A Refrigerator & Our Economy

For anyone who has been following our family blog you know by now we moved into Summergreen condomium on June 24, 2011.  So I suppose to most of you that makes us, “OLD FOLKS” now, but we prefer to think of it as not getting old, but giving us more time to do the things we enjoy more, and less doing yard work and house repairs.  So yes we purchased our condo and are redoing it to make it our last home, we hope.  We figure the next move will be when we no longer know who we are, or how to get back home, and our kids will be making all or most of our decisions for us.  So I guess that means we have to be nice to them now, so they will be nice to us when we really are old and senile.

  Well, okay then, on to the refrigerator story that turned out to be a “laugher” and makes you realize why our country is in the financial condition it is.  As I said in the first few lines we had moved in, and around August  we received our Brand New Stainless Steel appliances and our favorite one was the refrigerator.  We had gone to the store and the sales person who helped us is a friend we have known for many years and watched him grow up to become a fine young man.  While I had done all my research on-line using Consumers Reports and checking every rating system there is known to man.  So we went into the store knowing exactly the refrigerator we wanted, no salesman, no matter if we knew him or how much he thought he knew what we needed was going to deter our decision.  While we looked and drooled over the fridge WE were going to buy, which had French doors and a bottom freezer and ice and water in the door, the “NICE” salesman walked up and just happened to mention we might want to look at a new style that they had just started to carry.  It was made my Samsung.  Must be some nice guy named Sam who could sing.  Well our jaws must have almost hit the floor because the salesman said he almost did not dare show us that one in fear we would like it.  Well we did not like it, we fell in LOVE with it.  It not only had French doors and bottom freezer but had a extra drawer  I swear was made just for our grandkids.  It was made so you could put healthy snacks in it and they could open this drawer and get anything out without opening the rest of the refrigerator.  Then we opened it and I swear it called out our name, okay maybe that’s a stretch, but the lighting was all LED so no bulbs to replace.  Okay so maybe I will let him talk me into this one thing.

  Well delivery day came and we had all our new Stainless Steel appliances and could sit in our living room and look into the kitchen and enjoy the view of our new “toys” that surely would last us the rest of our life.  Well things are going along great for a couple of weeks when one evening while we were sitting in the living room together we hear a clunk.  I go and investigate and find the touch panel cover to the NEW, PERFECT refrigerator is laying on the floor staring up at me as if to say, “Help I have fallen and can’t get up”.  I pick it up and look at it and I just figured it must have not been pushed on properly at the factory so I put it back on and press it on as if I know what I am doing.  Well this lasted for a couple of days and then it fell off again, and a day later, again.  Okay, “it’s okay” I tell myself, that’s why they have warranty's.  I call the number in the manual.  Amazingly enough he speaks good English.  After all this refrigerator is made in Korea.  I explain what has happened and the nice man on the other end of the phone tells me they will send a new front panel out and I should receive it in about ten days.  Well, the new part arrives and I am about as happy as a kid in a candy store until I open the package.  The instructions say the New Panel is “New and Improved with a larger adhesive area.”  Well, guess what, it has NO adhesive at all on it.  My wife and I are both at a lost for words.  So back to the phone.  This time they schedule a repairman to come out and look at it.  A few days later a nice repairman comes out to look at our Wounded refrigerator.  He said he has never seen anything like this before, but he tells my wife he is going to order another touch panel and also the whole contraption behind it that the touch panel attaches to. He says when we receive both parts to call the store and he will come out and install them.  Well, a week or so goes by and I get a call from singing Sam asking me if I have received my two parts yet.  I tell them I have received one of the two.  He said to call him when the second part comes in.  The very next day I receive a call from my singing gentleman and he says the company that was to do the repair work just went out of business.  At this point I am thinking to myself, “I should have stuck to my original plan and not let that NICE salesman talk me into this now broken refrigerator.”  Well, the Samsung man asks me where we purchased it and when I tell him, he says they are going to send me a BRAND NEW refrigerator and take the old one back.  I agree almost laughing to myself thinking this expensive refrigerator is going to be shipped all the way back to Korea just because it can’t hold a small plastic cover.  Well in about 10 days we receive our second brand new refrigerator with no broken parts.  We did not even have the “old” fridge long enough to get it dirty, but who’s to argue with a new fridge.  Well, so far so good, no clunks in the night.  Yesterday I got a call from the store that is “supposed” to be out of business and telling me they have received the second part and if they can come out and install it.  I tell the nice lady that they can’t because they are “OUT of Business” according to Samsung.  She sounds stunned on the other end of the phone and said to me this is the second time they have had a customer tell them that.  I said “you might want to get that communication with Sam the singer figured out before they do go out of business.”  Now you know why I wonder how our country makes any money if they can’t do what started out to be maybe a $50.00 repair and ended up costing a couple of thousands of dollars.  Well this writing has made me sleepy so I better go lay in my recliner and watch some football or hockey.  Maybe I am getting old after all.

 

Dale