Mr. Fixit Man

About three weeks ago we turned our oven on and noticed a small fire through the glass window. Seems the heating element had cracked and the fire was the beginning of an electrical flame-out.

My wife hopped on the phone and found we could get the part and repair for about $100 at Sears (the oven is a Kenmore). I hopped on the Internet to see if we could get a better deal.

I found PartSelect.com, a vendor for thousands of appliance parts. On the website I was able to find our bad part (though it is listed as a Frigidaire part, which is probably a tip-off that our Kenmore is really made by Frigidaire). There was even a short blog-like entry from another consumer that had ordered the part and fixed her oven herself. Looks simple, I thought. So I ordered the part hoping to save myself about $70 (the part itself was $33, including shipping).

The part was to have arrived in three to five days. After eight days of crock-pot cooking and sandwiches, I traced our part through FedEx and found it that it was damaged during shipment and returned to the PartSelect warehouse in Morton, Illinois (about five hours drive from me). I called the PartSelect toll-free number and asked when they would send another. Their CS rep said that they had no knowledge of the part being returned (even though the FedEx shipping info was clear that it had been sent back and received). After being placed on hold for a few minutes, CS said that when a part is returned to their warehouse, it takes 2-3 weeks before it is catalogued. In other words, they had "no way of knowing" that I had not received my part.

On hold again. This time CS said that, though they could not verify the part had been received in the warehouse, they understood my need to fix the oven and would send another part out immediately, with no charge.

This they did, with the part arriving one day later (not the 3-5 days that the first order would have taken). Once received, I fixed my oven in 15 minutes without breaking a sweat or bleeding.

Grades:

• A+ for ease of repair
• B+ for website ease
• F for delivery -- When I received the second part, it was easy to see how the first had been damaged. It came in a flimsy cardboard box that was poorly taped and had no packaging material.
• C for customer service. The woman I spoke with was American and sympathetic. The company's inability to better track inventory is surprising.
• B overall. I would do it again to save the money, but it was not a perfect experience.