On june 30 i purchased a very nice refridgerator from sears roebuck along with an installment agreement ($94.99) for sears to hook up the water line with a copper water line. Our current unit did not have an ice maker.
Sears uses contractors for all installations and they sent j &j installation to perform the work.
The installer, rick, decided it was, in his opinion, to difficult to install a copper line even though the warning on the back of refridgerator clearly states that ONLY a copper line can be used. He decided to just use an old plastic line and push the fridge back in place.
For a short period everything seemed fine, until about two weeks later we noticed a small amount of water at the base of the unit. Thinking someone had gotten careless with the powerful icemaker and dropped a cube on the floor leaving it to melt we reminded our sons to pick up any wayward icecubes off the floor.
The next day a noticeably larger puddle was creeping from under the unit. We laid a small towel underneath, scolded the boys again and leaving our 26 year old son behind, left for vacation. Two days later july 28, our son contacted us and informed us we had to come home because there was a flood in our basement and water was in our living room and entire kitchen where we unfortunatly have hardwood flooring.
Aside from losing almost everything in our basement including the drywall, ceiling, tile floor and the contents of the room including an antique dining room set, furniture, big screen t. V etc., we also had to have our hardwood floors sanded and refinished new carpeting paint baseboards and all the living room furniture cleaned.
Even though sears finally sent an adjustor out to look at the cause of the flood (3 days later) and they confirmed what our insurance company, allstate, told us, that the refridgerator was improperly installed with an existing plastic line that ultimately split, they blamed their contactor who denied responsiblity and blamed sears and sears refused to do anything! So then we not only had an extremely damaged home but a fridge with an ice/water maker that wouldn't work and the worse part is that sears refused to sent out another contractor because j&j installed it and they wouldn't come back out here again.
They did however, offer to reimburse us once we hired a plumber to properly install the right hardware.
I called the salesperson, the manager, the store manager and the 800# and here it is november 26 and we still do not have the ice maker working!
We have always bought our major appliances from sears without a problem but after his fiasco that most likely will not be the case again. The damage totalled over $20,000.00.
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