Why I will never buy a Kenmore appliance or any other appliance from Sears again

We bought our Kenmore dishwasher in 2010.  It has now broken for the fourth time.  The interesting thing is, the same part keeps failing; however, Sears still wants to charge me for my fourth Control Panel to install myself.

When it broke the first time (13 months after we bought it, one month after the warranty ran out) in December 2011, we had an appliance repairman, whom I found on yelp.com, come out and fix it because he charged $35 for the visit plus parts, while Sears wanted much more.  The other thing the repairman did was show me what he was doing so I could fix it myself if I had too.  I have degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, so I am able to understand how to fix appliances when shown.

Low and behold, eight months later,  in August 2012, the same part goes out.  I went on SearPartsDirect.com and found the part and ordered it myself and did the install as instructed.  It then failed another 9 months later in May 2013, so I ordered and replaced the same part again.  These dishwashers are the same as Whirlpool and Maytag brands as well, and if you do a google search on control panel failures, you can find a huge number of people with similar issues.

This brings me to last month, when for the fourth time, the control panel failed again.  I called Sears, including their executive helpline, and explained the situation, including the providing the order numbers for the multiple control panels I had ordered.  I was told, that earlier this year, Sears changed their parts warranty and instead of one year, it is now 90 days.  Hmmm, I wonder why?

The dishwasher itself cost less than $400.  I have now spent over $300 in parts, and Sears wants to charge me another $112 so I can fix it again.  My wife and I decided that even with Thanksgiving coming up and 15 people over for dinner, we can do without a dishwasher for a while.  Sears sold me and I suspect a lot of people a lemon of a dishwasher and they will not get another cent from us.

UPDATE: Sears noticed my tweet of this post and called me to offer me a brand new dishwasher at 25% off.  Wow, what a deal.  That only puts me another $200-$300 in the hole to Sears.  Are you kidding me?  I also have no guarantee that this one won't fail and if I buy a more expensive dishwasher to make sure it does not fail in the future, I will be out even more money than I paid for the original dishwasher 3 years ago.  I told them that their deal was not acceptable and I would now no longer shop at Sears.

Cell Phone Savings and ETF discount

I switched cell phone providers in July/August time frame to Ting.com.  I switched, while my wife stayed on Sprint because she got her phone in November of last year and the Early Termination Fee would have been horrendous (over $300).

Well, I'd say that switching was a success:

My bills the past three months:  $34.85, $32.70 and $26.13.
My wife's bills the past three months:  $69.70, $69.70 and $69.70.

This represents a drop of already $30 a month or $660 per year from $129.99 that we were previously paying in our joint phone account.  Now, Ting is offering a 25% discount on your ETF's.  So, I'll be switching my wife's phone over sooner that I originally expected.  This should save us an additional $30 per month.

The only issue may be that Ting does not allow roaming for data.  However, since most places we go nowadays either have coverage for Sprint or wifi access, I'm pretty confident this will not be a problem.

I'll update in couple months to let folks know if we are saving even more.  If you click the Ting.com link in the first paragraph, you'll get a $25 discount on your first month's service.

Sprint TOS update and saving on my cell phone bill

I was finally able to cancel my phone without causing incurring the ETF that Sprint wanted to charge.  However,  they would not allow me to cancel my wife's phone for the same reason because she just got her phone last November (I got my phone in October 2011).  This means that I was able to transfer to my phone to ting.com and changed my wife's plan from a family plan to one of their new individual plans until it makes sense to cancel her's altogether.

I am ok with this for one reason.  Switching over to ting seems like a risk and switching my phone first, allows  me to test the service before we switch over both of ours.  The main issue is Sprint didn't charge for roaming data (since their network sucks, this is probably a necessity) and ting basically does not allow it.  However, after a week of using ting.com, I'm happy to say I haven't noticed much of an issue.  Roaming calls still go through and are free still, so that was my main concern.   My bill is tracked by the amount of usage I actually use so the less I use data, talk or text for a month, the lower my bill and I can also set alerts to tell me I'm approaching certain limits.  I'm figuring my usage will end up costing me about $31 - $42 per month + charges, which is much cheaper than we're paying for my wife's plan.

I'll keep you updated.

Sprint lawyers need to retake contract law

I was on the phone with Sprint for about an hour on Saturday.  I called to have my service terminated while they waved the Early Termination Fee (ETF) based upon a change in their Terms of Service (TOS) that I wrote about previously.

They actually had someone from the escalations department contact me.  I think she was a bit exasperated and sounded like she had been fielding these calls for most of the day.  Nevertheless,  I noted two interesting things during our conversation.

1. She did not even realize that this change was in the contract.  She nearly called me a liar for saying it was different because the only thing the Sprint Lawyers had evidently prepared them for was the WiMax issue.
2. She insisted it was not a change that was material or adverse because the Sprint attorney's had told her it was not.  Evidently, they have no bias.

She outright refused to waive the fee and actually said that I should hire an attorney if I wanted to.  Based upon comments I've been reading online, it seems Sprint is in lock down mode and does not care how many customers they piss off.

BTW, it's not as if my wife and I are fly-by-night customers as we've been with Sprint for about 8 years.  If they don't respond to me soon, my next move will be to contact the Better Business Bureau (BBB).

Sprint TOS change, Can my Contract be Voided?

I have Sprint cell phone service and have been waiting for my contract to be up in order to possibly change my service over to ting.com.  One interesting bit of legalese is that if Sprint materially changes their Terms of Service, you are allowed to get out of your contract without being charged an Early Termination Fee.

Well, they changed their TOS of July 1 and I noticed they added this bit:

Call time for a single call may be subject to a maximum duration and may be automatically terminated if the maximum duration is exceeded. Rates that vary based on the time of access will be determined based on the location of the network equipment providing service and not the location of your Device or your Device's area code (if applicable).

By adding this, they are allowing themselves to basically say a call that was an hour and spanned over a time period where rates are different (nights vs. days), can be split up over the two different time periods.  I would say, changing how my rates are possibly calculated is a material change and should be subject to allowing my to get out of my TOS.  What do you think?