My elderly grandmother recently moved in with me, and I am fairly well responsible for 90% of her care. This has produced lots of unique challenges in my life, but the current one is just bullshit with icing on top.
For the last decade or so, because of congestive issues and other such stuff, she has slept in a recliner, and not a bed. If she lays flat, she cannot breathe. If she sits normally, edema builds up in her legs, badly.
Less than one year ago, seven months to be closer, she purchased a chair to the tune of about a thousand dollars from a furniture store where she lived in Connecticut. The chair that she purchased was specially designated for ‘medical’ lift chair use, and it was not cheap. One month ago, she moved to Vermont to live with me.
Shortly after that, the chair broke. The metal ‘arms’ that control the lift parts of the chair came off the welding, and need to be fixed. This was nearly a month ago. My mother immediately called the company that sold her the chair, because it was under warranty. Certain parts were guaranteed for 1 year, others 2 years, and other parts of the chair for life. The metal lift parts were guaranteed for life. We got the name and serial number of the chair, and the person we spoke to was supposed to call us back with the name of a place that services that make of chair in our area.
Three weeks later, they have nothing. We have emailed and called repeatedly. Each time they assure us they will rectify the problem. The last few days, the chair has ceased to work at all, the motor now completely blown from the overuse necessary to get the chair to recline at all with the broken arm.
My grandmother’s health is at stake. She is becoming ill because of all the edema buildup in her body. She is having trouble breathing. We are already in the process of taking care of her medically due to the move (which was on short notice for emergent reasons), and nobody seems to give a flying monkey fuck that she might die if she cannot get her chair fixed.
We were given the names of half a dozen furniture stores that have not carried or serviced her brand of chair for YEARS. Could it kill them to keep UPDATED FUCKING RECORDS? My mom spent all day on the phone crying in frustration and upset because her mother is ill and there’s nothing we can do except call these people over and over.
Finally, I went online and told my mom to let me search for the company. Within five minutes I had a phone number and contact at the company for customer service. After about 12 phone calls it was clear that there was no longer anyone in any kind of feasible range for us to get the chair fixed. No one fixes those chairs anymore. And it is less than a fucking year old. Everyone says ‘Oh, we stopped carrying /servicing those years ago’. The only reason I can come up with that everyone on the fucking planet stopped servicing these chairs is that they are rotten pieces of shit that constantly break down. Why else would nobody offer any service on them anymore? If even the fucking manufacturer of these pieces of shit can’t find someone to fix it, then it’s a grade-A super-failure fucking piece of steaming yak excrement. The least you could have done was call your customers that had bought that specific chair in the last year or so and tell them no one was fixing the goddamn chairs anymore so she could have traded it in for something that wasn’t a total piece of shit before they were simply fucked.
We have to buy a new chair. We’re going out at 8AM tomorrow to the closest store and bringing one home, because my poor grandmother’s legs are ballooning up and we don’t want her to die. She is already on blood thinners and diuretics and there’s nothing more any doctor can/will do for her. Buying this chair means that I am going to have to pull an extra 400$ out of my ass this month that I was not planning on. I can do it, but it is going to take some creative budgeting. Money is very very tight for us right now.
All because nobody will fix this fucking chair. Even if they could find someone to fix it, they were talking about possible weeks and/or months of waiting time, finding the parts, ordering the parts, and locating someone to come out and fix it. What happens when your customer’s HEALTH relies on the service of your fucking equipment, you fuckholes?
If they had just told us weeks ago that sorry, no one services these chairs anymore, at least we could have bought one before it started impacting her health. No, they had to dick us around for almost a month.
Fuck you and your customer service department. I’m sure it was annoying having to deal with us, but my mother was begging you to please help us find someone to fix the chair, for three weeks. She sees her mother suffering, and it kills her. And it kills me, too, because I have to watch it all happen, too.
My life is hard enough as it is, right now. I am surviving on two hours of sleep every day or two, because I spend all day long taking care of my grandmother, and I work all night. I am 26 years old with plenty of my own health issues, and I have no life or time to myself, but I am doing it because I love her and I want her last years on this earth to be as easy on her as possible. She wiped my ass more times than I can count when I was growing up, and she and her husband that recently died were the best grandparents I could ever have wished for. She deserves better than this.
All I can say is fuck you. I’m so tired and upset, I cannot even come up with more creative language.
It’s a complicated situation so if any clarification is needed feel free to ask. But since this is the pit, I figured it was good enough. And I’m tired. If there are any grammar/spelling mistakes, fuck me. Yesterday was my one day of the week to catch up on sleep, and my body was so used to being awake that it was physically impossible for me to sleep for a period longer than 30 minutes.
I’d like to hire a football team for a round of professional cunt-kicking.
I know bitching won’t help, but it sure as hell makes me feel better, so I thank the SDMB for that.
