Water Heater again!

[Malcom "Mal" Reynolds]

if you have a warranty, why are you paying anything at all?

[micky]

Not sure how this could help Julie, but you remind me...

My brother bought a brand new car that kept having a dead battery. It had a 2-year warrantee. The dealer replaced the alternator, the battery and the regulator, each of them twice. Still not fixed. Car won't start in the middle of NYC. A large part of the reason he gave the car to me when he was in Viet Nam.

I lived in Chicago. I took it to Sears for a new battery. They said, Do you want our free 1700 point mulit-check?. I said no. They said, It's free. I said okay. They found the problem in 10 minutes that the dealer couldn't find in 2 years.

The connection between the batteyr cable and the starter motor was dirty. Just take off the cable and clean the flat spots with a knife and put it back together again. It continued to be a problem if I left the headlights on and ran down the battery. I could get a jump, but at some random time later it wouldn't start. I learned I didn't have to take it aparat. I learned how to, even if good clothes, put my arm under the car and twist the cable 10 degrees, and the car would start again and be fine until the next time I ran the battery down.

Oh, when I moved to NYC a couple years later, the dealer was out of business.

[micky]

But the 8 years are not over, are they? So that's what matters.

And isn't it more Julie's responsibility to get reimbursed by Bradford, than it is the plumbers'? After all, she is the one with the warranty. The plumbers don't have a warranty. (The legal term is privity.) so the most it seems to me they could do is write a letter on their company's letterhead stationery**, saying the WH failed and, one hopes, decribing why and in what way it failed, what they did about it, and how much they charged. (If they don't know why, they can say they don't know), and they could write a letter asking for reimbursement to Julie which I would expect Julie to sign. The manufacture isn't going to pay them a second time, on the hopes that they'll remember to pay it back to Julie.

Not only that, the plumbers have been paid and it's human nature even for honest people not to give as much priority to getting the money back to pay back the customer than it is for the customer who is OUT the money to try to get it. If the plumbers wrote a letter to Bradford and it was ignored, will they notice? And that assumes they were reliable enough to write that first letter.

Plus it will confuse Bradford to get multiple letters from mulitple visits by mulitple plumbes. Julie is in a position to write a chronology that describes each step, each visit, probably briefly, and enclose originals (I think, while keeping copies) of all the bills and letters of explanation to date, with corresponding marks to make clear which bill and letter corresponds to each entry in the chronology, to make it as easy as possible for the Bradford employee to understand. . But see below at ^^^ before taking the trouble to write

What I would expect is that the plumbers and all who have worked on it will provide their respective letters to Julie, who will photocopy them and send the originals to Bradford along with her letter asking for reimbursement.

**If not on stationary, if it's detailed, it's probably good enough to have an explanation on the company's invoicel, if its preprinted and doesn't look like she printed it herself on the computer. That is there is a name and address and logo, better if it's not in black, or the paper is not white, whatever a real plumber who's not working out of his basement uses for a bill, and it says not just, "replaced pilot assembly" but "pilot stayed lit only one hour at a time, checked vent, checked honeycomb, checked pilot adjustment screw, checked thermocouple, no clear sign, replaced pilot assembly."****

I don't know how Bradford does it, but some manufacturers would have wanted Julie to call them first to get the name of an authorized Bradford repair company, or maybe a particular authorized repair company for warrantee work***

*** Isn't there a difference. Lots of places could be good enough to fix the WH (not that the places hired were) but getting warrantee work, if they are paid well enough, is some sort of reward. or if they're not paid so well, part of a contract where Bradford gets a wholesale price for the warrantee work. in return for that company getting many referrals over the years. Bradford won't want to pay full price to someone else if they have a place in town that gives them a discount off the market rate.

^^^In addition, if Julie has hired non-Bradford authorized repairmen, perhaps she has voided her warrantee. Merchandise warrantees are nowhere near as long as software terms of service, and people should read them when they get them or before they hire someone to work on something. Even if she has voided it, Bradford might be generous (on the valid theory that they likely didnt' make things worse) and charge little or nothing for their guy to come out (that is, partially or fully reimburse him.) and its worth calling them. Or looking in the warantee papers for instructions what to do, who to call in her area. .

****Regarding proving one's claim: When I was 32, I had my dislocating shoulder repaired. IIRC 4 nights in the hospital and 2 hours of surgery. (Now it would probably be 1 or 2 nights.) The hospital or I sent the bill to the insurance company, and I got a check for 10 or 20% of the cost. I called and asked nicely and based on their list of procedures and the approprieate reimbursement, which I think only had 3 items related to the shoulder, they paid me the hospital rate for putting the shoulder bones back in place, something I could do myself in 2 minutes. I said it was full surgery, much more complicated and she said to send a "medical report" or "doctor's report".

So I called the doctor's office and got the "medical report" that he didn't plan to send me, but he needed to give to the hospital he worked at, I think, or at least keep for his own records. It was at least 3 pages single spaced. I sent the insurance company a copy and a letter saying the procedure was more like 'open reduction" (if a dislocated shoulder is allowed to stay dislocated for a week or a month, it can be impossible to get it back in without surgery) , and they sent me a check for the entire bill, except maybe the telephone.

There is a protocol for getting reimbursed or paid and one must follow it.

****The medical report was also interesting because I asked him in advance what he planned to do to me, something books said you should ask. He said "Don't know. Have to open you up and see what the problem is." Then I asked afterwards and he didn't answer, so I said, "Really. My friends want to know what you did. " He said, "Just tell them I fixed you up and I did a good job" Calling the office for a copy of the medical report, and blaming it on the insurance even if that weren't an issue, was a lot easier than arguing with him. And much more detailed than his explanation would have been even if he were happy to tell me.

Anyhow, it's 35 years later and my shoulder hasn't dislocated since. I can't sleep on my belly with my arm over my head, and I've gotten a twinge maybe 6 times in those years, but that's all.

[micky]

well the falling asleep is understandable and I know of no alarm that rings when the hot water arrives, but it wouldn't happen if she didn't let it run for 10-20 minutes.

She should turn the hot water on and stand there until it arrives. She can brush her teeth while she's waitng. Then there will be no sleeping.

[micky]

I have 2.5 baths, none with windows, so 3 fans. I can't stand the noise, and I spend most of my time in the bathroom not taking a bath or shower, but brushing my teeth, washing my hands or using the toilet. So soon after I got the house I just unplugged one fan and put switches in for the other two. Even in the apartment my mother rented, I put in chain switches with a chain and a string dangling down. She couldn't stand the noise I left the switches when she moved out, and the management didn't complain.

[micky]

But it makes babies so soft.

[micky]

I like baths because I relax in them, daydream or watch tv. They take at least 30 minutes, and probably at most 30 minutes. That seems to be when I want to get out. I have a Powermid setup so I can use the remote to change channels or watch recorded shows in the bath, and I have a volume control hardwired** in the wall next to the tub. It controls a 10" woofer/ 6" tweeter? that I removed from a 1930's record player and put on a board in the corner of the ceiling. The speakers are about 84 years old now and going strong. The bathroom also has good acoustics.

**Don't warn me about electric shock. I make sure my hand is dry, and there is a plastic knob that is 3/4" that is also dry, and the knob surrounds a metal shaft which is insulated from the actual current, and the voltage of the sound current is low.

And I've been doing this for 30 years here and 10 years in Brooklyn, and I've never felt even a tingle.

Once in a while I listen to the radio, but I can't adjust the volume and I need to when the water is running versus when it's not. I use an old sock to muffle the sound of running water, but it doesn't work 100%. Maybe I'll find a better sock.

[micky]

I grew up with baths because the linoleum that covered the wall around the bathtub was lifting up at one seam and maybe one or two corners, and the plaster underneath would get washed into the tub, and after my father died, we didn't have the money fix it.

Well that's what my mother said and I'm sure it's true, but the other big reason was probably that my mother took baths and saw no reason even to get a shower curtain. And probably my father took baths, or he would have fixed the bathtub walls while he was taking showers before he died.

He'd been in the army, in WWI, along with 3 of my uncles, so I guess he took showers there, but he must have stopped afterwards.

As to the money to heat the water, or the cost of the water, either my mother didn't think about it, or it really wasn't significant in the

50's. Probably a gas water heater.

My grandfather came from eastern Europe with nothing, but eventually owned a small hardware store. I guess they had a nice house for their generation, on a nice street, but I was 10 and too young to notice details, so I don't know how willing they were to spend more money than necessary.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Some of the older vent fans are like standing on the airport runway. Little air moved but lots of noise. I don't know about other brands, but Panasonic are very quiet. That was my main reason for choosing them.

[BenDarrenBach]

On Saturday, September 6, 2014 4:10:28 PM UTC-5, micky wrote: No offense micky...you need to get your own blog...and get to the point quicker. I feel I can tell you this because I am a senior like yourself...and we tend to bore people if we get too long winded. To summarize: get a blog; get to the point quickly. Then you can get back to analyzing drain valves and flood frequencies. ;^)

[trader_4]

Bath fans are a classic example of stupidity. Every builder here in NJ that I've seen building $750K - $1mil homes puts the cheapest, noisiest crap fans in. They cost about $35. For $75 or so, you can get a decent one that is quiet. And unlike a light fixture, where if you don't like it, it's easy to change, every bath fan I've seen, to replace it, you have to tear the ceiling open. If I were the builder, I'd spend the extra few bucks and point it out when showing the home, making it a feature.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Pay no attention to the shoddy products behind the drywall, just look at those fancy granite counter-tops.

[Malcom "Mal" Reynolds]

Julie has a history, especially in the rec.food.cooking ng of announcing problems that could easily be resolved by asking the store what it was going to do, but not doing so because in her experience they never do anything. I think it's highly amusing that she has gone thru all of this mess an not thought to contact the manufacturer directly for help...not to mention how much she'll end up spending and if it ever gets resolved, she won't even know what the problem was in the first place

After all, she is the one with the warranty.

[micky]

You're right. I read here about quiet Panasonic fans, maybe from you.

Ugh. Until this sentence, I was going to send your post to a friend who just bought a fancy, almost new house.

Good idea.

And they don't make any noise at all.

[micky]

I don't mind your post, but I don't want to get a blog. Then I'd have to get readers for it. Regular readers here may know my sometimes-style, and everyone can see where the post is going after they've read a few lines.

[BenDarrenBach]

...excellent! TY

[Julie Bove]

Yes. I try if possible to have us take back to back showers so the water is already hot. Otherwise, I only let it run long enough to get hot. This time of year it doesn't really matter to me. It's so hot in that bathroom the way it is, the last thing I want is a hot shower!

[Julie Bove]

I had a similar problem with a 1970 Ford Maverick. Made the mistakes of putting in alternators, voltage regulators and batteries, repeatedly. I didn't do this but K Mart. I was taking it back and forth between the store where I worked and the one closer to where I lived. Long story short, at some point they did not ground one of the wires to the voltage regulator. So the mechanic surmised that each time they put a new one in, they did the same thing. Car would work for a while then the loose wire would come in contact with something and problem all over again.

[Julie Bove]

Well, I could not find it so that's not possible. No digital cam. I have one on my phone but each time I try to send myself a pic vial email, it knocks my email out so not gonna do that.

It is working now. No faults. If this happens again, I will try to find the number.

I have photobucket but... I can't seem to send pics to myself. Not sure why. If the problems continue, I will try what you said but I have had more calls to Frontier than I care to remember in the past week and I don't want to take the chance of screwing up my email again. Thanks~!

[clare]

That's what happens when you take your car to KMART for repairs. That's like going to Starbucks to get a leaky roof fixed!!!