Jason’s refrigerator wouldn’t work correctly, no matter how many times it was repaired. Eventually, Best Buy had to intervene. Yes, that Best Buy.

Two weeks ago, Jason e-mailed us looking for executive contact info to launch an EECB at LG. He was frustrated with the usual channels:

We’ve been having problems with a refrigerator we bought from Best Buy last October. It’s never worked right and every time they’ve sent service out it’s gotten worse and worse. After their latest attempt last week, the freezer runs all the time, the ice and water doesn’t work, we’ve got water dripping down in the freezer forming mini-glaciers and the front panel controls for temperature don’t work. They’ve been out four times and insist that they have to continue throwing parts at it. We feel that under the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act we have the right to elect repair, but we’re stopped by the first level supervisor at their customer support line (Jewel) who says that their policies supersede law. They gave me an address to write to but promised that it only goes back to their department. We’re extremely frustrated and we can’t keep losing food and medicine to this thing, but they’re not helping us out at all. They say that the service company they contract with has to say that it’s unrepairable and the service company says that they can’t do that since technically every part but the cabinet is replaceable and LG’s technical support line tells them to keep putting parts in. Jewel denies this and says that we’re really not caught in the middle like we actually are. Best Buy is being surprisingly helpful and the operations manager of the store we purchased it from is checking with her district manager to see if they can just junk it out and give us a new (non LG!) refrigerator.

Well. How did this all work out? We heard back from Jason earlier today. LG never came through, but Best Buy did—remember, they just bought this refrigerator there six months ago.

After LG sent out parts again, the repair finally killed the refrigerator and tripped the circuit breaker inside the house. I called LG back up and was connected with a different supervisor (Sherry Pederson). She was very nice and apologetic that the issue had gotten so bad and the support we received was so bad and given the current situation, forwarded our case to their RA department. It still took from April 24 to April 28 for them to get the RA approved and then we encountered more hassle at Best Buy.

The operations manager we originally spoke to was on vacation and got the runaround from the managers on staff. They did not want to honor the promise of the operations manager to honor all discounts that we received. After a total of over two hours in the store they finally agreed to honor the original discounts on a new refrigerator and we selected a Samsung. We chose Samsung because the refrigerator that the LG replaced was a Samsung was flawless. So far we are satisfied with the Samsung and will never purchase another LG product again due to the complete breakdown of the LG repair and support process.

It’s unfortunate, but not surprising that the appliance had to be broken beyond all functioning before it was replaced.

(Photo: Dominic’s Pics)

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