This is a story that I’ve been waiting to tell for months now. I like telling stories! Normally, it’s fun, and it comes from a place that is lousy with giant robots, magic, and just so many swords. So many swords. This story though, it comes from a place soaked in blood and mind numbing fury.  I wish it were something that actually mattered, in the long term, but it’s usually the inconsequential things that cause the most anger. You are never closer to actually murdering someone than when some prick cuts you off traffic, or when some dick cuts in front of you in line at the grocery store and then pays for his twelve pack of Bud Light in nickels. I write from that place of anger.

TL;DR: It took Frigidaire SIX MONTHS to do do anything about our broken freezer and we ended up losing $400 in the deal. Don’t buy Frigidaire. Ever. Don’t do it.

Warning! If you don’t like or approve of profanity, move on. This is not the blog post for you.

I would love to was poetic about this whole life episode for a few thousand words, but it would just be far too “first world problems” the whole time. Instead, I’ll focus on what went wrong, and all the ways that Frigidaire fucked up. It’s still going to be long. But there will be swearing! You all like swearing and rage, right?

Six months ago, my wife and I bought a new chest freezer to put in our new basement. We were pretty excited, since it would mean she’d get to experiment with more frozen meals, and we’d get to try out some other things that we just didn’t have the freezer space for. We chose a Frigidaire, mostly for the brand recognition. I had done a little research but there hadn’t been too many red flags, in fact it seemed they were pretty much on par, compared with their peers, in terms of negative feedback. It made sense. Frigidaire. Cold air! What could go wrong? The freezer was delivered, we filled it up, all was cool. (See what I did there?)

Two weeks later, all the food was ruined. Well over $300 of food, gone. The freezer had failed, thawed, and remained thawed for long enough for bread dough to start to raise. “Well, shit,” I thought, “Guess I’ll have to call Nebraska Furniture Mart.” They told me there was nothing they could do, I had to call Frigidaire, since it was still under manufacturer warranty. I didn’t know it yet, but I’d just been condemned to six months in consumer hell.

I’ll preface what comes next by saying that the customer service reps were always polite, and their computer always knew who I was, letting them pull up my information without me having to continually go into everything again. I don’t really blame them. The organization they belong to, on the other hand, fills me with rage.

Going in, I thought that this would probably be a simple thing. Frigidaire has people to come out and service their products. Unfortunately for me, after failing in such a spectacular way, the freezer had gone back to freezing things, after being unplugged and plugged back in. We took some steps to rule out things like the outlet being bad, something not being set up right…basically any sort of user error. That out of the way, I called into Frigidaire. They were very sorry that I had experienced problems, but didn’t want to send anyone out to take a look at it, since it was working again. I was supposed to watch the thing and see if it happened again. There was nothing they could do about the food though, they didn’t cover food loss.

We weren’t happy about the food loss, but, at the time, I figured it was just the sort of thing you have to expect from time to time. That’s just life, right? And maybe it was just a one time thing. Really, I’d just be happy with a working freezer. We had the small one left over from our last place that would get us by until we knew one way or another.  The customer service rep was polite and courteous and if the freezer actually worked we could deal with the food loss.

We watched the freezer over the next couple weeks, leaving it plugged in, without any food in it. It sat useless in the basement, attempting to prove its worth to us. In the end, it failed another three times, so I called in again. Frigidaire Customer Service (heretofore referred to as the Devil, Satan, Father of Lies) was very sorry to hear about that. They would contact Nebraska Furniture Mart and arrange for a replacement, probably by the end of the week (late in October). “Well, that’s that!” I thought, foolishly, “That wasn’t so bad.” Oh, the lies we tell ourselves.

One week went by. Then two. We got a letter in the mail requesting the original receipt from Furniture Mart and the serial and model numbers of the freezer. Which is odd, I thought, because they already have both of those, since when I called in the first time I’d registered the freezer with them. Confused, and beginning to become annoyed, I called the Devil up again to see what was going on, since the letter hadn’t really explained anything. Satan told me that Nebraska Furniture Mart wasn’t working with them to replace my freezer, so they’d be buying it back from me. With some small addendums: They wouldn’t be paying for taxes or delivery fees. Well…fuck.

You see, that changes the math just a little fucking bit. We paid $220 for that shitty freezer, and about $22 in taxes and another $50 for the delivery fee.  Add that to the (minimum) $300 of food that the freezer had destroyed and we were now out nearly twice the cost of the original freezer, at $370 some dollars. But wait, it gets better! Not only that, but we were going to have to pay to get a new one delivered, another $50 that The Father of Lies didn’t give a shit about.   A call to Nebraska Furniture Mart excused that cost, but pretty much means we have to buy from them again. Also, there was still nothing they could do, I was stuck with Satan, for all my freezer related servicing needs. A quick reminder that Satan, the Devil, The Father of Lies is Frigidaire Customer Service.

Well, fuck it. I’m stuck. If I want this piece of garbage out of my basement and working freezer in there, I’ve got to go along with what they want.  I sent them the original receipt and the serial and model number, hoping for a quick turn around.

Two weeks pass. We get another letter. They want the serial and model number before they can proceed. “The fuck?” I say, “I sent this to those assholes twice.” Back to the phone for another wonderful conversation with the Devil. Turns out they didn’t just need any old paper with with model and serial number on it, they needed some obscure piece of paper that was either taped onto the outside of the freezer, or the inside, when we’d first gotten it. I have no memory of the paper they described, nor was it with any of the saved paper work.

I’m doing my absolute best now to be patient with the customer service reps. They didn’t ask to have to deal with people who their own company was in the process of giving the run around.  At this point though, I’ve had an unplugged, useless piece of junk in my basement taking up space for months, and I’m sick of their surveys after every call. I’m sick of the wait times, I’m sick of the hoops and I don’t have the fucking piece of paper they just have to have.

They have a solution though. On the back of the freezer is a sticker that has the model and serial number. I can scrape that off, and send it in. Wait? The only mark on this goddamned useless hunk of junk that identifies it as the hunk of useless junk I paid $220 for four months ago. Yes, that sounded like a fucking awesome idea. I wanted another solution. Any solution that didn’t give them the last bit of evidence the machine was the one I paid for.

I called Nebraska Furniture Mart again. No help there. Fantastic. I had another option that had produced results in the past. Social media! I went to the Twitters, and bitched about my problems to their official account, and received a quick reply. We got a dialogue going, the connected me with the account I had in their system and I explained the problem that I was having. I took a picture of the sticker in question and posted it to them.  No. They needed me to physically remove it, and mail the thing in. There was no other way.

I would like to reiterate. They’ve had the original receipt for way more than a month now. They knew the model and serial number when they registered the fucking freezer, which was no problem at the time. I’ve had a non-functional fucking brick in my basement for three to four months now, largely waiting on them, with no communication that wasn’t initiated by me. It doesn’t take a moron to realize when you’re being given the runaround. This is the path open to me, so I took what photographic evidence I could, got the sticker off, also pouring all my hatred for them into that envelope and mailed it off.

Another two weeks go by. We hear nothing from them. I am now slowly simmering in my anger, and just imagining writing this exact blog post. But since we haven’t heard a goddamned thing, haven’t gotten any sort of confirmation or status update I have to once again talk to Satan.

Did they get that fucking sticker they just had to have? Yes? What’s the hold up then? Oh, the turn around to get me a refund is three to four weeks.  When are they going to arrange to have the broke ass freezer picked up and disposed of? Haha…They aren’t.  That fucking huge brick in my basement isn’t going anywhere unless I pay to have it gotten rid of, which, let’s check the price, is at least, another $50.

I like math. Let’s do some fucking MATH! $220 (Freezer) + $50 (Delivery Fee) + $300 (Ruined Food) + $50 (Disposal) – $220 (Refund) = $400. I would like to reiterate that going with Frigidaire straight up cost us $400 that we’re not going to get back for the privilege of having that piece of shit in our basement for six months and so many goddamned hours on the phone. I know. At the beginning of the whole fiasco I was willing to write the food off and call it “Lesson in life” but now? After all this shit? Their broken ass piece of garbage ruined $300 of what it was supposed to keep unruined. That was its only job. So, fuck that and fuck Frigidaire. Fuck them with their broken ass freezer that has been in my basement for six months.

Fine! Fine. It had been two weeks, we only had another couple of weeks till we got the money and we’re done with Frigidaire forever.

We waited another month. Another month. Six total weeks, for them to get us a fucking prepaid credit card, with $220 in it. It only less than four weeks for my computer to get built and shipped to me. I want you guys to think about that. Four weeks gets me a gaming quality PC. It takes Frigidaire six weeks to get me a fucking piece of plastic with some money on it after MONTHS of knowing they were going to have to do that exact thing.

And thus, I’ve come to the end of my story. We have our money back, or at least a fractional portion and the one joy I can take from it is attempting to make sure anyone who reads this doesn’t purchase anything from Frigidaire. Will you listen? Maybe, maybe not. If you buy something from Frigidaire, maybe it’ll work just fine. But then, maybe it won’t and you’ll have to spend the next six months or more of your life dealing with Satan, the Devil, Father of Lies, which, once again, is Frigidaire Customer Service.