21 September, 2010

But my microwave is under warranty!

Way back this past April, Bill and I bought a new microwave/hood to go above our stove, mostly because the old one occasionally shot sparks, which surely were not a good thing.

Totally loving the microwave, btw. It's an Amana, it's white, and it nukes things quite well. Installing it was a bit of chore (it's taller than our old microwave and Bill had to cut and remove ceramic tile to get it to fit) but it's worked beautifully.

Anyway, a week or so ago, I noticed that there's a little, itty-bitty crack forming near the bottom of the handle. We had this problem before with the microwave at the old house, and it became kind of a PITA to use the microwave once the handle snapped completely off. I'd rather not go through that again, so we went to Menards to see if they had any suggestions.

Well, our microwave comes with a full one year warranty, and they said we could either order the part directly from Whirlpool for free, or call for a free service visit and have it fixed. Okay, we thought - knowing how crazy-nuts our life has become and how Bill already has too many 'fix it' projects - we'll just call for service. So we did. Last Wednesday or Thursday, I believe. And the service guy was supposed to come today, sometime between 1 and 5 pm.

Did I mention we've been kinda busy lately? Bill's working overtime, Laura's working and has college, I have writing, quilting, errand running and quilt-shop duties (plus the ever looming quilt show that's coming up) and, well, we haz thingz to do! Especially during those prime hours of 'thingz to do!' time. ;)

But we made a point to be available all afternoon. Bill stayed up until I got home from writing while Laura was at school, and I busied myself downstairs while the clock ticked along. Gozer, the poor guy, was banished to his pen in the back yard in case he decided to attack the service guy, or, more likely, lick him to death. All in all, folks every day face the 'wait around for the service people' issue, and it's really not a big deal, other than Goz desperately wanting in the house instead of being alone, in the rain, out back.

He was crying. It bothered me, okay?

About 5 minutes 'til 5pm, I called to see if they were gonna make it out today, mostly so I could let Gozer in. It's not like I have anywhere else to be this evening. Really, my life is VERY dull and I was kinda looking forward to watching the 'microwave handle removal and installation procedure'. Hey, you never know when something like that might happen in a book. Anyway, I called, and they had no idea what the bleep I was talking about.

The guy on the other end of the phone keyed in our phone number and had no service call listed. Nothing. And the information that popped up was for an address I'd never heard before in a town that's about eleven miles away for a name that's definitely not us, and they had no record of requesting a service call today. So he ran our address, which gave him some random non-local phone number and name. Our name turned up something totally not matching anything resembling our lives, and whenever he tried to re-enter information to match *us* instead of the whomever the computer said we were, it wouldn't let him key it in.

So, we and our microwave apparently do not exist, and if we *do* we never had a service call for today.

About twenty minutes and much confusion later (it's rather surreal to give someone your address several times and have them repeat it back each time as something totally different) we're supposedly scheduled to get a new handle tomorrow. Between 1 and 5. And all names, numbers, addresses, and things repeated back match our information. Finally. Here's hoping they'll still match tomorrow.

Gozer, however, will stay inside this time, I think. No reason to traumatize him twice. ;)

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