Don’t tell me you don’t trust Harbor Freight! 
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i bought a dehumidifier from Bonaire. it broke in 6months . so they sent me return label i sent it back . they never sent a replacement i followed with support and they said the shipping center in canada closed down and would be sometime 6 months and then a year later i followed up again and got emails reply from several companies saying they were Bonaire support and they kept closing the ticket while we emailed back and forth . the rep wanted a picture of the unit i explained to him that i had already sent it back with the shipping label they provided me but kept insisting i send him a picture of the actual unit and not one i got off the internet. I never did get my unit back .
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If you really want to get down to it you should be going after the employee’s parents. Or maybe the employee’s parents’ bartender.
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That’s how commercial & residential construction has be run for decades - leaving us with President Shit-4-Brains as just one of many duboptimal outcomes.
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The misconception here is that this is customer driven. The brand (Whirlpool) isn’t considering the question “how can we deliver a lower cost product to our consumer” ; they are exploring the “how can we get our product made for lower cost and still charge the consumer the same amount” space. The last stove I bought was a Whirlpool; it arrived without connections installed for one of the burners. I sighed and fixed it myself. I have lost track of how many refrigerators I bought in the last 15 years, including an expensive German brand that was the shortest lived. My willingness to pay for what I reasonably expected was quality did not protect me. The appliances my parents bought, starting in the 1940s, were always replaced because they got tired of looking at them, not because they failed. Don’t think you can blame the customer for any of this .
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True Story: Way back in the DOS days, I bought a 3 month old used Micropolis hard drive that normally retailed for $3k for 80% off. It was my pride and joy - 6 gigs when most drives were 20 megs. At one point, I bought a new case from Fry’s, and when I plugged it all in, it made a “wheeeEEEE>PAF<” noise, and blew up said hard drive - the power connector had been wired backwards. Called Fry’s, spent 2 months trying to get them to pay to replace that hard drive, kept getting variants of “tough shit”. They finally pawned me off on the power supply manufacturer in China. I thought “what the hell” and called the number… and a guy with a Texas accent answered. Told him my story, he was sympathetic, got my info, said he’d look into it. I assumed nothing would come of it, but two months later a delivery person with a brand new drive rolls into my work. And Fry’s is history but I’m still here, so yay. Sometimes bitching loudly and persistently pays off.
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My past confidence in KitchenAid was shaken when a relatively new (18 months) blender broke.
I opened it, looked where plastic had broken inside and realized that where they should have used 2" screws to hold a vital part in place, they cheaped out and used screws 1/2" long. The vital reinforced part was being secured by its very tips.
The blender was assembled with the wrong screws!
KitchenAid offered to sell me another for 30% off. I said I would prefer a replacement part and I’d fix this one. They restated their offer. I found the replacement and fixed it.
(left) broken one (right) replacement I had to buy because KitchenAid is awful
[Edit] Bonus: Twitter interaction with Kitchaid
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This is what I came here for. I rather suspect that trying to cook a roast in a toaster over would have voided any warranty immediately. They aren’t called ‘toaster’ ovens for no reason.
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I look at the parts catalog before buying from a company. If their products from 10 years ago or less do not have replacement parts available, then I do not buy their crap. I just had to buy a replacement AC for my boat and spent a ton of time researching because the damn things are super expensive. I finally found a company in Florida that not only cost about 2/3rds what the leading brand made in china charged but they had parts available for models from 15 years ago and the thermostat connectors where not specialized or proprietary so I can either buy a regular home one or roll my own with an arduino.
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Find out what companies run liquidation auctions for restaurants in the nearest city to you and get yourself a used, restaurant Vitamix. Spare parts are cheap and easy to swap and it’s the best blender ever.
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Nice victim blaming. Here’s an ad from Kitchenaid for Roasting a whole chicken in their toaster oven:
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Hah. A few years ago, I tried to buy a KitchenAid induction stove. First I was told a delivery date in 3 months, then that got extended to 6 months. I called at the 6 month point to see when it was going to be delivered, and was told it was in a warehouse, then that it was on a truck to be delivered the next day. I took a day off work to be there when it arrived, but it was a no show. I then called around for several hours, getting transferred from group to group until finally I got a hold of someone who admitted that the stove had never actually been manufactured and would never, in fact, be delivered. Don’t buy KitchenAid.
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That’s tough, since they’ve bought so many of the once-competing brands.
That sounds like a remarkably small amount of money to repair a mishap like this.
And Whirlpool did eventually pay her, and not just $600:
Whirlpool apologized, calling Hammond’s experience “unacceptable” and saying it would be “appropriately addressed.” It eventually paid Hammond $5,000 for the damage and her trouble.
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I prefer to do risk assessment on per-tool basis. For example there’s not much that can go wrong with pneumatic tools like sanders or reciprocating saws, while things like electrospindles, variable frequency drives and generally electric tools have significant risk of possibly deadly injury. And I would never buy anything that is powered by lithium-polymer battery on Aliexpress - the fire risk is too high.
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Hmm, I have never not had a deductible on mine and it has always made the most sense for that deductible to be 500 USD. Whereas for some reason on my auto policy a 100 deductible is only slightly more expensive than 500 so I have 100.
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Someone I know says she was living with friends in a hippy treehouse when her toaster oven which was turned off spontaneously burst into flames and burned down the dwelling. She is always unplugging my toaster oven. I am curious if anyone who works on these knows if this is a common failure mode. I always just assumed it more likely that hippies in a treehouse didn’t clean the crumbs out but it would restore my faith in hippies if this were a real thing.
On another note, I thought that all the American brands except Kenmore were now just rebadged Electrolux. Kinda cool that there is another company elec tech that is being rebadged.
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Hammond asked for $600 to fix the kitchen.
Whirlpool ended up paying Hammond $5,000, six times the original amount she asked for.
8.33333333333 times the amount she asked for?
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You know the old adage: success has a thousand fathers, but failure has antipodal call-waiting.
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Theres a Swedish saying that it is expensive to be poor.
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Just go straight for where the responsibility really lies (and coincidentally where the money is) - sue God.
Which one? Sue 'em all - at least all the ones that claim to be omnipotent creators.
Service of proceedings via their appointed representatives on earth or at the nearest place of worship to the place the damage occurred.
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