well, it was yesterday, anyway.
I went on a little trip this past weekend with my woman (Ann) and my adorable baby (Krystal). When we got back Sunday night, we had a quick, easy meal from the freezer. I happened to notice, when I grabbed our repast, that there was, for some inexplicable reason, an awful lot of frost on many of our food items. But I cooked, we ate, and we didn't think much more about it that day.
Monday we had a bigger dinner. Ann mentioned that she kept hearing this odd clicking noise coming from the kitchen every once in a while, but I couldn't tell what was making it. A couple of hours later we decided to have a scoop of ice cream for dessert. Well, Ann got out the ice cream container and then called me over. I picked it up. It was not cold and firm like ice cream containers should be, but soggy and extremely flexible. I opened it up and inside there was a muddy soup.
Apparently the clicking noise (which I was finally able to confirm) was our fridge, not making things cold.
That was Monday. This is Wednesday. In spite of two days of effort, I still do not know when I will have a service person arrive to repair my goddamn fridge. This is not for lack of trying, though. Tuesday morning, Ann packed up all the meat that was still cold enough to be good and took it to work to put in a co-worker's freezer. I called the warranty number listed inside the fridge. Navigated the voice menus. Talked to 5 different people as I got transferred back and forth. Got 2 other numbers that I probably needed to call. Finally left a message, at about 9:00 am, to a person whose voice mail promised to call me back within the hour. Went to work an hour and a half later without being called back.
So around noon, I finally got my "within the hour" callback. After several go-rounds of "do you have the number of the invoice you purchased the fridge on?" "No, it came with the house." "Do you have the name of the person who you purchased it from?" "No, I didn't think to look up my mortgage information for a refrigerator problem." Etc., etc. Finally I gave the nice lady the serial number of the fridge, which I had of course recorded, talked briefly with her manager, and found out that while my full-coverage warranty had long since expired, the fridge was still under a 5-year manufacturer's warranty on "sealed systems", which means that if the compressor had failed they would replace it free. The actual service call would cost me $70, but the parts and subsequent labor were covered.
Hooray, we're getting somewhere! This was after I'd talked to the nice lady three separate times when she had to look something up and call me back, and her manager once for pricing information. But she promised that she would find out who was in my area and when they could schedule me a service call, and call me back (again!) that afternoon to let me know when that was.
That was Tuesday. Wednesday morning I spend my free time before going to work putting everything that was still in the freezer into a bag and thence into the trash can in the garage. (This is where the meat juice comes in; we'd missed a few meat items that may have been salvageable the day before, but were swimming in their own liquids today.) When I got to work, I was tied up in meetings and fixing problems the whole morning. Wednesday afternoon I finally call back the company and say "Yes, I'd like to schedule the service call for my fridge." "Do you have your invoice number?" (sigh)
"No, but I called yesterday, can you pull the information from there?" Many struggles and tribulations later, we establish that I do indeed still own a fridge. For some reason that I cannot fathom, however, they will not allow me to TELL them at what address the fridge is located; they HAVE to find it in their own records before they can schedule the call for me. The nice lady says she will search their databases for information about my fridge and call me back as soon she has something. But they close at 5:00, so probably she won't be able to schedule anything for me until tomorrow. (It is now 4:00ish.)
4:30, and my phone rings! Excitement! "Are you at this address?" No. "Okay, I'll keep looking." (click.)
4:45, and my phone rings again! "Are you at this other address?" No. "Okay, still looking, I'll keep on it first thing tomorrow too." (click)
4:50, and my phone rings yet another time! It's the manager, who appears to remember absolutely nothing of what we discussed yesterday. "Are you at this address?" No. "Okay, how about this one?" YES! That is my address! "Now, I'm confused. What kind of fridge is this exactly?" It's out of ApplianceSmart warranty but in Manufacturer's Sealed System Warranty, and it's a broken fridge, can you get it fixed for me? "Well, do you have its model number?" No, it's on my information sheet which is, unfortunately, not present with me at the moment. (I did previously manage to recall the serial number correctly, though.) "Okay, well, call back when you're at home and leave us a message with your fridge's model number and we'll take care of scheduling something for you first thing in the morning." (sigh) Fine.
So I am going to call in a few minutes and leave them a message with my refrigerator's make, model, and serial number. (And by the Geneva convention, that's all I'm required to tell them, right?) In the meantime, my fridge contains 6 water bottles, 7 different kinds of sauce, 2 containers of parmesan cheese, 8 prepackaged cups of applesauce, and a loaf of bread, all at room temperature, or perhaps even slightly warmer.
Looks like we'll be eating out for a little while yet....