot for that helpful information, Caller ID.
Wednesday November 17th: I call the hotline back and talk to someone not named Shatavia. She sets me up for an appointment to have the repair done while I’m on the phone. The repair will be done next Tuesday morning.
Tuesday November 23rd: The repairman cometh…
Howdy.
He switches out the no-good, dangerous capacitor for one that is probably slightly less shady. Because he had to stand the freezer on its end to do the repair, he advises me not to plug it in again until the next day. OK, no problem. Thanks a bunch… this wasn’t bad after all!
Wednesday November 24th: I plug my freezer back in, and nearly make a trip Mecca to restock it more meat. But I don’t…. and it’s a good thing I didn’t. I realize three hours after plugging it back in that the compressor hasn’t come back on. I immediately call the hotline back to tell them what happened. They will send the guy back out on Friday. Just great… since I am working Thanksgiving night, Friday was going to be my day to sleep it off.
Friday November 26th: The repairman is supposed to be there between 8 AM and noon. He shows up at 2:30. He says he called to inform me he would be late and got no answer. The contact number he says he had for me turns out to be the cell number of my real estate agent who helped me get this house the year before. I have no idea how Shatavia screwed that one up when she took my contact info two weeks ago…
Someone must’ve stuck a wire in the wrong place.
He confirms that the compressor on my four month old freezer is toast. He orders a new one and will be back out next Friday morning.
Thursday December 2nd: A&E (The repair place, not the network) calls to inform me that the compressor I need is on backorder… which is shop talk for saying their supplier ain’t got one. I’m to call them back to reschedule my appointment whenever the new compressor finally does show up at my door.
Monday December 6th: A big heavy box with my new compressor lands on my front doorstep…
Along with Winnie the Sumatran Flying Squirrel, who one of my message board friends sent me!
I call A&E back and get a new appointment for Thursday morning.
Thursday December 9th: The repairman shows up and opens the box. This is what was inside…
Almost new condition!
Holy fucking possumshit…. you’ve got to be kidding me.
So what if one of the prongs and a rod are bent? Duct tape fixes everything!
They sent me a junk part from a junk freezer. It’s not a matter of if he’d be wiling to install the compressor someone used as a soccer ball, he physically can’t install it because so many parts on it are bent! So he orders another compressor, but due to all the issues we’ve been having, he advises me to see if Mecca won’t just take the freezer back since a part not on the recall list has gone out.
Tuesday December 14th: I confirm with our claims associate that they will take the freezer back. Yippie!
Wednesday December 15th: My sister picks me up in the folks’ truck at 6:00 in the evening, and in an icy mix that’s begun falling, we take the shot freezer back to my Mecca. Since this is only the middle of the holiday shopping season, we wait half an hour to get to the front of the line at the courtesy desk, and the manager has to be called up twice to confirm the return since I never had the receipt. I finally get a gift card in the amount of the freezer, haul a new one off the shelf and buy it… and make $16.50 off the deal by using my discount card. But it hardly makes up for the trouble of being without my chest freezer for THREE WEEKS!!!
Though by this point in time, I could have just stored my meat outside.
At least that freezer is still working… four and a half years later!
Wednesday December 22nd: The junk compressor as well as the new one that had since arrived are left out on my porch for UPS to pick up. Good fucking riddance!
There was some uncertainty over whether the recall would cover the cost of the appointments and parts for the compressor part of the saga, though no bills were ever sent my way. Perhaps they knew their initial repair job was what fucked up my compressor in the first place…… or maybe Shatavia just didn’t work in their billing department…
Shatavia…. she a baaaaaad woman!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I hate appliance repairs. HATE THEM!!!
There’s no greater joy than waiting around all day to have your hard earned money taken from you… at least I got out of the latter half this time.
I went through something like this with Amazon and two broken air conditioners … and during the very same week, the life-altering “replacing the old cell phone we never use with a new cell phone we will never use” experience. Shudder. I didn’t write about these events because I had gotten so stressed out, Garry was convinced I was going to have a stroke. When finally it sorted itself out, I wanted to forget both horrible experiences as quickly and completely as possible. Thus, I didn’t have my near stroke until I got the new AT&T bill yesterday.
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We have a chest freezer, too. It makes a good tabletop, doesn’t it?
My cats love that it sits right under the kitchen window, so it’s one of their favorite places to look out upon their domain they can never quite physically conquer. I am so glad I don’t have to deal with the cellphone madness. My ancient, cheap relic is tacked on to her family plan and I’ve never upgraded it, and will just hand it back to them if they ever require it…
What a major pain in the ass…what we wouldn’t do for our meat….
*won’t
My meat deserves a special place…
Your real estate agent is probably wondering why they keep getting bills for freezer parts and repairs…
That would be hilarious. Just put them on the company’s tab, dear….
LOL I Love what Dman said. That would be so funny if your real estate agent was getting the bills and had to deal with them like you did. I hate dealing with repair people and all that goes with it. Nothing is ever simple and it’s always a pain in the butt.
The poor agent was a little old lady… she always reminded me of Tangina from the Poltergeist movies… I’d hate to see that stress passed on to her. Eh, better her than me, I guess!
Aw, I don’t want her to have that stress either. Little old ladies will sometimes surprise you though. 😉
You should have told them to install a Flux Capacitor. 😀 Also … I can’t get over how bizarre it is that they had your real estate agent’s phone number. The universe is so strange.
I have no explanation for that whatsoever. Funny thing is, I didn’t realize whose number it was at the time… just that I had a sense of deja vu when I heard it. I guess her number somehow got connected to my house, even though she wasn’t even the selling agent for it. I wonder if she gets the same collection calls I still get for people who haven’t lived here in years….
I have heard some horror appliance stories but yours wins. and night duty on top of it.
Argh… I hate it anytime I have to have someone out during the day. Even when I can schedule it for one of my non-sleeping days, it turns into a huge disaster! Maybe I should just become a Luddite! 🙂
No one understands night duty unless they have done it for a length of time. I have done my share and it is pure Hell trying to organize that sort of thing around it. 10 points for persistence. Persistence pays! 😀
I’m surprised Shatavia didn’t call herself something like “Jane” or “Mary.”
Or Julie… though that name may be copyrighted by Time/Life…
I agree with gentlestitches: your appliance repair story takes the cake! That part they sent…I’m speechless.
That’s what you get when you expect a company that’s being forced to fix a recall item have to turn around and fix another part as well due to their repairman’s negligence…
Almost enough to make you go vegetarian. But not quite. I would have Shataviad my drawers if I opened the box and saw that junk compressor inside, by the way, Bill. At least Mecca made good for one of their own.
We’re not expected to take extreme liberties with our return policy like some of our customers do, so I was a tad surprised they did take it back after 90 days and without a receipt. I think the fact that it had been on recall was the main reason the return was approved. I’m not sure what they’d have thought of the “profit” I made by using my discount on the second purchase, though. I’ll keep that hush hush… 😉
They had to take it back because the shebang was started by the repair cycle, Bill. The rest was history. And you bought new after that, so using your employee card was a no-brainer. See, I can justify all for you, my friend. 🙂
Only you, ES, can turn something as irritating as this situation into something as funny as you’ve written.
It helps to wait five years so I can cool off a bit from it. I still cringe every time I see an A&E factory service van, though…
Cringing is OK. You’re not throwing rotten veg or stones at them, which perhaps wouldn’t be a good idea.