A tale of two call centres
In the last month or so we’ve had a couple of relatively minor but extremely annoying incidents with things breaking around the house.
First was the shower handle – what I’d call the tap, but what many of the visitors to this site would probably call a faucet. To save confusion, let’s agree to call it a knob – OK? OK.
It’s one of those clear plastic jobs – fairly standard turny-twisty thing, you'd think.
Somehow, the plastic on the inside of the shower knob just crumbled away one morning and the bleeding thing came clean off in my hand.
Right at the end of a nice hot shower, just as I’m turning off, of course. Dripping wet, cold, can’t turn the sodder off all the way – still spraying cold water at me. Bugger.
So that’s thing one to fix. Should be relatively straightforward, right? Hold that thought.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the house...
Charlie and I are in the kitchen, Saturday night about a month back. I’m roasting peppers under the grill while he sits colouring at the kitchen table.
(Ahem. BTW - many of you would probably want me to say that I was
broiling the peppers in the
range or some such malarkey. Sod that.)
So we’re roasting these peppers. I’m at the sink, pottering. Charlie comes over to show me his drawing. As he passes the fridge there’s a sharp bang – sounds like one of the heavier fridge magnets hitting the hardwood floor. I turn to check – there’s nothing on the floor. Hmmm...
Distracted by the boy’s art, I think nothing of it and, after suitably complimentary comments, return to the job in hand.
Couple of minutes later I open the stove door to check peppers. Sharp bang explained.
The inner glass door of the oven has frigging exploded all over the place, hasn’t it?
Looks like a bullet hit it – big central hole with cracks radiating out in all directions, broken glass all over the inside. (Peppers duly tossed in the bin, of course). Bugger squared.
So - now we’ve a knackered shower and a knackered oven.
Back to the shower knob. Cutting the long story down a little – let’s just say I paid many visits to many different hardware stores over a period of weeks.
I consulted numerous helpful plumbing section staff in brightly-coloured polyester aprons. I peered hopefully into many little plastic bubbles holding all sorts of interesting-but-not-quite-right-looking knobs, handles and widgets. I actually bought three different shower knobs that looked pretty much exactly like the one that broke.
Two of them I subsequently returned after a few hours wrestling manfully with the wrench in order to figure out that yes, indeed – they weren’t going to fit.
One sort of fitted and actually even kind of worked for a while, only to break again after a mere week of use. Grrrrr...
Meanwhile – back at the stove. Now, this thing’s probably not even 5 years old. Our house is only about 5 years old and we know the couple we bought it from didn’t buy the new appliances until they’d already been living here for a while.
I call Kitchen Aid - or is it Whirlpool Canada? Or Inglis? What the hell
do they call themselves? It all seems to be the same company. I guess it’s kind of a Chrysler-Dodge-Plymouth thing, or something.
I’d checked before calling. Thankfully, the couple who sold us the house had kept all the warranty cards and assorted handbooks for all the appliances. The warranty information for the stove states:
“KitchenAid® ranges have a one-year FULL warranty, (parts and labour 1st year) on the entire product; a five-year LIMITED warranty (parts only 2nd - 5th year) on the electric elements/gas burners, ceramic-glass cooktop and electronic control; and a 10-year LIMITED warranty (parts only 2nd - 10th year) on the porcelain liner and inner door”
Of course, the customer service drone I talk to won’t have any of it. No – the warranty only covers “certain parts” in the door. But she won’t tell me what those parts are.
Er...hello? My oven door just fucking exploded with my 5 year old son not 6 feet away and you’re going to argue with me about the warranty terms?
OK. Drawing a deep breath, I book a service call. $69 “standard call out fee” even to get the sodder to turn up. Naturally the earliest time they can send someone is over a week away – the day after the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday in fact (good job we were heading to friends for our turkey this year).
Morning of the scheduled visit, the phone rings at about 7:30am. It’s the service guy. He’s calling to tell us he won’t be coming as “he has to order the glass”.
What?! No, really. What?! I mean
WHAT?!!
Why the hell could you not have ordered the glass over a week ago when I first rang to book the service call? I don’t have a functioning oven. We have two young children in the house and our frigging cooker’s not working. YES I’d call it an emergency – what the fuck do
you think? OK – so it’s not exactly life threatening, but it’s a
major pain in the bum all the same.
He tells me the glass “shouldn’t take too long” to order – but can’t give me anything like a reasonable ETA. He hangs up, muttering something about calling us when he gets the parts...
Back over to shower knob central, I’m cruising the aisles at The Building Box store, weekend before last. Every kind of shower, tap and toilet fitting known to man, or so it seems. Every kind
except the particular Moen replacement knob I need.
I’m starting to think they don’t make it any more – but the house is so new, how can that be?
Oh – forgot to mention – I’ve now managed to knacker two showers. In desperation to fix the main shower in the basement, I took the knob off the upstairs shower (same make and model).
As I carefully unscrewed this one from the tap, the plastic crumbled away in my hand. Swear to God – I didn’t force it or crush it, honest. Bugger just fell apart.
So. I’m in the Building Box. Starting to salivate – checking out all the fancy faucets, spray attachments, power nozzles. Going slightly dizzy, staring at a veritable cornucopia of shower knobs.
At last – at several points on the display wall, I sight my quarry! It does exist! O frabjous day!
Ahem. Except that it only exists as part of a complete knob, showerhead, tap set. Cheapest one – over a ton. Err. No thanks.
Luckily – helpful geezer in nylon apron thing wanders past. Suggests: “call Moen”.
Doh! *slaps forehead* But of course!
INTERMISSION
Mmm...nice cup of tea... OK, I’m back.
At long last, a few days after our weekend trip to the Building Box, the man from KitchenAid deigns to grace us with his presence. I return home from work that evening to find the stove door fully repaired, good as new. Sweet.
Then the nasty surprise: $180. One freaking hundred and eight zero bastard bucks. WTF?
Apparently it cost so much because he had to replace the entire interior door. It’s a sealed unit, you see. No serviceable replacement parts – if something breaks, you just have to replace the whole thing.
But hang on a minute...
“...a 10-year LIMITED warranty (parts only 2nd - 10th year) on the porcelain liner and inner door”
What parts? If you can’t repair or replace parts – what fucking parts? This thing is manufactured in such a way that when the inner door goes bloouie, you swap out the whole thing – so how can you have a warranty that only covers the “parts”. THERE ARE NO SODDING PARTS.
Oh, it’s a “limited” warranty, all right. So limited that it doesn’t appear to actually warrant anything. The whole thing’s just utterly moebian in its tangled logic – even getting worked up about it is making my head spin.
I’m picturing some horribly wizened and slime-coated lawyer at KitchenAid HQ, rubbing his greasy yellow palms together in sick glee at the tortured elegance of this particular bit of chicanery –
“nyuk, nyuk, nyuk, nyahhhh. No one will ever get this one to stick. MWOO HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAA!!”
Bastards.
Switching back to shower knob torment for a second (the 4th plane of hell, if I remember my Dante): I make the call to Moen.
Well, actually – I first spent 45 minutes bashing through both the moen.com and moen.ca websites. Both have pretty spanky UIs. Both are equipped with well-thought out search functions. Both, alas, only served to confirm my suspicion that the specific shower knob I’m looking for – the twisty little crystal bastard that has come to haunt my waking dreams – does not, in fact, exist. At least, apparently not in this dimension.
Humble and defeated – feeling like the guy who gets so horribly lost he eventually has to stop to ask directions (as if!) – I call the 1-800 line.
After ten minutes on hold, I get through to a chipper sounding bloke in the Moen call centre.
I start to explain my problem, beginning to wander into my tale of the long, miserable, fruitless search, and gearing up for a really good shouting match with yet another clueless call centre git – when something quite bizarre and, frankly, a tad unsettling happens.
He apologizes.
While I’m reeling & dizzy from this vicious and totally unexpected outburst of politeness, he presses home his attack – asking me a couple of questions about the broken knob.
I read him the serial number stamped into the back of the plastic – he says: “OK, I’ll pop one in the post for you right now – can I take your name and address?”
Er...hello? Sure. I’m practically speechless at this point. My gast is so completely flabbered I think I actually even said the word “Wow” out loud.
I give him my address, thank him profusely and hang up – completely forgetting that of course I actually need two of the flipping things.
After a quick 20 minutes spent checking that I’m not hallucinating; that the world hasn’t actually spun clean off its axis; that I haven’t stumbled into a parallel dimension where “customer service” still means something to do with serving and customers...
I called back. Five more minutes on hold: chipper Moen bloke #2 picks up. Flustered, I’m in the middle of trying to explain what a complete doofus I am to these obviously lovely Moen people, when he pipes up: “Sorry, do you mind if I just put you on hold for a second?” (He even waited for me to say “yes” before parking the call and disappearing...)
Couple of minutes later, he’s back on the line – panting a little, out of breath (I’m not making this up) – “Sorry Sir, I just ran off to check – I’m afraid they’ve already processed that first order in shipping. It’s OK though, I’ll just book in another one for you – but they might not both arrive at the same time, I’m afraid.”
At this point, I actually blacked out.
Less than a week later, both shower knobs duly arrived intact, and they’re
perfect. They are exactly the ones we needed. And supplied with grace, charm and the absolute minimum of hassle, and (key point here)
COMPLETELY FREE.
(Last part of the mystery was even solved by the packing slip info, btw. They’re described as “hotel” units – probably not available through standard retail. Dodgy lot that built this house probably got ’em knocked off from somewhere – that’s why we couldn’t find the replacement in any store.)
MORAL:
I’ve already written a glowing letter of praise and thanks to the head of Moen Canada. I also intend to replace every knob, tap, faucet and other fitting in the entire house with quality Moen products.
In fact, I think I’ll buy Moen for every house I ever live in from now on.
Fuck it – I’m going to start banging holes in the basement wall, just so I can install
more Moen products.
I mean,
check this baby out. Or
these little darlings. And how can you live without at least
one of these in your life (Um...well...steady on now...)
I love Moen. All hail Moen. Thank you, Mr. Moen – I’m ready to have your babies now...
As for KitchenAid, you rotten, filthy, praetorian, scum-sucking toerags. You’re getting a letter too.
But this one I’m going to hand deliver.
I’m going to print it on nice heavy card, staple it to your bogus and dishonest “warranty” information, fold the whole thing into the pointiest, spikiest shape possible, and home in on your flabby complacent fundaments. Grab yer ankles, you sons of bitches...
Net:
Moen good. KitchenAid bad.
/rant
Michael O'Connor Clarke's main blog.
Covering PR, social media, marketing, family life, sundry tomfoolery since 2001.
