I've been relatively quiet here for the past 25 days because I've been too busy washing dishes to play on the internet.
May 28th my dishwasher went ka-phlooey. It's a Bosch which the previous owner left behind for us--I would never have spent that much on a dishwasher myself! And since we didn't buy it, it's no longer under warranty
I had my plumber come out first--one look at the thing and he rolled his eyes. When I explained that I didn't buy it, he look relieved, then went on a tear about what a pain these things are to repair. He recommended I junk it and get a nice Frigidaire for half the cost. He told me it would cost me less to replace then to repair.
I called the manufacturer to find an authorized service representative. There's only two that come to my county (no one else here wants to touch these queens, confirming what my plumber said). I called one company. They came, looked at it for 5 minutes, took $95 from me, and promised to come back in 10 days with the parts, 20 days ago.
After a few really strange phone calls with them where they refused to tell me when the parts were ordered or when I could expect to have my dishwasher fixed. I asked for my money back and they refused.
It was only then that I decided to google them--thinking that I would get the name of the president/owner and send him a letter. What I found instead was a Contract Order from April 2005 from my state's Division of Consumer Affairs outlining specific business practices this company needed to follow to end the ongoing FRAUD investigation. Since the violated that Contract Order in their business with me, I think I can go through the DCA to maybe have a shot at getting my money back. At least according to the Order they are required to give a full refund if they fail to provide service in a timely manner without notifying the customer in writing.
I called Bosch again, sent them a copy of the Contract Order, and told them I wasn't thrilled with being referred to a company implicated in defrauding it's customers. They thanked me, sent me to another repair service and offered to pay for parts, but not serivce. Sort of generous...except the big expense with my machine is the service, which costs about $300 everytime it needs to be slid out from the cabinets to be fixed. This new company wants $100 just to look at it. They apologized, and told me that they would have creditted the $100 towards any repair costs if I had any other brand of dishwasher, but a Bosch is so hard to work on they can't afford to do that.
So including my possibly lost $95, I'm looking at a total of $495 to fix this thing. That kind of cash going to repairs makes my really unhappy. I'd rather spend that money on a new machine with a warranty, and one that's easier and cheaper to have repaired. But DH is kind of in love with having a status symbol dishwasher and wants to repair it. And that, folks, is the real source of my current stress--not just the money, or three weeks of dishes, but the fact that DH and I are really butting heads over this. I think it's more frugal in the long run to replace, he wants to gamble that this machine (the Jaguar of Dishwasher) won't need another repair for a while.
One word out of him tonight about how sick he is of washing dishes and I'm going to pop.
Thanks for letting me vent. At least the past 15 minutes were spent ranting, not in the kitchen, stuffing cookies in my mouth and glowering at the dishwasher.
Fall goals:
1. Bike 40-50 miles a week
2. Prepare new garden bed for next season
3. Heal my back
