Viking cook top griddle with down draft - down draft malfunctioned right after installation - viking gave no assistance

# 3 for August 23, 2003

Complaints.com received the following consumer message on August 22, 2003:

From:

RE: Viking cook top griddle with down draft - down draft malfunctioned right after installation - viking gave no assistance

Had a Viking cook top with griddle and down draft installed in my new home. The down draft malfunctioned from the first day. Viking provided no assistance in fixing the item. It seems there attitude is that they are number one and they don't need to worry about customer service.

The problems started almost from the very beginning. The installation documentation provided with the cook top and down draft was poor. When the builder called the Viking tech help line they were told Viking would send additional info. When the info arrived it was in French.

When the builder finally got the info and the cook top/down draft was installed, the down draft malfunctioned. The builder called Viking and was told someone would be sent from a local dealer to assist. Repeated calls were made, but no dealer responded. It was finally determined by the builder and electrician that a faulty (cracked) switch in the down draft had caused a board to short.

Again Viking was called and said they would have a dealer assist. At this point Viking even called me and said they would solve the problem. Nothing was done. At this point a local former Viking dealer ordered the part and installed it. Once this was done the down draft works fine.

The cook top is all we hoped for, but given the prices of Viking equipment, their customer service leaves much to be desired. Both we and the builder would recommend against installing a Viking product. There are other similar products by other companies who may have better customer service.

Silas Baron

Email User

Comment On This

We also had a very frustrating and unproductive experience with Viking trying to get replacement parts for our down draft vent. Even though we provided the correct part number and serial number, the parts we received did not fit at all. After many many days of communicating with various Viking people we were basically told that those were the parts because they are from these part numbers which matched our model number. Apparently Viking can not even keep up a simple system where a product and its corresponding parts should match. Would not use a viking product again.