That's old news they have moved on

Yep, but only to dealers like yourself. And, what have they moved on to though?

The mainstream media just ran with this story a few days ago and I missed the post from the day before here that broke it around here because it crept way down the page.

Shame you didn't use your vast wisdom to inform the group weeks ago that Viking had issued this recall since there are folks around here with these units. Was this just an oversite or part of the spin control from the mothership?

Glad to see they (Viking) are standing behind their stuff before the tort system forces them to.

I have one of these. It's so jolly. I am on hold with the recall folks who are being vry nice.

First question: How did you hear about the recall?

They say they sent a letter out to owners 2 weeks ago.

Current mystery is why their computer system only allows for 10 or 11 digit serial numbers while mine has 14 digits. If the serial number isn't correct the computer rejects the claim.

Isn't appliance h#ll fun?

It takes 14 days for the "repair kit" to arrive.

They had no service person in their system to do the switch out. So they give me the name of a local service person who happened to do my work on the oven. Then they want me to contact him to see if he can accept their authorization code for the payment.

They were very nice when I asked them to please check with him themselves since I knew nothing about their authorization codes and since I was the customer who was being inconvenienced by having to arrange a service call. Let's not discuss the fact that this is a recall.

They made the call and said the servicer will call me to confirm. If he doesn't accept, then I have to call another servicer.

But they went on to caution me not to schedule the service call before I had received the part, which is delivered without a signature and could land anywhere the UPS guy cares to leave it (usually they are pretty good). Well, duhhhhhhh

Honestly, I don't have to bash them. Any experience with them speaks for itself.

Maybe someone has moved on from this but anyone with one of these refrigerators hasn't moved on -- yet.

"They had no service person in their system to do the switch out"

"they want me to contact him to see if he can accept their authorization code for the payment. "

Yep , sounds exactly like they've moved on.

Come on, recalls are everywhere.

Wolf:
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml08/08391.html

GE:
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09046.html

GE Monogram:
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml06/06055.html?omni_key=Monogram_Pro_Range_Recall

Thermador:
http://www.appliancejournal.com/tag/oven-recall/

Bosch:
http://www.boschappliances.com/safetyrecall/dishwasher/

Miele (ok, this is laundry):
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml08/08577.html

By now you get the point, without me going into all the "reliable" car companies, etc. that have issued recalls. I'm not making an argument for or against Viking, just saying that recalls happen to the best (and worst) of them. Hardly seems like a talking point.

I was just sneering that it takes 2 weeks to get a part to somebody AND they want the customer to do all the work finding and haggling price for said work when they have a service network.

fair enough...!

Antss made the salient point in the whole fandango.

No apology, no "sorry for the inconvenience to you" just making it the customers responsibility to see if a repair person takes their authorization code?

In this situation the payment to the servicer shouldn't be my concern. The company should be sure the servicer has the part and then have them contact me to arrange the visit.

To be fair, they made the call when I said I wasn't interested in negotiating their fee with the servicer. Let's see what happens. In the past, the service has come from the regional rep which doesn't seem to be involved here.

This should be administered as a special project for them. 45k is a lot of fridges to take care of. And I wouln't want to bog down my reg line mgrs. with this + their reg duties.

However they know they need 45,ooo dohickies to fix this prob so parts should have been in the pipeline before they announced the recall. Then the special service czar would start to craft the "program" then the units would slowly get fixed.

I will disagree. They should announce the recall as soon as they know they have a problem. How would you feel if the fridge door fell on your foot and broke you toe only to find out the manafacture knew about the problem they were just waiting until the had all 45,000 repair kits ready to be shipped out to tell anyone. Let the customer know about the problem and what to watch out for first then get the repairs taken care of.

That said the customer shouldn't have to deal with the billing side of things to get it repaired. The manafacture should have a list of repair shops and they should be sending the parts to the repair shop not the customer this way the repair shop can verify they got all the parts needed and review the instructions before getting to the customers house. The only thing the customer should have to do is to arrange a time for the repair person to come and fix it.

This is all on fridges produced prior to 2006 and is definitely an inconvenience to those customers, but at least they are doing the right thing. As a person that sells this product I can say that the new product has been great.

kaffine - of course they've known about it before you did, unless you were the one who had one drop on your foot and started the ball rolling. If you'd like to debate crisis and risk mgmt. scenarios mail me off site.

Best to make really good products from the get go.

antss - You make it sound like they should have all 45,000 repair kits ready before they announce the recall. It's not like they are going to repair all 45,000 units the day they announce the recall. Why not announce the recall so people can take precautions until they can get it repaired. I have seen this done several times in other industries they announce the recall and give details on how to inspect it to know if it is problem with your unit and what precautions need to be taken until repairs are completed.

So the part arrived -- looks like new door assembly of some type. But the repair person they called, who has worked for me in the past, has declined to make the repair.

Will call Viking back tomorrow.

Needless to say I am thrilled.

So here I am with the door kit still in my mudroom. I've now called 5 service companies -- names provided by Viking -- and no one will do this repair. Why are they giving out names to customers without checking to see if the companies they recommend are willing?

My case has been "escalated" at Viking and the rep company for my region says they are "leaving messages" to see who can do the repair.

Part of the issue seems to be that it's a 3-hour, 2-man job by all accounts.

They are being polite and I cannot call them unresponsive. However, I could never buy another one of their products as it's been a four year saga of rolling service issues vs zero with everything else.

My next suggestion, if they cannot repair this fridge, is a buy back. When you spend $5K on a fridge, this type of incompetence is unacceptable to me.

Boy Rococogul, sure a good thing that door is being replaced under warranty---otherwise you would go Baroque.
Sure a jammer to have ANY appliance down that long, Especially a Fridge!!

Gary

ooopsss "Rococogurl"

A few things that have been gnawing me about this:

Dry -"This is all on fridges produced prior to 2006"

This means they've known about it for 3 years, just decided to release the info, and still have neither the parts or a workable plan to fix all of these crappy and dangerous units. Or has a court case forced this issue?

Making customers wait while the mothership goads, browbeats or strongarms or just waits for a servicer stupid enough to do the replacement for 30 cents on the dollar is disgusting.

Way to go Viking,

you are well on you way to the place of the domestic auto manuf.

I see some things havent changed, Viking still makes pretty looking stuff in every color under the sun but it's long term reliability AND customer service practices are still right there with every other low end disposable appliance.

Unfortunately, it's standard in business to do a cost/benefit analysis to determine the cheapest cost of handling things. I remember reading many years ago that a memo was released indicating that a company (I don't remember which one or if it was even revealed in the article) was dumping toxic chemicals that likely was causing serious illness in a particular neighborhood. The memo included an analysis to show that if would be cheaper for them to continue dumping and settle any lawsuits than it would be to stop dumping and clean up the area.

Dumb way to do business. First they get all the negative noteriety here--I wouldn't touch one with a 10 foot pole now, regardless of price--even free. Bad news travels fast, just like Capital One credit card that just ripped me off, I tell everyone where I go about it and I go a LOT, car shows etc etc, I post it on the net tell my neighbors and friends etc etc.
I ran a business for 16 years, never advertised--just word of mouth---made darn sure, everyone in the Company knew the customer was KING!!!
I suspect Guadalupe's input about Viking being sold to LG may be true, Viking not only has a lotta expense crawling out from that costly manufacturing defect but also the damage they have done to their reputation in the process with their "Cost/Benefit analysis"
I think they are finding out that "Sleeping Dogs DON'T LIE"

Gary

At this point, I'd be happier with another brand. While it's no small thing to change out a 36" bottom-mount built-in, the fridge is out of waranty, repairs are a fortune and while the former distributor would send out their own techs (for a price) to do the repairs, they knew what they were doing and showed up. There is a new distributor now which sells to our area but says they don't service it -- even in the case of a recall.

It will be interesting to see if they follow up, as promised, and how long it takes to get it fixed -- if it can get fixed. I'm at one month and counting.

It's as if I lived in Oregon and bought a car, then moved to New York and the car could no longer be serviced. Not normal.

I'm currently renovating a second kitchen. I don't enjoy saying this but I wouldn't buy a can opener from them.

The lone bright note is that it was easy to remove and replace the halogen bulb that burned out in my vent hood this weekend. When I saw it go, my first thought was, oh carp, what fresh h#ll will this bring?

weissman - Right out of school , I sat in on a few of those risk management "discussions" where $$$, time, peoples lives , and Mgmt's personal pocketbooks were kicked about, so i know how it works.

I know it's not fair but I still get incredulous when the folks lower down the chain don't seem to realize what is actually happening.

We also studied a true case in business school about one of the leading baby food manufacturers. A chemist in the lab discovered that their apple juice was actually just sugar water and contained no apple. He thought he had discovered an accidental glitch in their manufacturing process and reported the results to his superiors thinking they'd be pleased. I don't remember the exact sequence of events but I think he was ultimately fired and became a whistle blower that caused major resignations and criminal charges at the higher levels of the company. The only upside to this was that the actual product being sold was not harmful to babies - it just wasn't what it was supposed to be.

Curious about the class you read that case in. Was it in Ethics or Risk Management?

I don't remeber for sure but I think it was in a Business Law class.

just as I thought - the risk manager side.

big smile here

Hey you gals - don't get your panties in a wad. No big deal about replacing a hinge!

doug - better hope Roccogurl doesn't see this !

also , care to eloborate ?

In June we received a letter from Viking stating that the upper hinge on some refrigerator doors had failed for several people. There are two different hinges. They send a picture of both kinds. All you have to do is call Viking with the serial number of your fridge.

They send a replacement hinge along with a 'stiffner' for the top of the door. Then a Viking repair facility will call and make an appointment to replace the hinge. It takes the tech about 45 minutes to replace the hinge.

Honestly, I don't see how the old hinge would break - except if people kept hitting the door against the stop - real hard.

Out of curiosity, I went back and read all these negative comments.

Just because several people were injured by the hinge, does not mean that many more people are going to be injured, by doors immediately falling off Viking refrigerators. I saw the old hinge, bracket, and bolts. It is not a flimsy item.

Many recalls are precautionary. That's what this is, a precaution.

I see a lot of made up anger - so what the UPS driver left the replacement part at the door? that's what they do. So it takes two weeks to get the part? So what?

What are you really angry about??

antss -- someone seems to be posting some pathetic sexist remarks under doug gb's logon -- guess he'd better make sure he hasn't been keyjacked because it doesn't make him sound like a good guy.

Thanks to a call and a significant effort from Viking I am pleased to report that the door replacement is now scheduled and they have been willing to address other issues as well. It is quite a change for the better.

They also tell me they have NOT -- repeat NOT be sold to LG as was reported on this forum. They say they are still 100% US o & m.

Was that a sexist remark?

Really, why not respond to both my logically worded posts?

"What are you really angry about?? "

I think folks are upset that these fridges cost a lot of dough and have yet another problem besides the cooling and evaporation and dripping issues. They are also mad that Viking is again typically unresponsive to many of them on service issues. No other fridge manuf has the amount of problems that this line does and none to my knowledge have hinge failures in amounts that show up in any journals, blogs, or chat rooms.

Doug - Viking service obviously worked out well for you as it should. Re-read Rocco's predicament and ask yourself if you be a happy camper if you had to call around 3 states to find someone to put the things on and then arrange the financials to boot - this after you coerce them to come in the first place. This type of CS happens all too often with these guys for a firm that is supposedly "high end".

As always, antss has it right.

Viking has stepped up and stepped in to get my fridge door repaired and to address two other four-year-running remaining issues with other appliances. I am pleased and hopeful and if this type of response were typical of the past, I would have no posts on this thread.

In fairness, at least in my case, their attitude has changed and I am grateful and as happy to tell others about that as I was unhappy about persistent issues.

If I had charged them for MY time arranging and waiting for the now going on 13 service calls over 4 appliances however, a buyback, upcharge for new oven research, purchase, shipping and installation etc. I would be near paying for the appliances.

Stuff goes wrong. That's life. When it goes wrong repeatedly -- that's another issue. If all goes well, things at my house will be resolved and we can merrily go on to conversations about freedom columns, er fries, er French columns. French fridges? French doors? French bread (as long as the oven heats fast enough!) LOL