Boo, Hiss … Sears Home Services. I’m coming to really detest these guys!

We have a nice KitchenAide refrigerator. Stainless steel, French doors, big freezer compartment, ice and water in the door. All the good stuff.

It leaks water. The ice maker is in the roof of the fridge. Something up there is leaking water. We bought the fridge about six months before we went on the mission to Hawaii, so it sat in storage for three years until this house was completed last November and we moved all the furniture in. After a while we noticed that we had water coming from the top of the fridge. Over time there was more water leaking. KitchenAide is owned by Whirlpool and a check with Whirlpool revealed that the fridge was no longer under warranty. They recommended we call a local service company and gave me several options.

We’ve had good service from Sears Home Services before; they were one of the options; so I called and made an appointment. The service man came, looked inside, ordered a couple hundred dollars of parts, and left to come back when the parts arrived.

A different service man from Sears came and installed the parts and left. The leak was still there. I made another appointment. The service man ordered another couple hundred dollars of parts and left. When the parts arrived, he came and installed them. By afternoon the leak was back, much worse than before.

I called and made an appointment. Our local Sears store, in the meantime, has closed. Services are now coordinated out of Denver. The earliest appointment they would give me was three weeks away on the 18th of September. I got a phone call and an email on the evening of the 17th and another phone call (robo call) and a text message on the morning of the 18th reminding me that the service man would be at the house sometime between 8am and noon and that someone 18 years of age or older must be there.

We waited the morning. By noon no service man and no information. I called. It turns out that no service man was ever assigned to the appointment!!!!!! The next possible option was two more weeks in the future. Would a service man be assigned then?

When I call Sears Home Services, the first problem is getting past the VERY STUPID artificial intelligence app that does everything possible to avoid connecting to a live person. When the connection is finally made, the live person is in India. They seem to have no ability to talk to anyone directly in Sears. They can only make appointments on their computers. It’s then up to a Dispatch Center somewhere else to actually assign a service person to the appointment. When there is no one available to assign, the appointment sits vacant with no attempt to talk to the customer.

Will I ever get our fridge working correctly? They’ve probably replaced just about everything in the roof of the fridge that can be replaced. Except, of course, the part where the leak is happening.

The solution to these kinds of problems, in my experience, is always the simplest and most straight forward (Occam’s Razor comes to mind). The water line comes into the fridge at the top right, goes through a filter, then goes over to the ice maker. At that point, the line must divide at a ‘T’ intersection with water going to the ice maker and another line taking water to the door for dispensing. I’m thinking that ‘T’ is where the leak is happening. If so, all of these other parts (a new ice maker, a new heater assembly, and a new installation kit, costing us around $800 so far) were completely unnecessary.

Gahh!