Earlier this week I contacted Whirlpool Factory Service to report a defective door latch on my Whirlpool Cabrio Dryer, which was purchased on 8/30/07 so still under a 1 year factory warranty which covers labor and parts. They gave the job to A&E Factory Service for a service call today 5/24/08 between 8 and 12 Noon. At about 12:15 PM I get a call from the service tech telling me he was running a little late and asked me what the problem was. I explained to him that the latch was broken. He informed me that he didn't have this part on his truck. I told him the unit had two latches on it, with the additional on there in the event that you want to reverse the door. He came and removed the defective latch and moved the other latch to the side of the defective latch. He told me that he would order a replacement latch. I asked him to order 2 in the event that the latch broke again in the near future. He told me that the latches would cost $6.79 each plus the cost of the service call, $150.
At this point, I informed him that the dryer was under warranty. He told me the latch is cosmetic and not covered by the warranty. I informed him that without this latch the dryer doesn't work. It's what locks the door in place. It's not cosmetic but a functional part of the dryer. Anyway, the warranty doesn't say anything about defective cosmetic parts. He tells me all warranties say that now. Well first it's not cosmetic and secondly my warranty makes no such exception.
After telling him that I wasn't going to pay any service charge of $150 and had no money to pay that, he took off the $150 as being under warranty, then told me I owed $14.65 for the two parts ($13.58 for the two latches plus $1.07 sales tax. They charged me 7.875% sales tax; my town's sales tax rate is 7.375%. The neighboring city with which we share a zip code has the higher sales tax rate). I have no problem paying for one latch but to charge me for a part that went bad is a violation of the warranty. I asked him to bill me. He said that he needs to collect the money before he left my home. I paid via credit card. I was tempted to call the police to have him removed from my home.
Calls to A&E to resolve this issue have gone unanswered.
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