We called Kendall Appliances to have a refrigerator repair man come out and repair our ailing refrigerator. Even though the company was a 24/7 operation, they couldn’t get their repair guy to us... More

We called Kendall Appliances to have a refrigerator repair man come out and repair our ailing refrigerator. Even though the company was a 24/7 operation, they couldn’t get their repair guy to us for a few days. By the time he arrived, the refrigerator had stopped working and we had lost all our food. The repair man identified the problem as a faulty circuit board and replaced it. The bill was just short of $300, $140 of which was listed as a “service charge” although the invoice stated that the service call would be free with repair. It took a while for the refrigerator to slowly cool down after the repair man left and we just thought that was the way it worked, having never had the problem before. We went out to the store and bought all new food; a $300 store total with much of that going into the refrigerator. Unfortunately, the unit began to lose its coolness once again and we phoned the repair shop. No one called back. Each time I called, the office person said, “He *still* hasn’t called you?? Let me give him a call and I’ll have him call you right back!” No one called back, even though she “promised” that somebody, if even just her, would. I told her we had a restocked fridge and we were losing our food! Still, no one would call back. My fiancé called the next morning and got the same routine. At 5:35 that night, two full days after I began calling them, the manager finally called me back. Morgan, the manager, proceeded to tell me that he thought he was doing a great job—he’d been working every night until 8:00 PM, he said, and here he was, returning my call! He asked me to describe what was happening with our fridge. He guessed at what he might be able to do to fix it. He was inconvenienced, he said, because our original repair guy, Jack, was on vacation and Jack was the one who lived close to their parts place in Tuckwila, bringing all the parts in to the shop for him. Without Jack to do that, poor Morgan was likely going to have to drive to Tuckwila to get our part. I had to essentially listen to him debate with himself about doing that while I thought about my food going bad in the interim. I asked him questions, trying to be absolutely clear as I wasn’t sure if I would ever be graced with phone contact with the man again, and he actually had the nerve to yell at me, “Why are you putting me through the grist mill??” Morgan finally decided upon coming out the next morning to look at our fridge first to see what part he would actually need before going out to Tuckwila. (True light bulb moment, Morgan!) He came out and decided he needed to order a couple of parts and didn’t know when they would get in. He advised my fiancé to “call in to the office and let them know how it was going”..??? Why? So we could add to our own inconvenience?? Calling their office did nothing but provide more of that. It’s been five days since Morgan was here and he has not contacted us to let us know anything. We’ve lost all of our food purchased after his repair man “fixed” our fridge. We’ve had no safe food to offer out-of-town guests. We’ve gone eighteen days without a refrigerator. We’ve decided to just buy a new fridge, but I’m waiting to find out how long it will take for anyone from Kendall Appliance to *ever* call us. If/when they do, I will be insisting on a refund of the money we have paid them. If they don’t call within another week, or if they call and refuse to refund our money, I’ll be filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. I looked them up on the BBB after the fact, unfortunately, and found they already have one open complaint against them. Kendall Appliance seems to be as big of a lemon as our five-year-old, $1500 Maytag refrigerator/freezer.
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