Best Buy-- best buy?

When we moved in I knew I needed a new refrigerator and I decided to get a new dishwasher too. I had gotten used to the really quiet one I had an rumor had it my newly inherited dishwasher was quite noisy. It was hard to face going back to the sound of the "swish, swish, clonk, clonk, swish"multiple times a day.

When I got into KC one of the very first things I did was look for new appliances. I went to Best Buy first and never went anywhere else. I knew I wanted Stainless Steel and if you've shopped for appliances lately then you know if the appliance has the words "stainless steel" attached to it in any combination you can automatically add a hefty percentage to the price. But Best Buy had a stainless steel LG refrigerator with French doors, ice and water in the door and a bottom freezer with a tilt down freezer door.

I was in lust.

It had been returned because it had 3 dents in the door and was marked down $900 to reflect the damage.

No, this wasn't lust, it was love.

Anyone with kids knows that with 6 kids in my house dents in the doors are inevitable. My doors now had a head start on the dentage to come. The refrigerator was mine.

Of course the dishwasher had to match brands and it just so happened that they had a floor model they were discontinuing that was Stainless Steel and had the controls on the top of the door. It didn't have a manual so it was marked down $200. Could this get any better????

It did-- 0% interest for 18 months! Oh happy day!

The following Thursday my new dishwasher is installed by Mike the Plumber. Mike is eager to finish my install because he has just finished a job at a local winery and was given 2 bottles of wine. Mike can't wait to get home to open his new wine! In fact, Mike wishes he had a cork screw so that he could open his bottles now. But he stays long enough to pontificate on the inferiority of other big chain stores that hire trained monkeys to install their dishwashers and that is why the big chain stores are often stuck with multi thousand dollar bills when the dishwasher floods.

Obviously Mike the Plumber has never read my blog and learned that we NEVER put ourselves in a position to regret what we have said.

Thursday night I used my new dishwasher with great joy and to my amazement it was even quieter than my old one!

Friday morning I woke up and and there was a large puddle of water on my kitchen floor. The inside of my sink cabinet was soaked with water. Water was dripping through the sub floor onto my unfinished basement floor. After I had the sense to turn the water off at the dishwasher valve (water was dripping from the connection at a steady drip) I spent the day dealing with Best Buy, who re-sent Mike the Plumber to fix the leak, and water extraction companies who were all to busy from recent storms to come look at my house.

Mike the Plumber shows up and tells me there is calcification build up. He extracts it and goes on his merry way. I refrained from inquiring about his wine.

Later that day my wood floor around the sink cabinet begins to buckle and become warped. I ask Best Buy how they plan to handle this. Their solution is to send someone to look at the damage because Mike the Plumber said there wasn't any damage. My reply to them? "Yeah, I bet that's what he said. Of course that's what he said. He doesn't want to be held responsible for this."

Fast forward a couple of days and I get a call from Mike the Contractor. Mike the Contractor, who is actually Mike the Plumber, is on his way to see my floor. (I guess he became a contractor over the weekend -- good for him! Its always good to improve oneself!) I tell him fine but I'm at the post office so my son can let him in.

{I'm at the post office because living with a water leak and damage isn't enough to deal with. No I'm also dealing with an adoption and its accompanying paperwork that needs to be done NOW. Oh, and did I forget to mention that I had just moved in???}

Mike the Contractor calls when when he leaves my house and tells me that my wood floor is warped but that it should settle down in a few months. What he told my son is that its not Mike the Plumber's fault because it wasn't from the installation or the dishwasher, it was from OUR line.

Its times like this I wish I had a man to deal with these kinds of things. I just get tired of fighting so many battles.

But I don't have a man and you know what, I'm not doing so bad without one. So my plan is to have a flooring company give me an estimate to fix the floor and present the estimate to Best Buy.

I wonder if Mike the Contractor will become Mike the Claims Adjuster?