When Incompetents Install Things (long)

So, I paid serious coin recently for a newly built home in a hip and happening area of Chicago. One of the features of this home was a washing machine and dryer. Doesn’t sound like much, but it was my being tired of having to block time out during the week to visit my high-rise’s laundry room that was part of the catalyst for my moving. (Well, that and a desire to have a back deck or back yard to grill in, and the limitations that the no pets rule in my building imposed on my blossoming relationship with a woman who has a dog. But laundry was a part of it.)

So, when we close, the laundry has not been hooked up. I call several times to try and get them over to install it, with no real response (other than vague “we’re on it”). Finally, after I say that I am going to call an installer to come out and do it, I get a call from the builder’s agent. (For reference, the builder’s real estate agent is the primary point of contact. I have never met the builder himself. He’s kind of like the Wizard of Oz, I think.) Builder’s agent (hereinafter SchmuckBoy) tells me that if I call an installer, I’m paying for it myself since the builder won’t reimburse. So I tell SchmuckBoy that the builder better get his people out here to fix it.

So, two workmen from the builder show up, only one of whom speaks English. They work for a while, and tell me that the washer is hooked up. Thinking that it is actually hooked up, I decide to test it with some laundry.

More background - this washer is one of them fancy front-loaders. It sprays water from the front, and then uses the rotation of the tub to soak the clothes through and spin them dry.

So I load it up, and start it going. When the wash cycle is complete, and I pull the clothes out, I notice that the ones on the top are bone dry. Not even a little damp.

Hm.

So, I try rerunning the load, this time staying to watch it. I notice that the tub doesn’t really so much spin, just sort of rocks back and forth. I test the tub, and notice that it has a rather short rotation. Kind of like something was holding it in place.

It’s about this time that I notice four plastic stoppers on top of the wash tub.

So, I RTFM (read the f***ing manual), and note that the unit shipped with these bolts in it that locked the tub during shipment. And these four stoppers were apparently intended to be put in the holes where the bolts were. The bolts were also cleverly desiged to hold the power cord for the washer, thus ensuring that you’d have to remove them in order to get the power cord out. The stoppers would then go in the holes.

Thinking I understand the problem, I call the builder’s workmen and get them to come out and finish the installation by putting the four stoppers where they’re supposed to go. (The unit is far too heavy for me to move on my own, and hey, it’s their job). They come and do so. I test the tub and notice that it now has a nice 360 degree of rotation. I am pleased.

Fast forward about a week or so, when we actually are out of clothes and need to do laundry. The Sicilian woman I live with goes down to do a load of laundry. After it’s done, she informs me that the clothes at the top are, once again, bone dry.

Merde.

So, we run it again. Water sprays in the front, but the tub would qualify for the Olympic standing there and doing nothing team.

So I assume that they’ve botched the installation yet again. After a terse voicemail message to SchmuckBoy and a terse conversation with the developer’s attorney, I inform them that I am not going to let the builder’s people come out and try a third time, and am instead going to call an installer from the appliance warehouse from which they purchased the unit to come out and do the job.

Installer came yesterday and tells me that the unit is hooked up fine, no kinks in the hose, no noticeable debris or blockage in the line, water is turned on, etc. I tell him the history, and he informs me that if the tub didn’t rotate fully when I ran the initial load after the first installation attempt, the shipping bolts were still in place. (which means that they took them out to get the power cord out, and put them back after the power cord was free). Apparently, it is not unheard of people doing the installation for builders to forget to take these bolts out. The upshot, however, is that when I ran the load with the bolts in place, I probably damaged the washer, possibly beyond repair.

So, thanks to the builder’s insistence on using his own incompetent people, I am now stuck with no washer. Meaning, that I paid a huge sum of money for my new home, and am forced to use a laundromat.

I am not a fan of my life right now.

Dahrlink, I have two ideas for you:

  1. Use your hard-won legal skills to threaten the developer within an inch of his life. Threaten him with the Attorney General’s office, the Better Business Bureau, and every other consumer rights organization you can think of. All this shit should have been taken care of ages ago, and certainly before closing. Several weeks later is totally unacceptable. If you’ve damaged anything unknowingly because HIS incompetent schmucks did something wrong, then it is HIS responsibility to make it right. Period.

  2. If you are ever again stuck with workmen at your house, and they don’t speak English, and you can’t communicate with them, then CALL ME. You know what languages I speak. Lots of Chicago workmen are Polish, and I don’t really speak any Polish, but I can sometimes make myself understood in Polish. One of the pluses of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe was that most Poles were required to study Russian in school.

If you have a newly built home, there should be some kind of warantee (i.e. they can’t install a broken appliance and say tough luck). I would follow Eva Luna’s advice and contact consumer rights organizations.

And don’t hate your life, you have a great new house (sans washer), a deck, a grill, and a good relationship; right?

And a cute dog. So I suppose it’s not all bad. But it’s damn annoying.

I’ve let SchmuckBoy know that this situation has arisen, but I’m not putting anything in writing until I have a dollar amount to quote him, as well as a diagnostic from the technician. Which will tell me, among other things, if the scenario I described is plausible. But it seems to be what best fits the facts.

Damn, the title of this thread is not
When Incompetents Install Thongs
Would’ve been more fun than a busted washing machine !

If it makes you feel better, the same thing happened to us when we bought a brand-new house. We figured that if we bought all the appliances through the builder (at outrageously marked up prices), then at least we wouldn’t have to wait around for weeks afterwards to have them delivered/installed by other vendors.

In the end, our oven was a week late, they left the shipping bracket on our washer (which we didn’t realize until we’d tried to use it a few times), they seriously screwed up the installation of our dishwasher, and we have a township-mandated indoor sprinkler system that’s still fubar’d almost three years later (every week, a new sprinkler head decides to start leaking – on the dining room table, the bed, the piano, etc.).

O, the joys of new construction. :slight_smile:

Well, one of my favorite things in the “what the hell were they thinking” category is in the third (guest) bedroom, where there are two closets, a small linen closet and a larger guest closet. The doors to each closet are a different color. Since they didn’t have the doors in at the time of closing, how would I have known.

Also the walk-in closet in the master bedroom. The door opens inwards, which renders about a third of the closet essentially unusable. (But we are having nice organizers put in next week which should hopefully alleviate the terrible space crunch we’re seeing in there.)

It just occurred to me that given the remainder of your history, even just the part I know, your plumbing is cursed. Well, better to have this kind of plumbing be cursed than the other kind. And I’m sure jeevfiancée would agree.

So how does one remove one’s plumbing curse? Anyone know a good mail-order source for plumbing voodoo dolls?

So, in the continuing saga of "My Builder Is So Lazy . . . "

We have a deck out behind our place facing out into the alley. This is where the fire escape and parking spaces are. Our deck is one floor above ground level, and underneath it (right now) is a sandy pit which we were promised would have gravel put in.

Yesterday, jeevfiancée comes home and finds that they’ve dumped a big ol pile of gravel in the parking spaces. Fortunately, not ours (probably only because our car was actually there), but this big ol’ pile actually extends out to partially block the fire escape stairs.

Yes, folks, they had the wherewithal to dump the gravel down, but not the inclination to take it the extra six feet required to deposit it under the deck.

Morons.