Friday, July 13, 2007

Is the Maytag Repair Man trying to round up business?

First the television, and now the dishwasher! Ach!

I get a lot of junk mail and much of it gets thrown into the trash. Yesterday there was one from Maytag/Jenn-Air; the outside of the envelope said "IMPORTANT SAFETY NOTICE." Since I have a Maytag dishwasher I decided it might be prudent to just have a look inside this particular one.

As instructed in the letter I called the 800 # and after a considerable amount of time, one hang-up and a lot of talking to a computer, I was able to find that my Maytag model could catch fire and has done so in 135 reported cases. I was to unplug the thing and cease using it immediately!

My dishwasher is defective! I am devastated. Like the dilapidated X-television set, the dishwasher is quite old. It doesn't do as good a job as it used to do (better than I would do on my own however) and is beginning to look a bit worn...it may be 10 years old but I am not certain.

There are two things I do not like to do around the house...#1 is dust and #2 is wash dishes!

The offer: I was to choose between 2 options. I could either have a Maytag Repair Man come to my house and repair the defective unit, or I could get a $75 credit toward another Maytag/Jenn-Air dishwasher. Those are not very good choices! My dishwasher is OLD - it is on it's very last leg - and even though I know the Maytag Repair Man is desperately looking for work (I even saw him on a TV commercial repairing a copier), I hate having repair men come into my house.

And, I have used that dishwasher for years without burning the house down, so does it really need repaired? On the other hand, I don't want to spend $469 on a new one (even with the $75 credit they are offering, that is a LOT of money!) Wonder if I could handle not having a dishwasher?

There was a time when the kiddos were little that the dishwasher crashed - 'crash' is a word used a lot in our racing family; a simple fact of life, not pleasant, but still a fact. At the time Roger was racing and we had a separate 'racing account' at the bank. I replaced that dishwasher with racing funds! Back then not having a dishwasher was not on my list of options.

But, that was then...and this is now - the kids are gone, we occasionally use paper products, I rarely put any pots or pans in the dishwasher anyway. Do I really need that dishwasher? I suppose I will continue to use my old, dilapidated dishwasher until my Cascade runs out and then see how long it takes me to get tired of washing dishes by hand. Can I make it 2 weeks? 6 months...how about a year? Anyone care to place bets?

Afterthought: How many paper plates can I buy for $400 anyway?

1 comment:

Just Jonna said...

my dishwasher died about 2 years ago, and we've been handwashing ever since. sadly, the dishes get done at about the same frequency. With only 3 of us here, we had to wait on the dishwasher to get full before running it. Then, when it was full of clean dishes we'd just use them out of the washer instead of putting them away, and all the dirty dishes piled up on the counter anyway. lol