Whirlpool Customer Services - or lack of! (General Comments / Advice)

Member Name: Bernie Ross

Product:	General Comments / Advice
Date:	23/11/02 (963 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None.

Disadvantages: No-one there who knows the products

Extraordinary. I bought a rather expensive Whirlpool oven. It came with an instruction manual. This included descriptions of various functions which were described in a completely cryptic and contradictory manner. So I telephoned Whirlpool customer services. I asked what, the various functions did. For example, the "pastry function" was described as "static plus fan". Static was described as "no fan". What on earth?

The person read the instruction booklet to me.

I replied that I was an averagely intelligent human being who could read an instruction manual all by himself, and I wanted to know what was meant by "static plus fan".

"Oh, that's probably......." came the reply.

I explained that I was a very keen cook and I wanted to know what the oven DID. I could work out the "probably" and the "perhaps", and the person's opinion of what they thought it "probably" did was very welcome. However, I had telephoned the compnay to speak to someone who knew the product and find out exactly WHAT it did, not what someone with no knowledge of the oven thought that it PROBABLY did.

So I got transferred - the first of many transferrings.

I finally spoke to someone who admitted he had no idea of what the oven actually did in terms of the functions, such as pastry and the difference between turbo-grill and fan. He was also keen to offer me his suppositions and guesses. When I informed him that I wanted to know what the oven was actually doing, he told to me to stick a couple of meat pies into the oven and see how they turned out.

He told me I would have to do this as there was no-one at Whirlpool who knew what the various functions were.

If I wanted an explanation of what the functions were, he said that I would have to telephone the manufacturers in Italy. If I spoke Italian, that is.

Oh,
the Whirlpool delivery service is a whole other story. I'll do a review of that one when my gas hob finally arrives. It's only ten days late so far.

- Bernie

Summary: