Sears at it's finest

I have an interesting tale to tell about an appliance which we purchased October of 2006. First I need to say that we have used Sears appliances for years and have been very happy with them. But, due to our recent experiences I need to say that I think we’ve bought our last Kenmore product from Sears.

We purchased a Kenmore Trio Refrigerator (Model 795.77314600) hoping that again, we’d have a long living unit. Boy, were we wrong. Shortly after the warrantee ran out small things started happening, like , plastic latches broken, freeze ups so that it wouldn’t cool, etc. Nothing that was very serious, but is very annoying at best. Then one evening in early November of 2010, my wife open the door to discover the entire light bulb assembly (which is at the top) had fallen to the shelf below. The refrigerator was extremely hot inside and had melted the plastic around the mounting screws. Of course the butter had melted as well and was running down from shelf to shelf. A note here; these bulbs are supposed to come on when the door is open. Then if the door is left open for about a minute, an alarm sounds. This alarm NEVER sounded, but the VERY hot bulbs were on!

I started doing some internet searches and discovered that this is a known problem with these units, which are manufactured by LG and sold under the Sears name Kenmore. I found a web site, www.mysears.com, but the pages referring to this problem have been removed. But, if you go to Google and do a search on “Kenmore Trio Refrigerator Fire Hazard”, there’s plenty of information out there.



I called many Sears and LG phone number and got absolute zero from them. Go figure!! So, I sent in a complaint to our states Attorney General. From this, I received that my complaint had be forwarded to the Consumer Products Safety Division, in Washington. Time marches on and I finally got a correspondence from Sears stating that there had been a class action settlement. Of course, neither Sears nor LG said they did anything wrong. HELLO, some people actually had a fire in their kitchen as a result of this “defect”.

Needless to say, I got on the phone to Sears to have the repair taken care of. They ordered the parts and scheduled a service call for a few weeks in the future. Well, the parts didn’t come so I called again to cancel the service call. Shortly thereafter I started receiving all sorts of calls from Sears in reference to the backordered parts or they were trying to reschedule the service call. Good thinking, schedule service calls with no parts!! Go figure. Anyway, time marches on (an lots of calls from Sears) and the parts finally arrive. I called Sears and scheduled the call. They finally arrived and fixed the refrigerator. This was in mid-January of 2012.

Now, zoom forward to the present (mid-March). We’re sitting here in the evening and there’s knock on the door. The UPS truck had delivered 2 boxes. Of course, I asked my wife what she had ordered. Likewise, she asked me the same question. You’re not going to believe it but, they delivered 2 sets of parts for our refrigerator AFTER the unit has been repaired. Now, we’ll wait to see if anyone calls to schedule one or two new appointments.

Needless to say, purchasing anything from Sears is NOT on the top of our list. FYI, I won’t go into the rusted out oven (Sears) or the dishwasher (Sears) that had to be replaced. Just junk!!!