Screw Maytag and Sherwin Williams
- From: unklbob <mcgriswald@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 17 Apr 2007 06:34:01 -0700
I am going through Usenet groups and various consumer/home repair
websites airing my complaint about these two companies. I am not the
kind of person who will picket some corporation's HQ, but if I can
dissuade one person from patronizing these guys, I am at least getting
some measure of "revenge".
This is a re-post from alt.home.repair
I used to manage retail businesses in both paint and appliance
sales,
and one thing that I learned was that when dealing with the public,
only about 40% of people who had problems with your product took the
time to complain, and of that percentage, only about 5% were scammers
or unreasonable. So in order to keep the business of the remaining
95% of the customers who complained in good faith, I ate the loss on
the scammers and those who complained in bad faith.
I recently dealt with the corporations mentioned above, and had no
success, despite attempts at going up the chain of command. I
purchased a Maytag Atlantis washer, and determined after the warranty
had expired that the unit was defective as delivered. Without going
into all the details, I'll just say that talking to repairman I found
out that there were significant problems with the unit's
transmission,
and after I paid over $200 to have the transmission replaced, I am
now
suffering from the same problem as before--of course the repair
warranty has expired.
In the case of the paint, I purchased three gallons of SW's top end
interior paint, and got very poor coverage despite careful prep. I
went through the chain of command from sales associate to store
manager to district manager and received no followthrough despite
what
I felt was a reasonable beef.
At a point, I guess its not worth my time to continue dealing with
these people over relatively small sums of money, but I have to
wonder
why they think its worth a short term gain to walk my business for
the
rest of my life when its pretty certain that I will buy more
appliances and paint in the future?
Stupid business decisions on their part.
In response to questions about my issues with the products from
various posters, I wrote this followup:
The original point of my complaint was that both my claims were
legit,
and given my experience in those industries, the only conclusion a
manager or customer service rep could make was a) this guy has a
legitimate gripe, or b) he's lying and trying to scam us.
In the Maytag case, from the point of delivery the unit never fully
spun out the clothes at the end of the cycle--they ended up almost
dripping wet. I called the service line during the warranty period
and was told that this was a "clothes saving feature" and in tandem
with the dryer, the clothes should come out fine, which they did,
although it took them a long time to dry. When the unit failed
completely after the portion of the warranty that covered labor
expired, I called a local repair guy who told me that given my story
the transmission was defective from the get go. Indeed, the new
tranny that was installed completely spun out the clothes, at least
for the first month, then it began to fail. (And no, I am not
overloading the unit!!)
As for the SW paint, we purchased three gallons of their "Super
Paint", cleaned the walls with a trisodium phosphate dilution, LET IT
COMPLETELY DRY, then applied a coat of Zinnser "Bulls-Eye" primer.
In
two of the rooms the paint coverage was perfect--we applied it with a
medium nap roller, which was appropriate for type of texture on the
wall. In the third room we applied it exactly like the other two,
and
after one coat we could see streaks. We ended up putting two coats
plus touch-ups on the room and couldn't completely cover all four
walls in a small child's bedroom. When I went back I told the guy my
story and asked for a replacement gallon at half price since I only
got half the coverage I expected. I suggested that perhaps there was
an issue with the tint or the base, since the other two gallons
covered perfectly.
My point about both of these incidences is that despite going up the
chain in both companies, I got *no* response from individuals whose
jobs rely on my satisfaction.
I would add, that I had a bad experience with Sears, that given the
circumstances was essentially my fault. Nevertheless, the manager of
the department that I was dealing with completely handled my problem
to my satisfaction, and I'll keep shopping there. Both Lowe's and
Depot have also handled by problems with alacrity. I am not a
chronic
complainer, I just have owned several homes over the course of my
life
and I have bought a lot of home improvement supplies.
.
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