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Previous Entry.. Next Entry.. The Quest for More Air Conditioning. The Final Chapter (Hopefully)
August 02, 2005 20:05 So this morning the repairman comes by to service the air conditioner. In reality, he understood that it would cost more, and take longer to repair it than to just replace it and send the old one back. So after hearing my description of the problem, he calls his manager and tells them that it's going to need a new coil, knowing full well that the manager would just authorize a replacement instead of repairing it. And so it happens. He calls back an hour later telling me I just need to box up the old one, take it to Sears, and they'll give me a new replacement. Good so far. We get there, they're expecting us, pick up the old unit, give me a receipt for an identical replacement and we get over to appliances. I hit one of the sales people up, he finds a few in stock, rings up a replacement, and calls over a manager to authorize the replacement. This is where it gets fun. During this time, Gertie has been scouting out the floor models and discovers that all the air conditioner units are currently on sale, or at least the Kenmore units such as I had, and all of them are marked $30 off. The in store units were priced $10 more than it had been paid for, so that makes $20 difference in the price paid for this unit, and the price they're currently selling it for. So Gertie decides to take advantage of the price difference to push a refund of the $20 difference. It's debatable if it should even matter since we're getting the exact same unit, and it's not costing us a penny to do so, but seeing how we've spent a month messing with this, there should be SOME type of compensation. So Gertie gets the store manager involved, and she and another manager are getting into it over proper course of action involving price differences with regards to warranty exchanges, and the store manager's take on it was that since we had to box it up and bring it into the store, we should be able to take advantage of the difference in price. Ok. Now, keep in mind, the price difference was actually $20, but the sale discount was $30, and therefore they "refund" us $30. Their words exactly "If we give you $30, will you be happy?" So fine, she's happy. And I go to pick up the unit over at the warehouse. It gets better. Turns out, the salesman who initially rang up the exchange discovered that they didn't in fact have any of our units in stock, but since everything was on sale anyway, figured the difference in price and keyed in a larger model such that the prices closely matched up. When the managers showed up, they were confronted with Gertie and thus got confused into thinking the replacement was the exact model. As it happens, they gave us a model that is twice as large, and $40 more expensive. The salesman that finally rang it up seemed to notice the discrepancy, but since two managers above him had ordered him to pay out, he paid out without objecting. So, in the end, we ended up with $30 in cash, and a Air conditioner worth $40 more and twice as powerful as the one we started with. And this one works too. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Thanks Dustec. :) Gertie however is considering returning the $30, although we're as of yet not sure exactly how to do that, and what they'd do about it if we did. I'll post an update about that event once it occurs.
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