Plague diary April 17 -- freezer update

When I last shared the story of my new freezer, two and a half weeks ago, GE Appliances had promised to send me a new freezer in place of the one we just bought but did not work properly.  It was going to be delivered on April 7.  At the time, I wrote "seeing will be believing."  Oh, what a cynic I am, to doubt the promises of a major American manufacturer.

(Well, actually, it's a major Chinese manufacturer, who bought the appliance division four years ago, but kept the GE name because it's so well known and trusted.)  (Right.  As my new best friend Sandy, the appliance expediter at Home Depot said to me recently on the phone, "I hate GE.")

Guess what -- no freezer on April 7.  I will spare you the gory details of my many calls and emails with GE's "customer service" people.  I will hint that they changed their story multiple times, they lied to Sandy about what they had told me a couple of days previously, they contradicted their very own emails from the week before which were still appended to the new email.

still in garage

A week ago Sandy extracted a promise, confirmed in an email to me from Andre at GE, that "in about 5 business days" the local trucking company would show up at my door with a check for $857.65 and take the freezer away.  (Well, actually he promised Sandy "three to five business days," but you know how these promises work.)  And today -- guess what -- the trucking company has not received the check and therefore has not scheduled a time to come get my freezer.

But I have both made and lost friends in this process!  First I thought I had made friends with Deshalique at GE, when she found the hard-to-get temp sensor in her secret warehouse and had it shipped to me that very afternoon!!  Then, after she refused to answer my emails, not to mention not having the part shipped, I sadly decided she was not my friend after all.  When GE send me a survey to complete about whether I would recommend GE appliances to my friends, and how would I rate my recent interaction with my case manager, I was able to rat her out by name, the only fun I've had in a while.

Then I made friends with Sabrina at GE, who promised to deliver the replacement freezer on April 7.  Since she wasn't my real case manager, she didn't have the opportunity to refuse to answer my emails wondering why it hadn't been delivered, so maybe she's still my friend despite not coming up with a freezer.

But Sandy is still and always my friend.  When GE stopped talking to me Sandy was able to get through and negotiate on my behalf.  And she always calls me back within a couple of hours to report on what she has accomplished!  I think that when and if the freezer departs, I will take Sandy some cookies, or maybe a personalized face mask.

And now I have made friends with Brian at the trucking company, with whom I chat every now and then to learn that GE has not sent the check yet.

UPDATE 1:  Sandy followed up with GE and called me an hour ago to keep me posted.  She reports that although Andre told us the truck would be here with a check in five days, he wasn't exactly telling the truth.  In fact, GE didn't approve the check until day before yesterday, so maybe a week more.  

UPDATE 2:  Vicki left a comment on this post asking whether we could get a chargeback on the credit card instead of waiting for the GE check.  Yes, that would be the simplest way to do it, but apparently simplest is not the way GE does business.  And I hesitate to even try to suggest this to GE.  I did wonder whether we could postpone paying MasterCard until we actually got the check from GE, but MasterCard is so swamped with calls that the robosystem wouldn't even put me in a queue to talk to a human being, just hung up on me.