Are all appliances, not just cheap ones, now considered disposable? Celia tells Consumerist that she paid $3,000 for her KitchenAid double oven four and a half years ago. The appliance broke down after she did something completely unreasonable during Thanksgiving: she tried to use both ovens at the same time. After a lengthy attempt to get it repaired, she learned that it wouldn’t be possible to get the oven fixed. Why? Because Whirlpool, parent company of KitchenAid, doesn’t make the part anymore.
I am having a problem with the Whirlpool Corporation and with A&E Factory Service, which is owned by Sears, and I wonder if it might be a story that is of interest to you, or a situation you could provide some assistance with.
I have a four and a half year old KitchenAid double oven. It was purchased new and cost around $3000.00. The day after Thanksgiving it quit working, for no reason other than I was using both ovens at once, something I may have never done before. I went on the KitchenAid website to find who they recommended for servicing of appliances, and called a company called A&E Factory Service. They came out on Dec. 2, 2010 and said the control board would have to be replaced. They required me to pay in advance for the part ($503) and labor ($129) before they would order it. This seems like a bad business practice, but I went ahead and paid.
A few days later a part arrived, but it was broken. A&E came and took the broken part and placed another order. A few days after that they called to tell me it was back ordered. I didn’t hear anything more from them after that. I did call to see if I could get a refund but they said they could only refund me for the part after I got the part, and that they could not refund me for the labor.
Today, January 4, 2011, I called KitchenAid, who informed me that the part is no longer being made and cannot be found. They did arrange for A&E to refund me for the part, but not for the labor. The refund is to a credit card and will take seven to 10 business days; seems kind of long. I think $129 is high for a diagnostic call, but that is not the main thing I question here. What I really wonder is how a large company such as Whirlpool can make an expensive oven and then only four years later no longer have parts available for it when it breaks.
That does seem unreasonable. Maybe the executive customer service contacts for Whirlpool that we posted here might have something to say about the situation.
Update: Celia wrote in with this information about the part, which some readers requested:
Thanks for posting it! The model number is KitchenAid KEBC247KWH05 and the part number is listed as “CONTRL-ELEC 22 664 8302305. 1027939.” I think that “1027939″ is the main descriptor. It’s the main control board. I’ve looked for it online and not been able to find the part but I am a novice at this.
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Sadly, yes. They’re essentially disposable. I see this at work all the time on commercial grade stuff too…not just Sears (from whom I’ve come to expect this kind of thing).
One case in point. Our municipality planning dept put us in a position to choose between buying a “commercial” Viking gas range or install a monster hood at $40K+ (long story). For what Viking charges, you’d think it’d hold up. Even though this is technically a commercial application, it’s not really…many residential installs get more use/abuse.
It was nothing but trouble. Ignitors. Burner tubes. Oven door hinges and seals. All hard to get, expensive replacement parts, short warranty. Eventually they just stopped making replacement parts b/c they were faulty the whole time (specifically the burner tubes…every time the oven was turned on the ignitor burned a hole that got a little bigger each time leading to a bigger and bigger gas leak in the oven cavity). No love from Viking. They couldn’t care less that a five year old piece of equipment was such an epic failure for us and many others on the Net.
As a side note, the stove previous to that was a Wolff (sp?) that we lit with matches and must’ve weighed 1,000 pounds. It lasted 40 years.
The repair shop where I worked in college sold these high-end brands like Viking, Subzero, and Wolf and they weren’t much better than the other brands as far as reliability.
Yeah but they look pretty and have such status!
We replaced it with an Imperial (a true commercial unit for a fraction of the cost) and so far so good. What the code guy doesn’t know won’t hurt him now that the CO is a few years in the bag*.
* Not being cavalier about building codes. It all shakes out in the end.
Look for aftermarket parts.
That’s so sad. The ovenrange that came with my house is from the 40s and it still works. Hotpoint Aristocrat FTW!
Maybe you want to try this site: https://www.partscription.com/
It’s like an aggregate of parts carried at hardware stores. They might have the thing you need – then you can have them install it.
This is a not that well known issue with Kitchen and Laundy appliances. The companies that manufacture these items rely heavily on planned obsolescence. Models are changed frequently and intentionally do not use the same basic parts. Spare parts are discontinued as quickly as possible.
I have run into this plenty. Most recently, my microwave platen stopped rotating. The plastic part that wore out and needs replacing? No longer available. My oven is less than 5 years old. I have checked everywhere, including ebay.
I had a similar incident this past year with my Samsung DLP LED tv (bought new in 2008 for around $1,500.00). This is a tv we kept in our finished basement and was rarely used.
About six months ago, the tv would not turn on. It would power up but never turn on. I did a lot of research on the problem online. I deduced the problem to be the light engine (a $900-1000 part). But I thought I would get a professional opinion. I took the tv to what I consider the most reputable and knowledgeable service shop in all of Indianapolis. The owner of the shop worked on the tv for nearly 3 weeks (at no charge to me) and reached the same conclusion I did online that the light engine was bad. Well, he told me he could not locate a new light engine as Samsung discontinued all LED DLP tv production. Yay for my super-expensive paperweight….
No refund for labor? Wasn’t that meant for the installation of the part that is unavailable?
Try finding the part yourself. There may be suppliers who have it in stock.
Ha! My $1,000 refrigerator worked flawlessly for more than 4 years!!! Now the freezer warms up periodically so the ice in the bin partially melts just before it freezes again…thereby freezing everything into one big iceberg.
It’s GE and American made so I can only assume it was designed to work, as advertised, for no more than 4 years in order to maximize shareholder value and increase profits at the expense of many things.
On another note, my parents have a 35 year old, american-made refrigerator/freezer in their basement they still use to hold extra beer and frozen meat.
The energy consumption on that bad boy must be stunning.
chargeback. they charged you for parts and labor. if they could not do the job you requested then then the labor must be refunded also.
suppose you have a 1 story house and hire a roofing company to replace a few shingles and they come out in a group of 50 people but find out that they have no tools or supplies for working on roofs, would you still have to pay all of the workers for labor?
they charged you labor not diagnostics
labor is when the job is completed. now for attempts at work.
At the company I work at, when some cooling equipment for the server room had to be replaced, the company hired made a mistake and had to start almost entirely over. (4 hours or so wasted)
they did not even think of charging for the wasted labor because it did not net any results. If you pay for parts and labor, the labor is for the a job well done, if nothing gets done then no labor was done regardless of how much work the worker did.
you can only charge for labor when a job is done to completion, anything less means that you are by law entitled to a 100% refund. You can take them to small claims court if needed and you will win in this case.
I find it hard to believe that the board is not available. Perhaps you have a wrong part number or the person you talked too missunderstood what you needed. Try contacting some local appliance stores that sell Whirlpool and ask them for assistance. Try the smaller retailers not the big box stores.
As for A&E Factory Service, it sucks. They were supposed to come out to fix the door handle on my refrigerator at a certain time on a certain day. They never showed up and didn’t call. When I called to inquire I was told that the “technician” had stated that when he arrived I wasn’t home. I was home all day. They offered to reschedule but I refused. I called a local appliance dealer that does their own service and they fixed the problem under warranty. If you want to do some reading just Google A&E Factory Service. There are hundreds of complaints about their terrible service.
My sister is looking into dishwashers. She said all the reviews are complaining about the pc boards going out after 2 years and not being made anymore so they can’t be replaced. She said the solution is to buy the longest possible extended warranty so they will have to replace it if they can’t fix it.
You used to could get refurbished pc boards and return the part you took out for credit so they could refurbish it. The same used to be true of the timers and transmissions on washing machines but I don’t know about that now, either. It’s been a long time since we were in the appliance repair business.
I’m glad my appliances are all old except for the microwave, it’s the only one that has a pc board.
Parts of the OP’s story sound similar to a story I have. We have a 4 year old GE gas oven and this past Thanksgiving my wife decided to use the self cleaning feature. Apparently, according to a repair person who wanted to charge $250 for labor and parts….you shouldn’t use that feature as it excessive heat causes the ignition coils to break. I bought the part for $25 at a local mom and pop repair shop and replaced it in less than 10 minutes.
To the OP: look around locally, other than the first repair person, and see if they have the part. If not, do what the others have said and take to the inter tubes….it’s not just for porn ya know.
Give these people a shot. They have found parts for appliances over forty years old. They will probably get the board from the company that made the board, which was NOT Whirlpool. Also, find an old timer who works alone, they know more tricks than newbies every time. Watch the newbies shout at me this time!
http://www.dlpartsco.com/
ALL the new products on the market today are lousy. We just now lost an old Philco refrigerator!! We have no idea how old it really was.
If I missed it I’m sorry but were these electronic controls for an electric or gas oven? It doesn’t matter per say since a lot of computer type circutry is susceptible to power surges since they work off such low voltages should the control circut be on a plug that can take a secondary surge protector other than the breaker?
From all the complaints I read at consumeraffairs.com, Whirlpool has become a vortex of customer dissatisfaction. At this point, I would avoid buying any product from Maytag, KitchenAid, or any other brand that Whirlpool has sucked down.
I know I’m late to the game on this, and I also may be posting something someone already found out, but the part number I found is 8302305. Marcone.com doesn’t show it as discontinued (though it will be early Feb. before it comes in.) Searspartsdirect.com shows it as in stock, which would only take a couple of days to get it in, but it’s Sears, and as we all know their inventory may be wildly off, or they may just want to keep the parts forever. Also, please please please note: A&E is an awful company. Super awful. Type A&E Factory Service into Google, and the fifth result is the first (of many) of people who have complaints about the company.
Yes I saw that Sears thinks they have the part, but I am skeptical. I found a place in Chicago that claims to have it, I will call them tomorrow. If Marcone won’t get it until February, could that be because it’s not being made any more and they haven’t figured that out yet? I have been told by two people at KitchenAid that the part will no longer be made.
Check this out says it is out of stock but worth contacting.
http://www.repairclinic.com/PartDetail/Circuit-Board-or-Timer/1027939?modelNumber=KEBC247KWH05
Go here:
/www.searspartsdirect.com
Look up by your model number of oven. Then look for the part in the exploded views. It looks like they have boku parts for this model. (The part number itself MAY or MAY NOT be the same.)
A quick look shows only one part in the realm of the price you were given, $327.13.
Also check your local yellow pages for “appliance parts” as you MAY have a company nearby where you can talk to a knowledgeable person, pick up the part right at the counter, and save shipping costs.
Get the part yourself, and get a local repair company of your choice to fix it. Once you have a good local company, they can make magic happen for you. Shop around, if need be. Skip the “official” repair people if it’s out of warranty, as they’ll just rape you for parts AND labor, and they don’t really give a crap anyway.
Dear Kelly-Brian,
I came across your posting and wanted to reach out and offer assistance, pertaining to your Kitchen-Aid Double Oven. I do apologize for the hassle you have received from our Factory Service concerning the control board that was ordered and then discontinued. I would like to speak with you about this situation in more detail; again I do apologize for frustration this has caused you and your family – understanding the loss of a major appliance especially on Thanksgiving. We would appreciate the opportunity to assist you in further resolving this matter. My name is Marcus and I work for the A&E Solutions team and we want you to know we are here to assist you. At your convenience please contact my office at AEservice@aefactoryservice.com so we can further discuss your concerns. In the email please provide us with a contact number and we will contact you directly. In addition please include your screen name (Kelly-Brian) in your email so we can reference to your posting.
Thank you,
Marcus C.
A&E Cares
Dear Marcus,
if you had read a little more carefully you might have noticed that Kelly-Brian is not the person having the problem. I am the person having the problem. This seems typical of the level of care that Sears, A&E Factory Services, and Whirlpool have brought to this whole problem. I confirmed with two people at Sears that they had the part in stock, so I ordered it, only to learn that they did not have it in stock as they had told me, but had to order it themselves, and of course they can’t because it is not being made any more.
I still believe you should refund the $129 service fee that was charged to me on Dec. 2 when I attempted to order the part, as that fee included the labor charges for your repair person to come out and install the new part. Since you could never find the part for me I feel it is not right that I don’t get a refund on that money.
Should you actually want to help me resolve this you can reach me at celia.chapman@gmail.com.
Celia
Celia, I bought a used Whirlpool oven a couple of years back and soon after I got it, it looked like the main board had failed – it was turning the oven on and off at random and sounding the timer alarm intermittently. I went online and discovered that what was really giving trouble was a ribbon cable, and that the fix was to remove, clean, and reset the cable. I did, and that fixed it. I’m not sure if your oven is the same, but it would not hurt to take a look and try this fix. Just use a plain pencil eraser to clean the contacts on the ribbon cable. Take care not to kink the cable as you do that. Good luck.
I appreciate the tip, but there’s no power at all coming through. I had two different repairmen look at it and both diagnosed the same thing.
And another update. Sears showed that they had the part in stock, and I confirmed with two different people that they actually had it in stock, and they both said they did, so I ordered it, and then of course it turns out they don’t have it in stock, they have to order it, and they can’t because it’s not being made any more. They were pretty good about cancelling the order but still. Never doing business with them again. Now I have to get KitchenAid to replace the oven, which legally they have to do, and I am wondering how much foot dragging will occur. Should I hire a lawyer?
I have been reading consumerist for a couple of years now and felt compelled to get on the bandwagon.
Ahh kitchen aid… I just finished remodeling my kitchen and had bought kitchen aid’s stainless steel -dishwasher-gas convection oven-above range microwave and a 600 watt mixer. I was deployed to afghan about 2 months afterward. Not even 1 month into a year long deployment I got an email from my fiancee saying that the microwave had caught on fire when she had tried to make popcorn in it. Asked her what she did and she said i put the popcorn bag in and hit the popcorn button on the control panel 40 seconds later there was a fire inside and yes it was a microwavable popcorn bag that was my first question. She put out the little fire and called customer service a couple of days later, after we had chatted. it started out ok and KA arranged to have someone come by and replace it. A sub-contractor comes out a week later walks in has a quick look and says we can’t help you since it is mounted into the ceiling, which ok i understand i didn’t have a cabinet at the time that allowed for the proper clearance and wouldn’t expect them to climb into my attic. I asked a couple of friends to go up in the attic and remove the bolts and set it on the floor. once it was removed the sub was called again to come out and do the exchange, they came out looked around and told my fiancee that since they couldn’t mount the new one there was nothing they could do as they were not allowed to just exchange the broken one for the new one without installing the new one. so after 2 more months of back and forth with the customer service they ended up pro-rating the microwave and giving me 80% of what i had paid for it and was told take it or leave it…..
600 watt Mixer = after 1 year when I would turn it on at any speed setting it would go directly to the highest speed setting for 8 seconds then shut off. to their credit they shipped me out a new one and included a prepaid sticker so i could ship the defective one back.
Dishwasher= what they don’t mention on the box or in the instructions is that every few months you have to take apart the bottom washing section and drainage area so that you can clean it out to prevent food accumulating and giving off some pretty awesome smells… I thought that since it had a built in disposal this wouldn’t be a problem, i was so wrong.
the gas convection oven rocks though……… so far!
partstore.com lists this part for about $369.