Dear Total Shitbag Night: You Suck.

November 26th, 2008

Gah. What a night I have had. Day? Fine. Well, not exactly fine, because great heaving wracking menstrual cramps woke me at 4 in the morning, leaving me to writhe in agony until 6, when the alarm went off and I realized I looked like I’d been hit in the face with a sack that was chock full of “Holy shit you look awful!” bricks. Given the fact that I knew I was going to be feeling worse not better as the day progressed, I gave up and called in sick.

The rest of the day was halfway decent. I am almost out of any serious painkillers, and since apparently I have the only doctors in the world who want their patients to suffer excruciating pain, I can’t get anymore legally, I was carefully rationing them. But still, I could deal. Until around 5pm I went to try to take a nice hot shower, to help me work out a plot issue I was having with my book.

No hot water.

I went downstairs, the pilot light on the water heater was out. There’s an electronic pilot lighter thing, and I read the instructions and tried that, but it didn’t work. No light. I called the Whirlpool 800 number and got some Indian chick who seriously didn’t give a shit. She asked me if while I was doing the relight process I saw a spark in the chamber. Nope. So she asked me if I saw an orange wire. Yes I did. She told me to pull the orange wire off the ignition switch. I tugged, it didn’t come off. I asked her if I should pull it hard, and she said yes. I pulled harder, it wouldn’t come off. I told her it didn’t seem like it was supposed to come off. She insisted I pull it until it came off. I did. I am pretty sure that snapped the wiring. She asked me if I saw a spark then. I told her no. She said that the ignition switch was broken, to go to Lowe’s (specifically, Lowe’s) and buy a new one for $4.00. She said they’d reimburse me for it. Like I’d send a bill for $4.00. Whatever. So now it’s late. The day before Thanksgiving when all American stores are closed. I got my shit together and drove to Lowe’s, my car making ever-more heinous hissing noises all the time. I get there, and try to find an ignition switch. They don’t carry those. They know what it is, they just don’t carry them. I ask if they’re sure, and they say yeah, they’re sure. They tell me that Lowe’s parts ordering service can get it and send it to me. I call them while I am still at the store. They say they don’t supply any parts for water heaters. Of course they don’t.

I call Whirlpool back, while I am still at the store, and get Mr. Indian guy who barely speaks English. (I am sorry, I think most Indian people are probably very nice, and want to do the best they can at any job they’re given, but to need help from people who don’t know any English except the script they’re given is enough to make anyone a little nuts and frustrated. No offense meant to anyone from India.)

He tells me I need an ignition switch, and I say I know, where can I get one? He says “You can buy them anywhere!” I say, no, obviously not anywhere, because I am at a huge store than carries that kind of crap, and they don’t have it. “You can buy it anywhere!” he insists “and we will reimburse you!” Like the $4 is the height of my drama right now. “Yes but WHERE is anywhere? Who carries the parts for your stupid defective hot water heaters?” I want to know. “Anywhere!” is his answer. By now I am peeved and he says OK fine, he will send one out overnight. It will be here on Monday. Which is 4 days from now. When I won’t be home, which means I will get it Tuesday, which is five days from now. It’s 35 degrees, I can’t go without hot water that long. Fine. I tell him to send it, then call my parent’s house to get them to give me the number for Home Depot. My dad then begins to opine that he doesn’t believe it’s the igniter. He thinks I need to manually relight the pilot light. He’s the kind of do it yourselfer who’s always one step away from getting blown up. I am in no mood. I get the number for Home Depot and call them. After a while on hold they answer, do they carry universal igniters? They go to check, then hang up on me. I call back. Do they carry universal igniters? No, only plumbing supply stores. Those all closed at 5pm and won’t open until Friday. Of course.

I make my way home. In the car my Dad calls. He called the hardware store and told them about my Maytag hot water heater that won’t work, and they totally recognized the problem. It’s because my basement is too dusty, and it’s blocking the oxygen getting to the pilot light. OK A) It’s a Whirlpool and B) Really? You’re going with the dust theory? The only possible theory that would make it somehow MY FAULT that the thing is broken? Really? Now he says him and my Mom are driving over to my place right now. Like hell they are, I tell him to just leave it already.

I am so aggravated and concentrating on the insanity of my Dad that I miss my exit. Then I drop the F-bomb twice to my dad on the phone, hang up on him and get off at the exit where you can’t turn left which is of course the way I need to go. I pull into the shady-ass gas station and accidentally drive off the curb, thinking it’s the cutaway on the other side. Great. Then I get to my main street, which is another one where there’s no left in the direction I need to go. Reallllllly shouldn’t have missed my actual exit.

I get home, get inside and go downstairs to see if there’s dust up under there. There’s not. I vacuum it, just to be sure. I try to reattach the orange wire to the broken igniter, it will totally not attach and is borked beyond repair. So even if the igniter wasn’t broken before, it’s seriously broken now. Also, I’ve now somehow injured my knee, probably crawling around on the concrete basement floor for an hour trying to fix a fucking water heater I have no business messing with. I am in more pain. I take the second half of my Vicodin from earlier. I google universal ignition switches. I find a site which explains how all Whirlpool hot water heaters are pieces of garbage, they’re totally fucked from the get-go, there’s been a class action lawsuit because the pilot light keeps going out on them. After months of aggravation most people just have to get a new (not Whirlpool) water heater. This one is less than year old.

Fuck everyone, fuck everything, I hate this stupid piece of shit house in this horrible ghetto neighborhood which now, thanks to the new fucking great depression and the total meltdown of the housing market will NEVER get better and I will NEVER be able to sell this awful shitbag place. I will just live here with the houses all around me being shot to shit in the middle of the night, the whole place is going to slowly and steadily fall to pieces around me while I am afraid to walk out my own fucking door to mow my own fucking front lawn. That’s what I get for having some faith and optimism and buying in the stupid fucking city which for some insane reason has raised my property taxes so high that my mortgage payment is now $200 a month higher now than when I bought the place 2 years ago. Gee thanks. No problem city tax authority! I am practically made of money, which is why I bought a house in the ghetto in the first place, as you might imagine. Can I get a fucking cop around here sometime for $200 a month? And now I am probably going to have to lay out $500 for a new fucking water heater to replace the piece of shit broken one I have that’s less than a year old. And that shit will probably break down by spring.

Seriously? Fuck the whole world.

Filed under: housing drama | Comments (13)

13 Responses to “Dear Total Shitbag Night: You Suck.”

Zansetsue on November 27, 2008 3:23 pm
That is, without a doubt, a total shitbag day and night. *hugs*
SuperBadGirl on November 27, 2008 7:19 pm
I think I lost one of the last pieces of my mind last night, for real. I don’t understand why:

A) All these shitty things keep piling up on me, more than your average bear.

or

B) Why all these similar sorts of shitty things happen to other people all day long and they can take it calmly and I can’t.

It’s got to be one of those. I think if it’s B) it’s because I never relax. I think that must be my fault somehow. Either how I am hardwired, or some victimhood thing I have.

Whichever, I remain a miserable person and I am even sick of being around myself.
Joseph on December 21, 2008 11:29 pm
I too made the mistake of buying a Whirlpool water heater. I purchased it in April 2008. The pilot light stopped lighting 2 or 3 days ago (It’s December 21st 2008 now). Absolutely unreal.

I read your story, what did you end up doing? Did you just get a new water heater?
SuperBadGirl on December 22, 2008 12:08 am
There’s a thing on the water heater that goes bad, it’s the gas flow valve. They will try to tell you it’s other stuff, but it’s the valve and they know it. Here’s what you do. Call Whirlpool’s hot water heater customer service line. Tell them you’re having Sears come out and repair it, and you need 1) an authorization number, and 2) for them to send you the part overnight. Once you have the authorization, call Sears (they’re an authorized Whirlpool repair place, even though they don’t sell these water heaters) and tell them you have the authorization number, then get scheduled for a repair person to come out. Once they’ve replaced that gas flow valve you should be OK. Knock on wood, mine’s been fine since then. But the authorization number is key. Without it, Sears won’t come out at all—but with it, they come out AND the $99 service call gets charged back to Whirlpool. They authorized/paid for 2 service calls for me without a peep, because they know damn well this is a design flaw in their water heaters. Good luck, let me know if I can give you more info.
Joseph on December 22, 2008 1:10 am
How many calls did it take for you to get this done? Were you on the phone with people in India or did you get someone in the states?
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/whirlpool_water_heaters.html
SuperBadGirl on December 22, 2008 7:26 am
How many phone calls? I would say somewhere around 15-20, not including calls to plumbing supply places. That would bring it closer to 30. The person who finally sent the correct part was in America, the rest of the time I spoke to Whirlpool people in India, or Sears people who sounded as if they were in America.
Joseph on January 4, 2009 10:38 pm
OK, so I called whirlpool on Friday and for whatever reason was able to get them to send a gas valve and got the authorization code for the service through Sears.

With that in mind I noticed you mentioned 2 service calls. Did they replace something twice?

thanks,
Joseph on January 4, 2009 10:53 pm
crap, second question, from reading around on the internet do you need to drain the stupid water heater prior to them installing the new gas control valve? I’ll just have it done prior to the tech coming onsite to do the work if so.
SuperBadGirl on January 4, 2009 11:34 pm
The first guy who came said it was just a loose thermocoupler, and he got it to light. It went out 20 minutes after he left and took me another 4 days to get a second guy out to replace the gas valve, which was the real problem. With a faulty gas valve the service tech will be able to get it to light, it just won’t stay lit. Don’t fall for that, make sure that the gas valve is replaced, and that he stays long enough to make sure it’s really working.

And no, you don’t have to drain the water heater at all.
J on January 6, 2009 7:09 pm
I feel your pain (including the cramps)! I’m going through it AGAIN And this is the third appliance to go out on us in the last 30 days. We lost the computer part in a 5 yr old fridge, $400 to fix, lost a 5 yr old Maytag washer completely, $1,000+ to replace. This morning, our water heater (not even 2 yrs old) crapped out. I spoke to the same people in India that you did I’m sure. Both insisting that I pull out the orange wire. I couldn’t do it with reasonable effort and I’m afraid of blowing up the house, so I refused. They say I need a new ignitor switch, (even though they sent me one a year ago when I had the same problem). I called India back and the lady said they would have to charge me shipping on the gas flow valve… hold the bus! Not gonna happen. About $20 to get here the day before my technician is supposed to arrive. I told her to forget it. But if it turns out to be more than the ignition swith and I end up another week with nothing but cold water, I’m going to expect free labor since this lemon didn’t exactly come cheap. I was actully polite to her on the phone, but she was rather rude. (What a shitty job).

It’s crazy to spend so much money on appliances and then have to have them repaired every year or so. What happened to the good-old-days when appliances were simple, but lasted forever?
SuperBadGirl on January 6, 2009 8:00 pm
It is NOT going to be the ignition switch! All those things do is make a spark, they’re virtually impossible to break (unless they make you pull the wire out.) I would insist on the gas flow valve, this is a KNOWN issue, there’s been a class action lawsuit about it.

That sucks, particularly in this kind of weather. Best of luck to you.
Joseph on January 13, 2009 2:12 am
Allright. So last Thursday 01/08/09 the technician shows up and I have the gas valve for him to do the work.

He does the work, comes up and starts quasi- interrogating me about what troubleshooting steps Whirlpool had me perform prior to them sending me a part. I brushed it off and he stated: ” Well the thermocouple was loose , so i think that’s what it was, but i still replaced the gas valve”.

Right, what a load of BS. Either way the gas valve is now replaced and we’ll see how it goes. I have hot water for now. *sigh*
SuperBadGirl on January 13, 2009 7:28 am
Yeah, well I get he gets paid the same whether he’s sitting in the basement wiggling wires (thermocouple) or sitting in the basement doing actual work, like replacing the gas valve. I am sure he’d rather just wiggle some wires for 30 minutes. You saved yourself an extra week of aggravation.

(Knock on wood.) I haven’t had any issues since the gas valve was replaced.