Hey, Home Depot, where are my GE appliances?
Editor’s note: Jeanne Fleming and Leonard Schwarz are no longer writing the “Money Manners” column. We are replacing it with the weekly “Problem Solved” by Christopher Elliott. Q
I ordered a GE refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave and stove from Home Depot on Nov. 24 with delivery scheduled for Jan. 8. My appliances never arrived.
I have contacted both Home Depot and GE about my delivery delay. My local Home Depot store gave me a 10 percent refund, but GE continues to push back my delivery date and simply says “I’m sorry” when I call to inquire about the missed delivery. I have been given delivery dates of Jan. 8, 22, 26, 27, 31 and Feb. 14.
It’s February, and I would like my appliances! The $400 refund from my local store was very generous, and the representatives from GE tell me that I can be compensated when my items are delivered. Home Depot stated that GE generally offers $50 per item in compensation. At this point, due to lack of communication with GE, I feel that $50 per missed delivery date is fair. Can you help? — Kelly Spuzzillo, North Royalton, Ohio
A
GE and Home Depot can do better — much better. I can understand one missed delivery date, but six? Come on. These are household appliances. You can’t just say “sorry” and expect everything to be fine. How are you going to cook with no appliances? Well, as someone who travels all the time, and often stays in places without a full kitchen, I can tell you — you improvise. (Raw vegan food, anyone?)
And I’m not complaining, by the way; I love to experience new places, and I don’t mind doing dishes by hand or visiting a coin laundry. You just spent thousands of dollars, and both Home Depot and GE made you promises that they could not keep. That’s wrong.
It looks as if most of your contact with GE and Home Depot was by phone. That works for some cases, but not this one. You want to start a paper trail just in case you need to appeal this to someone higher up.
If you’d kept your paperwork, a little push would have done the trick. I list executive contacts for Home Depot and GE on my consumer-advocacy site, elliott.org.
A polite escalation to the right person in writing might have expedited the delivery of your appliances. I contacted Home Depot on your behalf. It reached out to GE, which confirmed that it would deliver everything within a week. It also offered you $1,000, which you accepted.