This Was Handled Poorly

The difference between a good company and a bad company is how they handle a situation like mine. This was handled poorly.

Last month I wrote about the hassle of proving I was the original and rightful owner of my refrigerator. In the end LG Electronics agreed refrigerators shouldn’t break at 13 months and sent a technician my way on their tab.

IMAG1385He was here last week. I showed him a photo of Stef holding a chunk of ice from under the freezer tray. I pulled out my phone to play the sound the fan sometimes made, but he stopped me.

“I know what it is,” he said.

We needed a totally new assembly for the rear of the freezer compartment. It would have to be ordered.

IMAG1437The photo on the left is what I’m about to throw out. It’s not physically broken. This wasn’t a part gone bad. This was a system poorly designed. This was a ‘soft recall.’

Why did LG make me jump through all those hoops? Were they looking for a way to avoid responsibility? They know problems on my model’s freezer are common.

Why didn’t LG or Lowe’s, where we bought it, reach out to their customers first? There are probably loads of owners who see their 12 month guarantee is up and hope for the best. They end up swallowing LG’s mistake.

Engineering is complex. There will always be design flaws. I understand that part.

The difference between a good company and a bad company is how they handle a situation like this. LG handled it poorly.

4 thoughts on “This Was Handled Poorly”

  1. LG is one of those companies like Samsung–they have rather byzantine warranty setups and a basic bad attitude toward consumers, in my opinion. Last couple times I was looking for major appliances, I steered clear of them for multiple reasons, unreliability and warranty hassles being the main ones.

    Some of the reviews were scathing, to put it mildly. Noise, stupid early failures, and difficulty of getting service parts were part of the issue. It pays to do a lot of research first nowadays…

    At least you managed to get them to fix it…

  2. We purchased an LG french door refrigerator and it was nothing but problems and a lack of customer service from LG. We had continual ice building up along the side and under the freezer. Finally dumped the refrigerator after 3 years and bought a Whirlpool. Much better customer service.

  3. If they do as you think they should they would have to admit they made a crappy product and that would cost them money, hassles and bad PR. Better to make your life miserable in hope you’ll get tired of the crap and go away. Works in 9 out of 10 cases.

  4. I had the same thing happen to me with my Samsung TV. After jumping through myriad hoops, I Googled the problem and found out that Samsung knew about this for years. Once I found that out and contacted them again, a technician was at my house within a week.

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