GE customer service sucks
GE has terrible customer service.
In April, less than three months ago, we bought a new washing machine, one of those new ones that don’t require an agitator. The clothes get clean through some magical process of water shooting really hard or pixie dust. It’s a top-loading machine with lights and a computerized control panel. Not top of the line or crazy expensive, but not cheap by any means, and only three months old.
For a couple of washes it wasn’t draining completely and wasn’t spinning and our clothes were sopping wet at the end of the wash. We had to manually turn it to the spin setting. So my wife called customer service, and the woman on the phone was rude and annoyed when my wife wanted to be sure she had heard the instructions correctly. We were told to unplug the machine and then plug it in and open and close the lid a number of times. This was supposed to reset the computer and make it work correctly. Instead, after we did this, the machine no longer filled with water at all. When we turned it on, it went right to wash mode without filling. It isn’t supposed to do this.
We called customer service and described exactly what was happening, and they said a technician had to come out and fix it. It wouldn’t cost anything because of the warantee on a new machine, of course. But there was no appointment available for a week. A week! I’m not saying that not being able to wash clothes for a week is worse than Darfur, or is a crime against humanity. But I’m not not saying it, either.
We waited a week and the service technician came out this morning. And what did he do, you ask, that required a week of waiting? He turned on the machine, whereupon it did precisely what it did when we turned it on, which we told the customer service representative on the phone the week before. That’s all he did and all he needed to do to know that he had to order a part — a replacement of the entire computer control panel. The technician didn’t take anything apart or run any tests. He just turned the machine on, saw what we had seen when we tried the machine, and knew immediately what was wrong. Actually, he knew what was wrong even before trying the machine, when we told him what had happened. “I’m going to have to order a part,” he said.
If the person answering the phone had simply had some knowledge, or put us through to someone who did, someone at GE customer service could have known by our description of the problem that this part needed to be replaced. Then the guy who drove to our house today could have had the part on his truck and our washer would now be working. Instead, we have to wait until next week for the part to come in and the repair to be made.
GE wasted our time this morning (we had to give them a four-hour window of availability) and now we’re going on week two of not having a working washing machine after buying a new machine just three months ago. That is some bad customer service, GE.
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About Scott Stein
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I started boucoting GE several years ago due to this & the fact that all GE product gave me problems, add in the CEO Imlet is a idiot, Obama support, has got involved in the operation of NBC & run them from #1 to #3 in the 3 man lineup.
Solution for me has been Frigidare great products never a problem
REI is truly awful too:
http://tiny.cc/jwl4o
Scott - this is Megan from GE, sorry to hear you’ve had such a bad experience. Someone from our team will be reaching out to you shortly. Thanks.
Megan’s comment (if legit) proves that the most effective way to get horrible customer service fixed is to tweet or blog about the incompetence of a company. These places are terrified of their names being tarred by negative search trends and recurring appearances of keywords like “horrible,” “awful,” “pathetic,” “wretched,” etc.
In theme with my previous comment:
REI, awful.
REI, horrible.
REI, pathetic.
REI, wretched.
REI, nauseating.
REI, terrible.
REI, stinky.
REI, crap.
REI, horse shit.
REI, guff.
REI, garbage.
Customer service. REI. Customer service. REI. Customer service. REI. Customer service. REI.
Shitty = REI
Worthless = REI
Michael, I’ll update this page if they do something to compensate for the bad customer service. I believe that Megan is indeed from GE — it’s a GE server that she used. Blogging or tweeting might not always be enough, though. In this case, the main reason there was a response, I believe, is that I sent a link to the post to the corporate head of appliance PR at GE. Second, though the people at GE probably do not know this, because WFTC is now getting bigger and has a good Google rating, this post is currently on page two of Google if you search for “GE customer service” — most personal blogs might not have that kind of reach. Still, the relevant point is that companies and customer service departments never know who can reach out to lots of people, on Facebook or whatever, to share their experience. So that’s one more reason they should do a better job for all of their customers.
@Scott
Glad to hear that Megan is real and not some prankster. Hope she resolves your issue.
Adobe has rushed to placate me after tweeting about their shenanigans, so the airing of customer service grievances does sometimes work in the dark, sweaty underbelly of Twitter…
Interesting to see how apologetic companies can be when they are hung out in public. Though doesn’t seem that public humiliation did anything for BP.