Last weekend we went to Myer (a big department store here in Sydney) and bought a refrigerator, a washing machine, and a microwave. They were to be delivered on Tuesday. On Monday, right after a marathon trip to IKEA that gave me a huge headache that lasted about 8 hours, they called. It’s a good thing Adam answered my phone because I was busy begging the pharmacist to give me any package of Panadol they had because my head was splitting open and I really didn’t care how much it cost or how many pills were in the package. (She thoughtfully grabbed the small package, took my $3 and pointed out the water dispenser a few feet away.) While this was going on, Adam was talking to the lady who sold us our “white goods”. They did not actually have the refrigerator or the washing machine in stock. She has been mistaken to sell those to us and he (Adam) could clearly see that it wasn’t the Myer lady’s fault that these items were discontinued and they didn’t have them anymore. I could tell Adam was becoming increasingly agitated, but I just couldn’t manage any input with my head splitting open. After some back and forth, the lady offered to deliver the floor models. I said that was fine if they gave us a discount and if the warranties were still valid. She offered to take $50 off each item and assured us the warranties were still good for the full 2 years.
On Thursday, the items were finally delivered and installed. I spent a good amount of time that afternoon cleaning the dust and coffee spills off of the refrigerator and getting it set up to use. I ignored the washing machine except to note that when you hit the power button, some lights lit up. Saturday morning, Adam decided to do a load of laundry. He is unlike most men, in that he actually reads the instructions for things and follows them.
A: ‘Crap’
L: ‘What?’
A: ‘The washing machine is overflowing’
L: ‘Do you need a towel?’
A: ‘No, there’s a drain in here. Hmm, I must have done something wrong.’
- a few minutes later -
A: ‘Crap, it’s overflowing again.’ followed by, ‘it will only drain if I run the spin cycle’
So, Myer sold us a washing machine that does not work, which really sucks, because it’s been a week since we’ve had a washing machine (back at the corporate apartment) and laundry is piling up. We are almost out of clean baby bibs and Athena is determined to get each and every one as dirty as possible, especially now that she is eating all sorts of baby foods. It’s also not practical for us to go find a laundry mat because we don’t have a car and we have a baby who would not be at all entertained by such activities.
Today, Adam called Myer and they basically said they couldn’t help us until Anna got in tomorrow because she is the one who deals with LG (the manufacturer). Personally, I wish they’d just take this one back and give us one that works, but Australians don’t seem to do Customer Service like they do in the US.