Dispatch Blues

Last Sunday I mentioned our difficulties in getting our new oven installed. Some of you have wondered about this, so let me state for the record that the actual installers who showed up on Sunday afternoon and did the work were professional and courteous, and their work was quite satisfactory. I’m not blaming them for any of this; they were just trying to make the best out of the bag of snakes their employers had handed them. My point in writing about this, then and now, is to point out just how unnecessary all of this was. It’s not exactly a cautionary tale – I don’t suppose any of you would try running a company in this fashion – but it’s still worth a closer look…

The trouble really began before New Year’s, when my wife and I went to Sears to get a new oven. Ours was original equipment when they built the house, and after 30 years of intense use it was on its last legs. We’d put up with it for a year and half, but after the front half of the door fell off for the second time, scattering shards of glass all over the kitchen and requiring us to open the door by pulling on the mounting bolts that had secured the handle (until it broke and fell off, too) we’d had enough. Our first indication that this was not going to be a simple transaction came when the Sears people told us they couldn’t handle the installation. It seems that our old oven was a custom install, and was wider than any model currently on sale – by about three-quarters of an inch. Sears can handle making room for something wider (by enlarging the hole the appliance goes into) but making it smaller was beyond them…

Fortunately, it was not beyond the abilities of Greg, our amazing general contractor. Greg and his merry band of craftsmen took care of the repairs we wanted when we first moved in, and they’ve taken on a few additional repairs since. In the event, Greg took some measurements, calculated a few numbers, and told me that he could do the job in an hour or so – and he already had all of the materials he’d need at home in the back of the workshop. With his help, the size of the aperture would not be an issue, and I went back to Sears to schedule the install for two days after Greg was scheduled to finish. Almost at once, we came upon a second issue: the Sears installers were booked up for more than two weeks, clearing the backlog that had piled up over the holidays. I found this irritating, since the holiday season doesn’t exactly sneak up on you (it’s the same date every year), and it’s not exactly like people don’t need to replace malfunctioning appliances during this time (things break when they break). But I scheduled the install for the first available date, 15 days into the new year and 19 into the future…

Which is how things stood until two days before the scheduled install, when the company that Sears subcontracted our job to called us to say that the installer who was supposed to show up two days later had Jury Duty, and could they move back until the following day (which was Saturday). We found this to be even more irritating, considering that Jury Duty doesn’t sneak up on you either; you generally know you’re going to have it two or three months in advance, and you could tell your employer to schedule accordingly. But we agreed to the change – only to have the company call us back on Friday and say that their remaining installer had a “family issue” and it was now going to have to be Monday. At which point we called Sears directly and started demanding a refund on the delivery and installation charges…

Now, for all I know this could be the only time this installation company – or our local Sears location, for that matter – has ever allowed a situation like this to develop. All I know is that as far as last week is concerned, their average is zero – and it may be awhile before we give them another chance…