Home Dep*t Redux

This post will be especially poignant for those who followed, either on Facebook or in real life, the absolute catastrophe that was the Sampsenblums attempting to first fix and then replace our broken dishwasher. I assume my ravings through that period alienated a good many people and if you are reading this you stuck by me through that, so I will attempt to summarize only very very briefly for those who are reading this for the first time: we bought a condo in June 2023 with a dishwasher flagged in the purchase agreement as “as-is,” which is known to mean “old and going to break soon.” In the spring, it started to leak, we got it repaired for a modest sum, it lasted a month or so then leaked again, we got it repaired a for slightly less modest sum at the encouragement of the very optimistic repairperson, it lasted another month then leaked again. We gave up and ordered a new dishwasher from Home Dep*t (never speak its name). I dithered over whether to pay for the store to install but thought it would be faster, an all-in-one deal. I was dead wrong. The dishwasher was delivered promptly but the installers were a completely separate freelance organization that HD had no control or even speaking relationship to (if I ever get the joy of rebutting someone who says “No one wants to work anymore,” I shall reply “No one wants to be an employer anymore!”) They did eventually turn up, unpacked the dishwasher only to discover a massive dent in the back. The box was intact, so someone had seen it that way, shrugged, and packed it anyway. They asked if we wanted them to try to install it and see if was operationally broken or just cosmetically broken but we said no thank you (visions of the broken dishwasher shooting water up the wall in Don’t Care High), and called HD to ask for a replacement dishwasher. They sent one, but forgot to tell the delivery people to take the broken one. We asked couldn’t they just take it anyway since they had a truck and dolly and people to take it right there, and they said they could not, lest they be accused of stealing it (!!!), and left us with the two broken dishwashers and the new third unknown, Schroedinger’s dishwasher. This time we booked the installers through their archaic mayhem process but they did not show up and proved to be very hard to get a hold of, having no “work phones,” simply personal cell phones they used sometimes at work. I tried calling various people back who had called me previously about the appointment and surprised them with their families, at meals. I fought with HD who pleaded incompetence. I had a fantastic fight with Mark by waking him up in the middle of the night and screaming at him for caring insufficiently about the dishwasher. I’m not sure at what point in the process I started to come unglued, but this is when I noticed, anyway. I fired the HD installers and got our money back and planned to use that to pay for our own installer who would at least be nicer to me (I figured???), but a very kind HD customer service agent offered to make our compensation for the inconvenience (I can never truly be compensated) that they pay for the installation. This turned out to be genius level because Schroedinger’s dishwasher was also broken, although the installer we hired (who was truly very nice) spent hours trying to repair it himself. He did take away the original broken dishwasher, leaving us with only two, which had to be returned to HD. They came and took those and brought us a third—a fourth? And then the good installer came back and installed it and it just worked?? That seemed impossible but it really happened. I think?? I mean, I still feel nervous when I run it and won’t have it on if we’ll be out of the house or asleep, but it does work and is even…good? I’ve only owned the two dishwashers in my whole life and I feel haunted but…cautiously optimistic? At this point HD had paid for us to have three different dishwashers delivered to our home and three different installers and had to have lost money on the process but they are such a massive corporation that no one even seemed startled when they opened our file for the millioneth chapter of complaining when I called. This all will come back again as even a good dishwasher doesn’t last forever; someday we’ll be back at square one when it breaks and I have to deal with the warrantee and my brain just short circuits entirely.

Sorry, that wasn’t short. And I actually left out a lot of mini-misadventures, side quests, commentary, etc.!

The point of this story is the last thing I did on the dishwasher file was email HD, tell them they ruined a month of my life and say they should send me some money. We had a functional dishwasher by that point, and the whole terrible relationship was ending but I was still so mad. Mark told me not to do it, but I thought it was better I send weird angry emails to HD than to him. I did not specify the amount of money—I was curious. They sent me a $100 gift card, and said they knew I might be disappointed but I wasn’t. There was nothing I wanted from HD, so I just set the gift card aside as a trophy, until now, when we bought a Christmas tree with it and paid to have it delivered. It was, predictably a hassle dealing with HD delivery, but far less hassle than trying to get a Christmas tree in North York when you don’t have a car (will we ever get a car? all our consumer purchases have gone so horribly wrong we may never be able to face a car dealership). It was very nice to just have the tree turn up and pop it in the stand. And it would have been terribly expensive without the gift card, and this way, no it wasn’t. So I think that’s kind of a happy ending. In addition to the dishwasher working. Touch wood. Merry decorative season, if you observe. I sincerely hope to never deal with HD again but, as we all know, life is very surprising.

<3

RR

PS—The dishwasher is a Whirlpool. I reserve my principle rage for HD because they were mean to my face, but WP send us two broken dishwashers so they were also certainly part of the problem. Broken in different ways, so not an ongoing defect, just a sloppy organization or massive back luck—one has to decide. Two different installers, upon uncovering the problem, did say that they encounter them uninstallable condition out of the box fairly often, so I do blame the organization, but it’s a small sample size. We bought it because we know people who are happy with theirs and, had I emerged from a coma the day dishwasher #3 was installed, I too would be happy—it works well. But I didn’t, and I will never shake the shadow of what came before. Caveat emptor.

PPS—The Rose-coloured survey rages on. Thanks to those who have completed it already—your feedback is noted and appreciated, and we will be answering some of your questions in future posts. More responses are very welcome. This will be going on until approximately Christmas eve, or whenever my trial membership runs out. About then.