Mr. Jeffrey Immelt
Chief Executive Officer
General Electric Company
3135 Easton Turnpike
Fairfield, CT 06828
(via mail)
Mr. Charles Blankenship
President and CEO
GE Consumer &
Industrial
Louisville, KY
GE Appliance
Headquarters
AP6, Room 129
Louisville, KY 40255
(via mail)
Dear Mr. Immelt, Mr.
Blankenship and other GE Appliance Professionals:
My name is Tina Engberg.
I am a food blogger and a cheese maker in Atlanta. I am also the wife of a UPS
executive, PTA volunteer, Scout Leader, and mother to two wild and crazy boys,
ages 7 and 10. I rely on my GE Monogram refrigerator, which we purchased
through the GE Appliance Store through the “friends and family” program on
12/20/2005, for a variety of things, the least of which is providing safe food
storage for my family. At the time we purchased the refrigerator (along with
several other appliances), my brother, Charles Brickley, was an employee of GE
Capital.
We purchased the
ZIS480NR, Serial number AL031077, and the ZIFI240PII Custom Panels. We even
sprung for the GEN0010B48 Four year in-home Service plan. That coverage, which
we never made use of, ended 1/20/2011.
We installed the
appliances into our new home in May 2007, in time to move in on June 16th,
2007. While we waited for the construction of our home to be complete, the
refrigerator sat, in the garage, in its original crating. A professional
installer put the refrigerator in for our contractor.
Since I want to get to
the meat of the matter, which incidentally, is warming right now in an IGLOO
cooler, this refrigerator has been nothing but a source of contention for our
family. It is the worst appliance I’ve ever owned, and I want my money back. I
have spent thousands of dollars I didn’t need to spend to replace food that
shouldn’t have gone bad. My next door neighbor graciously allows me to put food
in her deep freezer when ours is out, which is more often than anyone should
endure.
I could go on and on
about the fridge itself, but it might bore you, since I have the impression
that I’m not the only one who owns such a poor excuse of a refrigerator. The
ice-maker stopped working within the first three months of operation; we lived
without. We would experience unreasonable fluctuations in the temperature
between the freezer and the refrigerator. The “chiller drawer” in the bottom
went out at about a year. We have had our trusted appliance person (whose
father worked at the Lynn, MA GE Plant for over 40 years) replace the
motherboard, HMI Board, Touch pad, Icemaker, and Damper and the Crisper Control
Panel. Nothing. Right now, it’s 62 degrees in both sections. Thank goodness our
technician responds immediately to my phone calls. He doesn’t charge me for
more than the parts he orders and waits to receive (three weeks for a single
part to be delivered on a rush order; impressive JIT Manufacturing GE!) GE, on
the other hand, charges for Home Calls (where else would this appliance be?) just
to walk through my door.
At one point, in April
2012, we even tried to take advantage of what my husband called “a good factory
service deal” that he learned about through one of the GE online newsletters he
receives. On 5/15/12, your technician Henry Pomocnik (Tech 60) came to “Unblock
the air return” and put a new stripper in the ice-maker. When we tried to reach
Henry a few days later when what he fixed became unfixed again, we were not
able to reach him. Successive messages to GE’s Consumer Service went
unanswered. Since then, we’ve found a responsive service person to help us, but
this refrigerator is beyond repair, and I want you to buy it back from us.
The IRONY of all of this
is that my husband’s maternal great-grandfather, Charles Tripp, headed the
refrigeration unit at GE’s Lynn, MA plant; there’s a statue outside the plant
dedicated to his service to General Electric and the innovations he made in
home refrigeration for your company. We wanted to buy GE products because it
really meant something to the family, to support the business that provided
great opportunity and prosperity for Mr. Tripp and his daughters.
I would appreciate
hearing from you, especially, Mr. Blankeship. My cell is 678-xxx-xxxx.
Thank you,
Christina B. Engberg