Whirlpool range rant

On Fri, 25 Jun 2021 08:52:23 -0400, Frank posted for all of us to digest...

Sorry Frank, I feel your frustration. But the service guy appears to be a shotgunner or parts cannon type, where they replace parts until the problem is solved. Diagnoses is the key. Find the problem and repair it. Not replace the control panel and whoops, let's try this next...

I am taking a SWAG here; could there be a loose wire or connection in there from a previous repair? One bumps against the oven or causes some kind of movement like opening/closing the oven door. That is what can cause this type of intermittent problem. Sorta feel sad about writing this because you are in the same situation I am. You ain't ripping things apart-it's not your field of expertise... Maybe call an independent guy. The dealer would not get anymore of my business, especially the 'service' dept.

Tally ho,

On Fri, 25 Jun 2021 07:08:44 -0700 (PDT), bruce bowser posted for all of us to digest...

What good would this do?

Trades are seldom actually worth much to the dealer unless it is pretty enough that he can put it on his lot. If you are trading a junker, you are usually better off trying to sell it yourself, even if it is to a scrap dealer. I will only trade something I am not in good conscience selling myself. I have had a couple of those tho. The Chevy dealer called me up and cussed at me about an 88 Pontiac SSE that was a death trap. I did remind him I told him but he wasn't paying attention. The other one was my Chrysler LeBaron that was burning a quart of oil every couple hundred miles but it ran well, wasn't smoking and wasn't bleeding from the belly. It was rough enough that I imagine it was scrapped.

...snip...

A bit of apples and oranges here, but I wonder how much profit the dealer made when he sold a car to my daughter.

I have always sold my vehicles outright, but it made sense for my daughter to trade hers in, almost regardless of what she got for it. Based on year, model and mileage, it's on-line trade-in appraisal was around $2200 - if it was in average condition. It looked OK, but we knew it needed at least $1800 worth of work, at least half of that just to get it to pass inspection.

We're too honest to sell it outright to an unsuspecting buyer and she/we didn't want to try and find someone willing to DIY it back into shape.

The dealer offered her $1700. No test drive, I'm not even sure the guy started it. I don't think he was gone long enough to have a mechanic even pop the hood. $1700? Fine. It's all yours. Good luck.

Key point before I continue: She was buying Certified Pre-Owned Honda with less than 10K on it. She was entitled to the remainder of the standard bumper to bumper warranty (3Y/36K) plus an additional 1Y/12K bumper to bumper plus a 7Y/100K warranty on the power train. I know Honda's and the no-haggle price was right where it should have been. It was actually a pretty good deal, considering it was a CPO.

She also lives 3 hours from us and needed to get home for an appointment on the day that the car was promised to her.

Well, they didn't have the car ready on the day it was supposed to be ready because it needed something minor in order to be certified as CPO. She had to cancel her appointment at the last minute. Not happy.

So we go back the next day and wait an hour past our appointment time while they get the paperwork ready. Not happy.

Then they tell us that Honda has a policy that they have to wait a full 24 hours after any CPO certification related repair before they can certify the car. That won't be until after the sales floor closes. "Can you come back tomorrow?" Not happy.

"No I can't. I was to supposed to back at work yesterday and you already missed your promised delivery date. You also just wasted an hour of my time. I want my car today."

The manager says "OK, we can let you have the car today, but without the CPO warranty. Instead, we (i.e. this dealership) will write our own warranty, with the exact same terms as the CPO warranty. How's that sound?" My daughter says (gotta love her!)

"The CPO warranty comes from Honda Corporate, right?"

"Yes"

"I can take my car to any Honda dealer in the US and they will honor the CPO warranty, no questions asked, just based on the VIN number, right?"

"Yes"

"Will I be able to take this car into any Honda dealer in the US and tell them that I have CPO-like warranty through your dealership and expect them to honor it, no questions asked, just like a real CPO warranty?"

"Well...umm...not exactly, but..."

"Stop. Don't bother. I want the car today and I want the Honda backed CPO warranty or I'm walking. I need to get back home - tonight."

"OK...let me see what I can do."

He comes back in a few minutes and says "Here's what we are going to do. We are going to have you sign all the paperwork for the car and the CPO warranty, dated with tomorrow's date. We're going to put dealer plates on the car and give you your own plates to take home. Tomorrow, swap the plates and send ours back in this Fed-Ex envelope. We are loaning you the car for the night and you are actually buying it tomorrow. The CPO warranty will begin then."

"OK, that'll work."

Off he goes, comes back a few minutes later with a stack of paperwork and puts it in front of my daughter. My daughter looks at the paperwork, looks at the manager and says "This paperwork is not for the car that I am buying." Jaws drop.

The manager picks up the paperwork, realizes that someone screwed up the stock number and put all of my daughter's info on paperwork for the wrong car.

I look at my daughter, she looks at me and says "Wanna get out of here? I'll keep the Civic."

The manager, totally flustered and turning beet red, says "Wait - I really apologize. None of this should have happened. Not the delays, not the warranty issues, not the paperwork problems. How can we make this right?"

My daughter looks straight at the manager and says "Give me another $2000 for the Civic." Even I'm shocked at that ask! Proud, but shocked. ;-)

The manager pauses, thinks for a second and says "I can't do $2000, but I can do $1000 and I will personally get the paperwork ready and make sure that it is correct."

My daughter says "OK. Last chance, but I want the keys to the Civic first so that I can walk immediately if anything else goes wrong." At this point I am trying so hard not to laugh.

He brought her the keys to her Civic, left to put the paperwork together and a short time later she drove away with her "loaner".

She ended up getting $2700 for a Civic worth maybe half that. That definitely made the new car a good deal.

Maybe, but I needed transportation to the dealer so I drove my wife's 15 year old there and took the $200 trade. Less than a 1/4 tank of gas too.

Would have been a good first car for a teenager but would not pass inspection even though it ran good.

The last time I did that they told me the price was a grand more if I didn't finance. When I got up to walk out they told me how to finance it, pay it off and they still got paid so I did. I only financed the minimum, ten grand I think. With Ford credit, the deal was you had to keep the contract for 90 days minimum but they didn't say how much you could pay on it so the first month I gave them half, the second month I gave them 2/3ds of the balance and in the 3d month I paid it off. I still ended up paying a couple hundred in interest but it was $800 off when it was over. If I didn't do that they were going to let me walk. I don't know what their kickback was.

Look for the burn marks. 50a breakers do not trip without some serious current going somewhere. The first thing I would do is hang a current probe on there and turn the oven on. (The cooktop seems OK) It should pull about 25a. give or take based on my GE convection. Then bang on it, open and close the door etc and see what happens. If he can use all 4 burners and the oven it seems to eliminate an overload from a low resistance element. I am betting on a short to ground, hence the burn marks. Usually if you take the back off, you can see all the wiring. The elements connect in back.

Wife talked to Whirlpool this afternoon and they said we had to pay for a second opinion before they would decide to go to resolution. No idea what resolution might be. We are not throwing good money after bad and, we're just going to write the whole thing off, take our time and get a new range eventually.

I'd send Whirlpool a photo of the

big and detailed " For Free " advert

that will be posted on -

: all the online classified sites : all the facebook buy & sell sites : craigslist

etc etc

Then do it.

John T.

Damn, she's tough! Good girl.

Damn, that sucks. In the end it may be best though. Maybe even cheapest.

Here you go:

Dear Whirlpool,

In my opinion, Frank's range cannot be fixed.

Sincerely, Mr. Second

(Since you have to pay for this opinion, please donate whatever you think is reasonable to your favorite charity.)

I took an Uber to the dealer in Pompano to pick up the second car we bought. The dealer gave me half of the fare.

On Fri, 25 Jun 2021 18:29:30 -0400, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com posted for all of us to digest...

You mean the s*it stains?

On Fri, 25 Jun 2021 18:49:28 -0400, Frank posted for all of us to digest...

I understand your position. I don't know if I would have lasted this long.

Resolution is probably like arbitration; weighted against you. My belief, from afar, is the dealer service is incompetent. Done dredging up bad emotions.

On Fri, 25 Jun 2021 17:15:09 -0400, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com posted for all of us to digest...

I look at it as the dealers are the experts in their field and should know the faults and strong points of what they are selling. If something they sell you is a turd they will not even bother to look back. They try to polish the turd but... They will take every advantage they can with no regrets. The service dept is saddled with trying to mollify a victim. Even with new cars the manufacturers don't give the same time or money to fix a problem the shop gets from non-warranty repairs. The system is set up to screw the consumer. That's why lemon laws were created.

Turnabout is fair game on dealers. Private sales are sketchy especially with the curbstoners.

Buyers need to educate themselves, there is plenty of information on the web. BUT most buyers don't. This is an expensive purchase why do people cheat themselves? Life is too busy?

We traded a car in that a tree had fallen on. It was repaired properly. We had purchased a later year of the same vehicle and had a buy back under the lemon law. We just wanted a different car because we foresaw the same problems we had with the other one. We went to another make and negotiated. The appraiser didn't even want to drive it because it was perfect. We couldn't meet on price, we wanted 1k more for the trade. Then the sales guy comes out and says "what did you do - roll it over? It's been repaired on 5 surfaces". I told him a tree fell on it and he couldn't tell it and any problems would be fixed under the manufacturers remaining warranty period. He wouldn't budge on price so we walked. It was near the end of the month. We were in no hurry. The last day of the month he calls and meets my price. We agree & buy & are happy.

I could go on but you catch the drift. Dealers do it EVERY day and you do occasionally. They are out to maximize profits.

I don't like the idea of paying for things whether I get them or not.