Buyer Beware of GE Appliances and Home Depot

I have a houseful! Pets and kids create laundry- it is fact of life-as dependable as death and taxes.  As such I do a lot of laundry- somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 loads a week.

In January 2013 we purchased a new GE Adora washer- of course we purchased the extended warranty, that one is a gimme. It was great...at first.

Now that we have had it for nearly 2 years it has been broken 4 times... not just little things... but the drum, the motor (2x), the belt, the control panel.

Getting it fixed has always been a hassle.  Navigating through the automated phone thing at Home Depot is one mess- usually taking at least 10 minutes to reach a person- who is apathetic.

This particular repair takes the cake in terms of awfulness.

On December 12, 2014 I called to schedule a repair as the washer was not working. The scheduled me for a few days later. No problem.

When the day for the repair came- the tech did not come during the allotted window.  I called the company and they said they had cancelled the appointment as we were out of the service area (Note: there was no contact to say it was being cancelled).

After calling Home Depot again, and routing through their automated service again, I got rescheduled for another day.

Approximately 30 minutes before the tech was going to arrive I received a call saying they were on the way, and to please make sure any dogs were out of the way.  As requested, I put our dogs outside and came back in.  Looking out the window I saw the truck pulling out of our drive and driving away.  I ran outside to try and flag him down, either the tech did not care or did not notice me.  I did find a tag on the door, not filled out saying "Sorry we missed you".  My 5 year old said that no one rang the doorbell. (WTF?!) Note: I was outside a total of 2 minutes or less.

I called the 800 number on the tag- it took a good 5 minutes to reach a human- the person who answered was going to call dispatch and transfer me- after 10 minutes on hold the call was dropped. Immediately, I called back. After getting through to a person, the person essentially told me "Suck it up buttercup".

We were again rescheduled for the following day  (12/19/2014)- with a window between 3 and 4 pm when they would not come, because I had to pick up children.  Guess what time the tech showed up? 3:02. I was here and the tech diagnosed the problem as basically everything. He would need to order parts and we were scheduled for the repair to be completed on 12/30/2014.

On 12/29/2014 we received a call again pushing the repair date back until 1/5/2015. The parts had not been delivered yet and they needed two technicians for the repair.  Calling again to try and straighten this out because we were now looking at nearly a month with no washer we were again met with stark helpfulness and apathetic customer service-- the message was "too bad so sad".

We have continued to try and work with the GE Response team, and they have been terribly unhelpful.

Meanwhile- I received a notice from a collection agency regarding the repair from October- it was supposed to be covered by the warranty, so now I have to jump through hoops to try and figure that out.

They make errors and the onus is on me to fix it. I already have 5 children, I don't need to babysit a company as well.

I am completely appalled by the quality of the machine and the quality of the service.

Dealing with a month of laundry with 5 kids and no washer is both expensive, time consuming, and awful.  I have spent over $100 on laundry in the nearly month without a washer.

I am at a loss as to how to proceed, how to get someone to care, how to get someone to make it right!

So far I will be filing a complaint with the better business bureau but beyond that I don't know what to do. Of course, I will never buy a GE appliance again.  Nor will I be using Home Depot.