I am caught in a triangle between the US government safety regulations, Sears and my local gas company.
This isn't a political diary, unless you count the frustration that one has to go through when installing an appliance that doesn't work because the manufacturer blames government regulations for their crappy product.
If you're not interested in my attempt to document, make sense of, and vent major steam about the last 13 days, then there's nothing to see here and please move along. If you're still interested in reading, be warned that this will be very long.
It started on the 14th of this month, when my husband (on his first day of vacation) woke me up with, "We have a problem...There's water all over the basement." In a nutshell, the water heater that was installed when the house was built in 1984, finally gave up.
We're DIY kind of people. We are that way out of necessity, because it saves money. We study. We research. We learn everything we can about a project before we undertake it so we don't make mistakes that could harm our family or property. That is why it took us from Saturday morning until Tuesday night to get our brand new Sears water heater installed. We did a good job. We even brought the gas line up to code where it was not meeting code prior to our install.
When the pilot light would not stay lit, we attributed it to the fact that we were trying to heat up 40 gallons of very cold, Minnesota water, causing condensation, causing the burner to go out. That was part of the problem, but not quite all of the problem. Wednesday morning we had wonderful, hot water, and I was able to run the dishwasher and take a much-needed shower. The pilot light would not stay lit over the weekend. We would light it, the burner would fire up, the water in the take would get hot, and then the pilot light would go out. Finally, on Monday, we called the local gas company. They service all of our appliances under a service contract. We told them that we had a brand new water heater and never did they mention that they were not certified to do warranty work. The technician came out and basically said that there was a design flaw with many of the new water heaters on the market due to government safety regulations. He said that he was going to replace the entire burner assembly (because, of course, you can't replace the offending part which is probably a little over 5 bucks, but you have to replace the whole unit.) He couldn't even get the pilot light lit any longer, because the thermocouple had completely failed. He told us that he'd order it, taking 24-48 hours to process, and then overnight it to us. He also said that this would probably be one of many identical parts we would be ordering because he doubted it would solve the problem. I was pleasantly surprised when the part arrived the next morning! Another tech came out that afternoon, replaced the part, and wished us luck. We had another wonderful day with hot water yesterday. This morning, I took a shower and noticed that I had to crank that knob way to the left to get the desired temperature. I knew the pilot light had gone out again sometime last night.
The problem with the design of the new water heaters is that in this case, the engineers didn't make sure that the new design features didn't impair the function of the appliance. I'd like to ring the necks of the QA managers that decided the number of failures was acceptable. Older water heaters were open at the bottom. you stuck a match into a hole, held down the gas switched and lit the pilot light. There have been many tragedies over the years we have had gas water heaters. Many people have died from gas explosions and house fires, and many more have been injured. I'm not an expert, but I've read enough to know that Natural Gas is heavier than air and will sink to the floor. If there are excess fumes, an open pilot light can ignite them causing a fire or explosion. The government is also dealing with "teh stupid factor" in protecting people that store things like paint cans and rags around their water heater. I understand that safety regulations are meant to protect people, but it does no good if the product doesn't work!
What they have done, is seal the bottom of the water heater so that no flame is exposed to the outside. They put the pilot light behind a glass window so you can still see it, but you can't singe your eyebrows off when lighting it. They put an electronic ignition on the unit, so you're not using your fingers to stick matches into a little hole where a highly flammable gas is collecting. They put sensors at the bottom, so if fumes collect it disables the unit, kind of like the way a circuit breaker disrupts an electrical circuit if there is a problem. They also put a thermocouple behind that little glass window to make sure that the temperature does not exceed acceptable levels. Herein lies the problem, as I understand it and as it was explained to me by the technician. Because that thermocouple is behind the glass window, the temperatures get much higher than if there was air flow next to it. The thermocouple senses extremely high temps triggering a shut-down of the gas flow. Sometimes the thermocouples "fry" and then the whole burner unit needs replacing because the gas will no longer flow. It seems that the thermocouple is not designed to work behind that little glass window.
Today, I called both my gas company and Sears. I spoke with ten different people at Sears and my series of telephone conversations lasted nearly two hours. I didn't want to just set up a repair. I wanted to find out if I was going to have to replace 100 or 200 or 300 of these units this year. I wanted to find out if I was ever going to have reliable hot water again.
The repair department set me up with a technician that will come out to my home sometime TOMORROW to take a look at it. She gave me the number for the national customer service line. They gave me the number for One Source, which is supposed to deal with escalated calls. That person didn't deal with water heaters and transferred me to someone that did. By this time, I told my story several times. I explained the whole thing again. She asked me who installed the water heater, and I told her that we did it ourselves... big holding of breath.... that was no problem. Then she asked me who replaced the burner unit, and I told her that we have a maintenance contract with our local gas company and one of their technicians did it. She said we voided our warranty. So let me get this straight... Sears doesn't have a problem with a self-install, but does have a problem with a trained technician replacing the burner. That's right. OK, so then she wanted to know if I wanted to keep the appointment for tomorrow or not. I explained over and over again, that I want to talk to someone who will assure me that my water heater is going to FUNCTION. She very rudely transferred me back to the national customer service line, who transferred me to another department called Retail Recovery. This department is supposed to deal with products not working as intended. She couldn't help me as I had voided my warranty. She transferred me to service contracts, who also informed me that I had voided my warranty. Oky doky? "Is there anything else I can do for you?" I asked to be transferred to her supervisor. Finally... I got to talk with someone who understood that there were several issues going on here, and only one of them dealt with whether or not I was covered by my warranty. She said that she believes that unless the technician damaged the unit in some way, that the warranty is indeed intact, and advised me to continue with my service call tomorrow morning. I have no guarantees that I won't be charged, but I have her phone number!
In the mean time, the service technician came out from the gas company and found a way to get my pilot light re-lit. I cranked that baby up to the highest setting, so I have 40 gallons of very hot water. (No worries... no young children in the house and everyone has been advised to be very cautious of the hot water.)
I called the local gas company, which is a very large company in the Twin Cities, and not some little outfit in the sticks. I advised them that they need to tell their customers that they don't do warranty work! I told them I had a brand new unit when I placed the original call. Alarm bells should have gone off for them, and they should have advised me that I needed to call Sears for warranty work. The woman on the line absolutely agreed. I asked her to please pass the information to all of the CSMs.
It has been a very long couple of weeks. I'm tired. I'm cranky. If you've made it this far, you get a gold star, because I don't know if I'd have the attention span to read this. I used to work in customer screwing service, so I know how to deal with people on the phone. I left that job because the stress of it made me sick, and I feel like I'm right back in the slime pit again. I know that the product is faulty by design. I also know that Sears doesn't care and will do everything in their power to thwart me. For me, it's not about the warranty so much, because the local gas company is under contract with me and will come out every day to replace the burner units if I need them to do it. The problem here is getting recognition that there is a design flaw and it needs to be fixed. Sears is using the "You voided your warranty" BS as a way to ignore the larger problem.
I know that this is going to cost me a lot of money in the end. Worst of all... I know that this is not over, by a long shot, and there is more stress to come. Oh yeah... as I was writing this, Sears called and said that their technician is going to be delayed until later tomorrow. sigh.