Kitchen Aid Dishwasher/ A&E Factory Service

I purchased a top of the line Kitchen Aid Dishwasher in 2002 that started making a lot of noise all of the sudden when doing dishes. We called the Kitchen Aid customer service number and they referred us electronically to the A&E Factory repair service in our area in Northern Virginia. A&E Factory’s earliest service date was two weeks out. But we patiently waited for them to come.

The day before they were scheduled to service the appliance they called to confirm the appointment. Annoyingly they had a 4 hour time window... but no matter. We had arranged for my Mother in law, to visit and be at our home no matter when they showed up. A couple of hours before their appointment they called to verify the appointment again and spoke with my son, age 14. They asked his age (he probably sounded young) and he told them he was fourteen. They told him that we would have to reschedule the appointment because he was under-age. My son had no clue to tell him his 70 year old grandma was ALSO at the house... specifically to be there to accommodate them.

I spent 4 days after that trying to get them to admit their mistake (which they did... they admitted that they had jumped to a conclusion and aborted the visit because they had made an erroneous assumption about who was home)... but then everything went into kind of twisted time warp... calls to them where never returned.... Another two weeks would be required to schedule the next visit.

These guys are bums. Not only do they make stupid assumptions and do dumb things to avoid servicing customers.. they were incredibly difficult to deal with. After waiting 2 weeks for a service call... and then aborting the call for dumb reasons... they were unhelpful in expediting a new service call less than another 2 weeks away.

In frustration I got out the yellow pages and called a run of the mill appliance repair firm that visited us within 2 hours and fixed the problem after getting parts the next day. Lesson #1... skip the “factory service” option on you appliance! Lesson #2.... Avoid A&E Factory service... they are terrible! Lesson #3, get to know your local appliance repair company! They are likely to be more responsive and flexible than corporate chartered national firms.

It didn’t surprise me that when I searched the web for A&E Factory Service... the top answer on Google and Yahoo! Was Complains.Com. Hum! Maybe a connection here.

Jeff