The background story:  Two years ago we purchased a new washer & dryer to the tune of about $1,500 and at the time of purchase I was skeptical about the “benefits” of the “new” and “improved” models but this one purported to offer generous energy savings and life long span.  Our previous washer & dryer lasted for about 14 years before they needed to be replaced so I was hoping I wouldn’t rebuy until 2022.

Flash Forward To August 2009:   The dryer had been having sporadic problems for a few months; the key problem was that the dryer would only occasionally dry.  There was no real rhyme or reason as to when it would work or when it would not.   Finally, we decided we would call for repair and then the story began….

I look at the original paperwork and come to find out that the washer and dryer only have a one year warranty.   Fortunately, I purchased the items with American Express which doubles the warranty but that too didn’t help because I was exactly one month too late to claim the extended warranty.    I contact LG and they recommend a local service rep.

Local service rep comes out and attempts to diagnose the problem.   I must point out that I had already googled the symptoms of my drier problem and the most likely cause was a faulty valve.    The repair “technician” comes out and makes a diagnosis that my drier needs a new motherboard.  Motherboard?  My drier has a computer in it?   Guy leaves, orders motherboard and a few weeks later comes back with new motherboard.    Guy plugs in motherboard, turns on drier and says “Presto!”

Well it was “presto” for about 5 minutes because right after he left, the drier stopped working again and the motherboard evidently didn’t do a damn thing to fix the problem.   He comes back again and does another diagnosis and this time determines it might be the thermostat so he replaced that thing (note: he brought an extra thermostat) and “presto” it’s working right?   Well only for about five minutes so the guy calls LG to get some help and they determine the real problem is…………you guessed it….A FREAKING FAULTY VALVE!     A valve that costs about $10 no less!

So Mr. Technician leaves because he has to order the part comes back with the valve for the THIRD time and finally fixes the drier.   So far, we’ve invested 3 days off of work, $300 for a motherboard (and labor) that wasn’t needed an an additional $50 in other parts for a grand total of $350 for the dryer repair which is about half of what the new one cost.

I then proceed to ask Mr. Technician why the grand screw up and he blames the manufacturer claiming that they change the engineering on the equipment almost yearly and technicians can’t keep up with the changes and training.   If this is true then I can understand his dilemma, a small business owner can’t spend money retraining their employees every time an engineer rewires or redesigns the equipment and these guys maintain many manufacturers not just a single manufacturer.

So I then ask the tech if he’s taking the motherboard back and he says he can’t because it is now “used” since it was plugged into the drier then removed and replaced with the original one.  So I consider my options:

Sue the small company for gross incompetence and making me order a piece of equipment I didn’t need.  This will cost me more time and money and even if I win (which I’m pretty sure I would), I would likely end up spending more money and time than I could spare at the moment.

Let it go and never hire these guys again.  Well that’s a consideration but there were only 3 repair people to choose from to start with so if I alienate this guy, I’ll be left with only two other clueless technicians and besides, I felt sorry for the guy because he was genuinely pissed off at LG too.

The third and final option is to NEVER ever buy another LG product for as long as I live.   The way I see it, this will fix multiple levels of problems:  If LG goes out of business then technicians will no longer need to train on LG products; if technicians aren’t trained in LG products they can focus on the better products or in the best case scenario, the repair company goes out of business because some manufacturer out there will make a really great drier that won’t ever break down (like the one we had that lasted 14 years -it was a GE drier).

And in carefully considering my options I opted for the third and decided to extend it to ALL LG products because burn me once, shame on you, burn me twice, shame on me.    Good bye LG, I will never do business with you again.