Eilene Zimmerman's Blog

Taking My Own Advice

Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the Sears Repairman

For Thanksgiving, I spent a lot of money. Well, not for Thanksgiving per se—as my cousin Sherri and her husband Bruce hosted dinner—but during that holiday weekend, the blackest of all black shopping weekends, my inner consumer got the best of me.

No, I didn’t sleep in my car outside Best Buy waiting to purchase –for some ridiculous sale price—a television or laptop or whatever. But I did have to go back to the AT&T store to take advantage of the ridiculously good offer they gave me on my daughter’s cell phone upgrade.

About 100 people were waiting in line at the mall while my son and I were at AT&T. It was 8 in the morning and these people were lined up waiting for some mysterious “Free Gift!” being given out by a woman dressed, vaguely, as an elf crossed with an angel. Employees from Jamba Juice were giving out teeny tiny smoothies to all the people waiting in line, as if they were runners in a marathon that needed to be shored up for the last leg of the race. Finally someone got the gift—it was a booklet of coupons—and within minutes the entire line dispersed. They may be sheep, those shoppers, but they aren’t stupid.

My son then pressed me to take him into WalMart—a store I’m just opposed to on so many levels it would be another blog post entirely—so that he could have “The Black Friday experience.” I said, “Do you know what that experience is? A lot of people shopping.” But he had hung in there for almost an hour as I signed up for U-verse, got my daughter her free upgraded phone and signed more documents than I signed when refinancing my house, so I felt I owed him. “Ten minutes,” I said. “Seriously. Ten minutes.” He raced intuitively to the electronics section and began comparison-shopping for PC laptops.

Then I started to get in the spirit. This must be what it’s like in church, for some people, who are so moved they start to sway and speak in fake languages. I actually considered waiting on line to buy a Coke in a bottle shaped like a round ornament—really, unbelievably cute—but then remembered: this is WalMart. So we left.

The next day, still feeling dirty from all the shopping, I actually—in a moment that should qualify as temporary insanity—decided to hit the outlets in San Ysidro, thinking: who is going to drive practically to Mexico, when Fashion Valley is right here? I’ll be alone! I’m embarrassed now, thinking how smug I felt. Who drives to the border? I thought. Everyone, that’s who.

It took me 30 minutes and an anxiety attack to find parking, and then I decided to hit three stores and just make it work—find gifts for everyone for the holidays in those three stores. This isn’t a particularly smart spending strategy. By the end of the day, I felt mostly disgusted with myself, like every other over-consumptive American, hyped-up-on-the-Black-Friday-to-Cyber-Monday buying mania, grabbing any gift that seemed reasonably priced just to get it over and done with.

We’ve got non-religious Hanukkah AND Christmas around here, and that’s a boatload of unnecessary spending, believe me. It was with relief that I realized, yes, the weekend was ending. I’d shopped and survived and all that was left was to live through my fifth visit from the good people at Sears on Monday.

My Bosch dishwasher has been on the fritz since August. I blogged about it a few months ago, about how I’ll never buy one again. Be warned, friends, a Bosch isn’t for the feint of heart. I’ve had the motherboard, heater, valves, hoses and god- knows-what-else replaced on that thing and still—STILL—it doesn’t heat the water. The “Quick Wash” cycle runs 199 minutes. A man named Stan from Bosch called me a couple of months ago saying Bosch was “very concerned about customer satisfaction” and wanted to make things right.

Since that time he has yet to return a phone call—and believe me, I’ve left messages. I faxed him all my service receipts, just like he asked me to do. I’ve been without a dishwasher for three months, I’ve spent 17 hours either waiting for or babysitting Sears repair people. The poor man that came a week ago worked on the Bosch for 3.5 hours—he was in a full sweat by the end of it, lying on the floor. And still, the machine doesn’t work.

Which is a long way of saying that tonight, as I sit here doing dishes by hand and realizing the sweater I got my daughter at the Banana Republic outlet probably won’t fit her, I’m tired of spending money. And tired of spending time spending money. That stupid dishwasher cost my ex and I nearly $800 five years ago. You would think that would buy me a modicum of customer service? Please. This is America! Ever try calling 1-800-4-MYHOME? It’s a call center somewhere in India where all these very nice people keep repeating lines from a script. I tried getting past that. Last week I was screaming into the phone: “Stop saying that! You don’t understand that I’m upset! Stop reading the script!” The woman who called herself “Stephanie”–honestly, Stephanie?–hung up on me.

Sears tried to charge me for their repair work today, saying it had been more than 90 days since the original service call, as if this was somehow my fault. I laughed at the repairman on the phone. “I’ll have to call my supervisor then,” he said, cautiously. Go head, call him! I yelled, a little crazily. “Better yet, give me his number!” I shouted. “I’d like to talk to him!” I’m mad as hell, as they say, and I’m not gonna take it anymore. Or at the very least, I’m not going shopping anymore, especially for large kitchen appliances.. I’ll be sitting here waiting for Sears to come and repair my dishwasher instead.

Posted by Eilene Zimmerman on Mon, Nov 29th, 2010
Last updated Mon, Nov 29th, 2010

Keywords

Bosch Bosch dishwasher Sears AT&T Black Friday Cyber Monday

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