This is an ongoing saga that is not yet resolved… However, one thing that has been determined is that Frigidaire has the worst customer service of any company I have ever dealt with in my entire life.
Update: After 35 days, Frigidaire finally replaced the refrigerator, concluding the saga.
9/30: A 3 month old fridge fails on Saturday night (9/30/23). When I went into the kitchen in the morning, there was water all over the floor because the ice in the ice maker had all melted and dripped out of the dispenser on the door.
I call Lowe’s because I have a service contract on it. They say since the fridge is within its 12 month warranty, I have to work with the manufacturer.
Frigidaire service is closed for the weekend.
10/2: Call Frigidaire on monday morning and they say a tech has to come look at the fridge. They assign me to a service company in Flint called Saginaw Valley Service, and say my appointment is Tuesday afternoon
Get a call Monday afternoon from the service company saying they can’t help me because they don’t have any available techs. They say I need to have my case with Frigidaire re-queued to a different service company.
I call Frigidaire and after following the phone prompts I am greeted with a message saying “Due to unusually high call volume, we are unable to take your call.” They end the call. I’ve been trying to get through for the last two hours and haven’t been able to.
I call Lowe’s to see if there’s anything they can do, and now they are unable to find my service contract… the one they successfully looked up on Saturday when I initially called.
I finally get through to Frigidaire again, after 3 hours of trying. They inform me that there are no other service contractors in my area so they have to escalate my case to a “service locator team.” They say this process may take 2-3 business days. I tell them this is unacceptable and I want my fridge replaced, but I get nowhere. The best they can do is “expedite the service locator escalation” so that it takes “only” 24-48 hours to try to find another service contractor. They will not, no matter how much I complain or how many managers (3) I speak with, replace the fridge without waiting for a service appointment.
10/4: More than 48hrs goes by. I call Frigidaire back. They say my case has an update yesterday that says a service company called RSI appliance was assigned to me. They ask if I have gotten a call from them and I tell them no, and that I had no idea a company had been assigned. While on the phone with Frigidaire, they put me on hold to call RSI appliance to see if they can perform the service call. I sit on hold in silence for more than 10 minutes, then magically I hear some hold music. This goes on for another 10-15 mins until someone says “RSI Appliance service, how can I help you?” Frigidaire service somehow blind transferred me to the service contractor, who now needs a reference number that I don’t have. He manages to look me up by the fridge serial number and says the soonest they can come out is October 13th!! I have them book the appointment in case all else fails.
I call Frigidaire back and say I need a service appt sooner than 10/13. They agree that 9 days away is unacceptable and they send my case to the “replacement review team” to process a replacement.
10/5: I have major surgery and cannot deal with fridge drama, so no progress is made.
10/6: Still recovering from surgery, and Frigidaire will be closed tomorrow for the weekend.
10/9: I call Frigidaire on Monday morning to get an update. They rejected the replacement because they found another service contractor (Autumn Appliance), and supposedly scheduled a service appointment. I call Autumn Appliance and no service appointment has been scheduled. The soonest they can come out is 10/16. I have them schedule the appointment, but in my head I am banking on RSI Appliance coming on the 13th.
10/13: RSI appliance calls me to tell me their tech is sick and they won’t be able to make my service appointment today. They reschedule me for 10/20.
10/16: Autumn Appliance visits the house and determines that the Fresh Food evap blower fan has a locked rotor, and the fridge failed diagnostics. The tech sits on the phone with Frigidaire support for over an hour to complete the diagnostics and check the availability of the part. Frigidaire says the fan itself is unavailable so they will need to replace the entire “air tower” in the fridge. Frigidaire verifies that the air tower is available an in stock.
10/17: Autumn Appliance tech calls me to tell me that the air tower is in fact NOT in stock, but now they can order the fan itself. They place the order for the fan and say it will take 3-4 days to arrive and they schedule a service appointment for Tuesday 10/24.
10/23: I call Autumn Appliance to verify that the part came in and they will be able to come to my house tomorrow to service the fridge. The person on the phone says they don’t see that the part came in, but they will check on it and call me back. They call back an hour later and say that the part is back ordered and never shipped. Frigidaire did not tell them it was back ordered when it was ordered the previous week, so the last 8 days have been wasted.
I call Frigidaire to plead my case for a replacement once again. The representative that answers the phone definitely does not speak English as her first language. She can barely understand what I am saying and keep repeating the same thing to me over and over again. At one point she says she will call Autumn Appliance and see if she can get the tech to change the repair order to say the fridge is unrepairable! I inform her that this is absolutely not what I want her to do, and that it should not be up to the service contractor to falsify records in order to try to get Frigidaire to do the right thing. I continue to plead my case and she puts me on hold to “see what she can do.” 1 hour goes by and I am still on hold, with no interaction from the Frigidaire representative. A few minutes later, the line goes dead and hangs up.
10/24: I call Frigidaire to try to get an update. The representative I speak with now says that he needs to escalate the back-order to the service locator team to try to locate the part at a local repair facility/warehouse and that the process will take 5-7 business days. I inform him that time frame is unacceptable and re-explain the history of my case to him. I demand the fridge be replaced. He just continues to repeat the same thing back to me, “We need to complete the service locator process before a replacement can be issued.” He also stated several times that, “If the part cannot be located, we will issue a replacement refrigerator.” I tell him this is the third time I’ve been told that the fridge will be replaced and it still has not been replaced. Eventually, I am able to convince him to assign a “very high priority” to the service locator ticket and he says I will get a response in 24-48 hours. Out of frustration, I accept those terms and end the call.
10/25: On a whim, I look up some Frigidaire (Electrolux) execs on LinkedIn and try to get some contact information from them. With the help of a friend, we’re able to infer the email address of the COO, so I send them a long email that reeks of desperation, in hopes they can help.
10/26: After 48 hours, I did not receive any updates from Frigidaire, so I call them for an update. I was in the middle of a few things today, so I decided to try the text message support for the first time. I was clearly connected to a bot, but I provided my reference number and asked for an update on the backorder escalation. The bot responds that there is no update and she will submit the case to the replacement review team (again). She informs me that it will take 5-7 business days to get an update (again). I respond that 5-7 more business days is unacceptable and I want this to be a high priority request. I go back and forth for several minutes trying to convince the bot that it needs to happen sooner than 5-7 business days, but my efforts were futile. Having already been escalated to the replacement review team earlier in this process, I expect that I will receive no update. When I call next week it will have been rejected and the process will start all over again. This is absolutely maddening.
10/31: I get a call from the appliance service contractor saying that they’re still unable to get the parts needed to repair the fridge. For some reason, they gave me a new case number to track the process.
10/31: I get an email from Frigidaire–the first form of any communication I have received from Frigidaire since this process began–that my case has been closed. No other information is provided.
11/1: I call Frigidaire support to see what happened to my case. They inform me that my replacement has been approved! They hand me off to a local store for replacement logistics. I call the local store and they have no authorization from Frigidaire on the replacement. Outstanding.
11/3: New refrigerator has arrived and seems to work. Finally, this circus is over!