Thursday, April 03, 2025
God, I feel like I'm an old man wearing a tin foil hat yelling at the world
A few months ago our ice maker broke and the upshot—we got charged for a replacement unit that was never installed and we're using ice trays.
Last week, our dryer stopped working. It turned on, you can set the controls, but it fails to spin up and do any actual drying. We thought about maybe getting it repaired, but in all likelyhood, by the time we pay for the repair man and the replacement widget that isn't working, we would probably be looking at the price of a new dryer anyway. And if it can't be fixed, then we're definitely out the prirce of a new dryer and the repair man.
So early this week we went out to one of the two remaining home improvement stores (and it wouldn't surprise me to find out they're both owned by the same shadow company—can you tell I'm gettin cynical here?) and bought a replacement. Of course, we couldn't just buy a new dryer—no. We had to buy a new electrical cord (what? It doesn't come as part of the dryer?) and a new dryer hose (what? What's wrong with the one we already have? This stuff is pretty much standardized by now). Then there was the delivery fee, the installation fee, and the removal-of-the-old-unit fee. All that tacked on an additional 25% on the shelf price, not including taxes.
Maybe it would have been cheaper to get it repaired.
Anyway, today we received the unit. Two men unloaded the new dryer from the truck, brought it inside the garage, took the old dryer off the “pedestal” (which we purchased several years ago when we got a new washer and dryer—each are on a pedestal that acts as storage space), and then said they would NOT install the new dryer on the old pedestal. In fact, they insisted they COULD NOT install on the older pedestal, and then they left.
Well, thank you very much.
We called the home improvement store and they said it was company policy not to install a dryer on a pre-existing pedetal. They didn't say which company mandated this policy—the manufacturer of the dryer (which, at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if there was only one shadow company that owned all the appliance manufacturers) or the home improvement store. And of course, the removal of the pedestal would require an additional removal-of-the-old-unit fee, because it was considered a separate unit. It didn't matter that we had a perfectly good pedestal whose size matches the new dryer. And it didn't matter that the new dryer hose matched the size of the existing hose. Oh, and if we installed the dryer ourselves, we would immediately void the one-year warrantee on the dryer.
It seems like our only real choices were to spend even more money on a new pededstal, more money for delivery, more money to remove the old pedestal, more money to install the new pedestal. and probably an additional fee to install the new dryer (which we had already paid for installation) to install the dryer on said pedestal, or we could elect to void the warrantee and install the dryer on our own.
Well, XXXX me!
Bunny thinks I'm too cynical, but at this point, how do you not be cynical?
We ended up calling a friend over to help install the dryer on the old pedestal. It fit fine. So did the old hose. I'm not sure if it's even worth attempting to get the installation fee back—they might just void our warrantee on the spot (I can hear Bunny calling out “Stop being so cynical!”). I'm glad we didn't spring for the three or five year warrantees—the unit will probably last that long (and no longer, because then the same shadow company that owns all the appliance manufacturers gets another sale, and thus the line goes up, because XXXX you, think of the poor billionaires).
I hope it lasts longer. I don't want to be this cynical.
