Complaint Review: Whirlpool Kitchenaid

In four decades of adult life, I have never had such a dismal experience nor encountered such a despicable company as Whirlpool. Of course companies are greedy. Our experience goes way beyond greed, to incompetence and unethical behavior that should turn every decent person away from Whirlpool permanently.

We own a consistently defective Whirlpool product, a KitchenAid Superba refrigerator which has repeatedly and completely failed to cool at all. It has been repaired five times, each time after long delays, by Whirlpool's designated representative, A & E Factory Service (1300 Louis Henne Boulevard, Round Rock, TX 78664), through their Atlanta representative.

This "luxury" refrigerator, the purchase of which strained our budget seriously, came with a ten year warranty. We were told repeatedly on the telephone by Whirlpool representatives that after a limited number of repairs the refrigerator would be replaced. This turned out to be false.

The warranty is meaningless.

The first time this lemon went sour was November 3.

The second time this piece of garbage failed was the day before Thanksgiving.

The third time the heap of scrap metal ruined our family life was Christmas Eve.

On Thanksgiving and Christmas we had a house full to the brim with visiting family, family dinners planned for each night, and a desire to celebrate the holidays in a festive way as any normal family would. Instead, we faced the huge disruption, embarrassment, and health risk of a failing luxury refrigerator and freezer pouring water and foul smells into our home.

For our family, Thanksgiving and Christmas were both ruined by the repeated complete failures of Whirlpool's defective product. Our family celebrations could not take place in a normal manner throughout the Thanksgiving weekend and for the entire period between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. To say that we were disappointed, after already bearing up under an enormous disappointment for the Thanksgiving weekend, is putting it mildly.

The defective Whirlpool product failed again on January 14, was "repaired," failed again on January 28, was "repaired" on February 1 by a technician who said, "It will work until the year 3010." It failed again yesterday, February 5.

Five times the repairs have had a temporary effect, and the refrigerator stopped cooling again within a few days or at most a few weeks. Each time we have had to wait days from the report of the Whirlpool-Kitchenaid's failure to get a technician to come. Several times we have had to wait weeks for parts to be delivered.

We have had to throw away hundreds of dollars worth of food over the course of the Whirlpool product's repeated failures. Our losses in food alone now exceed the value of the appliance itself.

This does not take into account the fact that our home life has been disrupted for about twelve days in which repairs went on in our home. Needless to say, the repair men expected us to take a full day or a half day off from work to wait for them each time.

Since November 3, we have spent about a third of all days with all our food that needs refrigeration outside on our back porch. In Atlanta, even in the fall and winter, eating this food poses dangers to us, our children, our guests, and our pets. Throwing it away is a huge financial burden to us.

We wrote to the company (Ms. Janet Howard, Whirlpool C.I.C., 553 Benton Road, Benton Harbor MI 49022-8020) informing them that we did not accept further reparis as an adequate response on Whirlpool's part to these repeated, complete, disruptive, costly, embarrassing, and saddening failures of their product.

We insisted that they replace this product immediately with a fully functional new appliance of the same, comparable, or better make and model. We informed them that this was the only step we would consider an adequate resolution of the matter, although it still left us with our material and emotional losses uncompensated.

As of February 5 we have received no response to our letter of December 26. Spending hours, then days on hold waiting to talk to a company representative eventually led to someone (she identified herself only as "a supervisor") who said that because Michigan has no "lemon law," Whirlpool will NEVER replace the refrigerator, contradicting what we had been told by at least two other Whirlpool representatives.

This leaves us with a heap of junk in the center of our kitchen permanently, or until we strain our budget once again to replace it out of our own pockets. You can be sure it will be any company but Whirlpool.

Save yourself a lot of anguish, and have nothing to do with any Whirlpool or Kitchenaid product, for any reason, ever.

Mel
Atlanta, Georgia
U.S.A.

Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on Whirpool