The Dishwasher Debacle
In September husband and I did a lot of research, a lot of looking around, and then bought a new dishwasher.
We had always had a dishwasher in this house, but it had never worked well. Our plates were too large, it didn't really clean the dishes, and man was it loud. We had always said that when we were about to have our first child that we would switch to a real dishwasher (John's talents at the sink vs. a mechanized dishwasher). So we began looking at dishwashers while I was secretly pregnant, early on.
We ended up buying a Bosch for a couple of reasons: 1) it was highly-efficient with a stainless steel interior 2) it was one of the only dishwashers that was compact enough to fit under our kitchen counter completely 3) it was very quiet and 4) it was a really good quality item that was nowhere near the bottom of the line.
In October it was delievered. By the end of October husband was complaining about having to re-wash many of the dishes by hand. At first, I thought it was something we were doing wrong: were we not rinsing the dishes enough, husband thought they might be stacked in there too tightly.
In November, the installation guy came back to the house to have a look. His verdict: make sure the water is warm and use less soap... This sounded a little suspect to me, but I was willing to try it. I thought we were possibly not treating our Scandanavian brand appropriately... still only partially clean dishes after all that.
In December, we were at a holiday party where someone had a Bosch dishwasher. The message was: "we love it, we can do anything with it (soap, water temp, etc) and IT STILL CLEANS THE DISHES!" We returned to the drawing board and called the appliance store, meanwhile John was still doing dishes by hand.
This time they vowed to send out their own technician. He came (at least an hour late) and told us that the control panel in our almost-new dishwasher needed to be replaced. It wasn't the water or the soap- it was a malfunction of the machine.
I quietly told the repair guy and subsequently the customer service representative that I would not like a repair for my brand new dishwasher, but instead would just like a brand new dishwasher. The word LEMON just kept streaming through my mind. All I could think about was that any other time that you purchase something that is broken from the beginning, you return it and get a new one. Just because this purchase is larger than most, and needs to be installed is no reason for us to keep it and get it repaired instead of a getting it replaced. Because what happens in a year when the warranty has expired and eight other things are going wrong? I knew that my demands for a new washer were somewhat wasteful, yet I just wanted something that worked reliably.
So on Friday our new dishwasher was installed. On Saturday, it was the six month mark of my pregnancy and on Saturday we had our first batch of gloriously clean dishes hot out of the dishwasher to put away. Amen, we are ready for the kid.
We had always had a dishwasher in this house, but it had never worked well. Our plates were too large, it didn't really clean the dishes, and man was it loud. We had always said that when we were about to have our first child that we would switch to a real dishwasher (John's talents at the sink vs. a mechanized dishwasher). So we began looking at dishwashers while I was secretly pregnant, early on.
We ended up buying a Bosch for a couple of reasons: 1) it was highly-efficient with a stainless steel interior 2) it was one of the only dishwashers that was compact enough to fit under our kitchen counter completely 3) it was very quiet and 4) it was a really good quality item that was nowhere near the bottom of the line.
In October it was delievered. By the end of October husband was complaining about having to re-wash many of the dishes by hand. At first, I thought it was something we were doing wrong: were we not rinsing the dishes enough, husband thought they might be stacked in there too tightly.
In November, the installation guy came back to the house to have a look. His verdict: make sure the water is warm and use less soap... This sounded a little suspect to me, but I was willing to try it. I thought we were possibly not treating our Scandanavian brand appropriately... still only partially clean dishes after all that.
In December, we were at a holiday party where someone had a Bosch dishwasher. The message was: "we love it, we can do anything with it (soap, water temp, etc) and IT STILL CLEANS THE DISHES!" We returned to the drawing board and called the appliance store, meanwhile John was still doing dishes by hand.
This time they vowed to send out their own technician. He came (at least an hour late) and told us that the control panel in our almost-new dishwasher needed to be replaced. It wasn't the water or the soap- it was a malfunction of the machine.
I quietly told the repair guy and subsequently the customer service representative that I would not like a repair for my brand new dishwasher, but instead would just like a brand new dishwasher. The word LEMON just kept streaming through my mind. All I could think about was that any other time that you purchase something that is broken from the beginning, you return it and get a new one. Just because this purchase is larger than most, and needs to be installed is no reason for us to keep it and get it repaired instead of a getting it replaced. Because what happens in a year when the warranty has expired and eight other things are going wrong? I knew that my demands for a new washer were somewhat wasteful, yet I just wanted something that worked reliably.
So on Friday our new dishwasher was installed. On Saturday, it was the six month mark of my pregnancy and on Saturday we had our first batch of gloriously clean dishes hot out of the dishwasher to put away. Amen, we are ready for the kid.
posted by KLOU | 8:38 AM
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