Sears Extended Warranty story

[Julie]

I have an extended warranty for my dishwasher from Sears.

The Bosch dishwasher worked great for the first year. After then, the dishwasher left particles on the dishes and on the interior walls of the dishwasher. The dishes weren't coming out too clean either and they had to be hand washed after they came out of the dishwasher.

I called Sears. A tech came out and they told me the dishwasher was working fine. I showed them some example dirty dishes and he told me I was adding too much soap. Another tech told me I needed to alternate between power soap and gel.

I greatly cut back on the soap but the dishes still came out dirty. I started washing the dishes by hand before putting them in the dishwasher. The dishes were coming out dirtier than when they went in.

After about a half dozen service calls and one technician who seemed to enjoy screaming at me I called up Sears and canceled the extended warranty of the dishwasher. While I was at it, I canceled 5 other extended warranties.

I searched for some answers on the Internet. I know the water is really hard here (I only drink bottled water) so I used CLR and ran it through the dishwasher and let it soak overnight.

Dishes still didn't come out clean. I took the dishwasher outlet hose off of the garbage disposal and ran the hose into a bucket at ground level to make sure that the water was being properly evacuated. Water was coming out forcefully.

I ran the dishwasher again with two bottles of CLR. I first scooped out the water from the dishwasher so that the CLR was barely diluted. I ran the dishwasher for awhile then paused it and let the CLR soak overnight. I drained and rinsed several times. Then I ran the dishwasher with a few cups of vinegar.

Dishes are now coming out spotlessly and I got back a few hundred dollars from Sears and won't pay a small fortune when I would have had to renew in a few months. And I won't have to deal with the screaming technician anymore.

Sears Extended Warranties used to be very good but since they've been bought out by K-Mart the service is now awful.

[hallerb]

Sears service SUCKS!

Its WAY overpriced too.

My bosch does the dirty dish thing occsionally.

Make CERTAIN the spray arms are spraying well, check both filters the top one tends to clog:(

The arms get debris in them too.

clogged system should of been easy for techs.

Although they are under GREAT pressure to do X number of clls per day, like 13, so they dont have much time and that ends up requiring multiple calls

[Julie]

I took off both spray arms and checked them out. They were clear of any particles. I opened the dishwasher while it was running and the water came shooting out of the dishwasher so I'm pretty confident that the water pressure is strong. I could also see the arms coming to a stop.

This Bosch dishwasher model doesn't have a top filter. I cleaned the filters and unscrewed some parts below the filter to ensure that there wasn't anything that might be clogging.

As far as I can tell, the only problem that I had was dissolved solids accumulating somewhere in the dishwasher. I put some CLR in the toilet tank that was disgustingly grungy and let it soak overnight. The next day the water tank was totally white.

Why Sears service didn't tell me about the hard water problem to begin with is a mystery to me. I've only lived here for two years and I've never had to deal with hard water before. I now use only distilled water in the coffee maker.

[tom]

Most of the time one comes out ahead by taking the $ that would have gone to extended warrantees and banking it to be used to pay for repairs in the event of a break down. Most appliances break down under the original factory warranty if they're going to.

[Roger Shoaf]

I've only lived here for two years and I've

Distilled water is not to good for making coffee. If your water tastes good, then go ahead and drink it. If you boil your water you can precipitate out a big chunk of the hardness before making coffee.

Distilled water kind of acts like a sponge when making coffee and soaks up a lot of the stuff better left in the grounds.

If you find the taste of your water not to your liking bottled water is OK, but you will probably find that distilled water is probably better for your steam iron or your car battery.

[hallerb]

Bosch dishwashers are GREAT but the least reliable:( both by consumer reports and my experience.

parts are expensive modules,, however they are the quietest machine I have EVER seen, you can barely hear ours running.

I used to fall asleep to the old machine dreaming I was at the beach, the waves coming in

[Joseph Meehan]

I am sorry I can't offer you any help with the dishwasher, but I do suggest that you "Just Say No" to anyone who wants to sell you an extended warranty. They are very poor investments.

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, Living in a hard water area and no softener?

[trainfan1]

Well, this wasn't really an item that should be covered under Extended Warranty. It's regular maintenance, like an oil change or a car wash & detailing... you don't expect Toyota, BMW, or Honda to pick up those expenses.

You are responsible for the cleaning of the machine and the softness of the water supply, not them.

You were right to cancel your Extended Warranties. They are generally expensive for what you get.

Rob

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Idiots. A good reason not to shop at Sears.

Put the warranty money in a bank account and you will come out way ahead.

[Art]

Another common problem on Bosch it it goes dead. Check the connection between the house ac and dishwasher. Wire nuts often get burndt for no apparent reason. Replace and you are back in business.

[Art]

Actually Sears overprice extended warranties cover routine maintence.

[Dan Espen]

The problem you describe was a problem with Sears service, not the warranty.

They make cleaners for dishwashers, I don't know if they are any better than CLR.

In my opinion, no warranty is ever worth the money. That warranty is nothing more than insurance. Would you insure a pair of gloves?

The purpose of insurance is to protect you from losses you can't afford. You couldn't afford to replace your house if it burns down so in that case you buy insurance. You can afford to replace the dishwasher so getting insurance is on it is a losing proposition.

[larry moe 'n curly]

Whenever a tech does something like that, it always means they're incompetent and wrong. I live where the water is very hard, and we have no softener (corrodes water heaters), but our approx. 10-year-old Kenmore/Whirlpool dishwasher never exhibited the problem you experienced.

and are two really good appliance websites with Q&A forums.

It didn't start with Kmart because long before the merger, the CBS news magazine 48 Hours (back in the days when they were still doing stories that didn't involve murder) aired an episode about customer service that showed the problems one family had with their all-Sears kitchen and the extended warranties covering everything. Sears had made repeated service calls over several months without fixing anything, but after Sears was contacted by the program, suddenly repairs were made, appliances were replaced, and several hundred dollars was refunded.

My father has hated Sears service for decades, and when I was young I remember him fixing a fairly new Sears brand TV after it came back from their Phoenix service center unrepaired (the TV still works!) for the second or third time. So when I bought a new Kenmore washer a year ago and it had a chipped tub, I immediately exchanged it rather than risk repair.

[trainfan1]

That's a service contract, not an extended warranty, then. Sears should have treated the condition, then, or advised the owner how to address it.

They still would not have control over the water quality, except to sell them a water softener.

Rob

[clifto]

We switched to distilled for coffee and general water drinking a few years ago. Within a few weeks, I had more cavities than I'd had in the past ten years. Now we use Brita filters and descale the coffeepot regularly.

[Gary Slusser]

Softened water does not cause corrosion of water heaters nor create an environment for corrosion.

Softened water extends the life of all types of water heaters; oil, gas, electric tank type or tankless or domestic coil.

Hardness scale formation in a water heater increases the cost of operation by using more fuel/electric to heat the scale before water can be heated, it increases the time it takes to heat water and prevents the heater from raising the temp as high as it would normally so you use more warmish water. The scale build up then causes the tank to fail and possibly expensive water damage but at least premature water heater failure.

In the mean time all the things you launder or wash in hard water wears out sooner (including your skin) while you use more detergents, cleansers, shampoo and 'soaps' whle causing more cleaning of surfaces the water evaporates on and hard water makes cleaning everything more difficult and more frequent.

There are many hidden costs to living with water hardness of over 3-4 gpg (grains per gallon).

Gary Quality Water Associates

[mm]

I can see a lack of taste, but why cavities?

My friend only drinks distilled water. When he visits, that's his only request. Should I ask him if there are side effects?

[clifto]

I'm guessing lack of fluoride. Returning to tap water stopped the sudden onset of cavities, in any event. I do note that a few places sell a few brands that offer fluoridated drinking water in bottles.