Bad timing

In February, I splurged on a new washing machine. Costing a full $600 – after rebates, sales, and 10% off for getting yet another Sears credit card or something like that – it was my family’s way of minimizing our environmental impact. Front-loading washing machines, already used by nearly all Europeans, use about 1/3 the water of conventional machines, while their fast spinning squeezes water out of the clothes to cut drying time (and therefore power) in half.

Unfortunately, I bought it from Sears. I always buy from Sears. Their prices are good, their salesmen at one local store are good, and they’re convenient – and a struggling company that needs all the help it can get to stay alive.

After about two months, the machine refused to start. I described the symptoms over the phone – with electronic controls, I expected that the machine was trying to tell me something with its light blinking patterns (and it probably was). The technician was scheduled for a week later, between 8 and 12. He came at 3:15, spent half an hour taking the machine apart and peering at things, then went to his truck for half an hour without a word, and finally came back to put things back together. The problem was that a tiny magnet had fallen out of the soap tray and gotten lost; and without that the machine would not start. He put the machine together badly, cracking the front panel and not getting the top on completely.

Long story short, 9 days for the tiny magnet to arrive in the mail, then another week for another repairman to be scheduled who did not show up until after 2 pm for his 8-12 appointment. After speaking with a half dozen people, and trying to see a store manager who refused to leave his office, we got an agreement to replace the machine with a new one. I had been willing to just have the damage caused by the repairman fixed at first.

Sears has an awful customer service line that insists on using a slow voice recognition system that has no operator option for those whose needs don’t fit. If you call to find out when your appointment is, it gives you the same window and hangs up (even if you call after the window). Getting to a human requires lying to the computer.

Every part of this arrangement was a frustration, and Sears ended up having to replace a washer because of their poor service and lousy repairman training. What’s really sad about this is that the final person I was escalated to was clearly trained in all sorts of customer-de-angrifying techniques, but by then the damage was done. It’s no good having a really good customer recovery expert if every other step drives the customer mad.

This relates clearly to Chrysler, and other automakers as well. They treat us like idiots, and though to be fair many of us are, or at least act like we are, it doesn’t help them to make their contempt for us clear. The company is penny wise and pound foolish, with apparently untrained phone operators who get angry at slight provocation and zone reps who loathe customers and want to punish them for making trouble. Like Sears, they don’t seem to understand that customers are leaving and not coming back, and that the supply of new recruits is limited. Convincing someone to take a chance on Chrysler is hard; having Chrysler squander your personal reputation by dissing someone you referred to them is harder.

The front lines are where it counts, not a customer recovery expert you need to spend an hour on the phone to reach. For Chrysler, that means both the people answering the phones and the dealers, though as a customer service manager once explained to me, the dealers are all honest and give very good service. (How did he know? “If they didn’t, the dealers would tell us about it.”)

You have one chance to get it right. Sears blew it. Chrysler seems to blow it most of the time, too. Just as I’m going to Allmake Appliance for my next dishwasher, I’d bet most frustrated Chrysler customers head right over to Toyota. It’s hard to blame them.

(By the way, the last-ditch recovery effort by Sears was somewhat successful. While I’m writing them off for appliances and things that need service, they’re still on my list for air conditioners, tools, and that sort of thing. You can’t beat the Craftsman hand tool “just take it and replace it” warranty.)