In March last year I wrote about how much we liked the Westpoint microwave we had bought a few months earlier. It replaced one which had become corroded and rusty inside; the interior surface looked more sturdy than the previous one, but we were careful to keep the door open after each use, to cover anything we cooked in it for more than a minute or two, and to dry it if there was obvious moisture inside.
And it kept working well...except for one little thing. The digital time display started to deteriorate. I suppose we'd had it for about nine months when the first bar, the bottom one at the right, started to vanish. At first it was just fainter than the rest, but over the course of a few days it disappeared entirely.
It wasn't a huge issue, just mildly annoying that, for instance, a digital 8 looked like a digital capital A, and a digital 3 looked like a backwards capital F. Then, a few months later, the top bar became fainter, and also vanished not long afterwards. I don't know why I didn't take a photo of this - I take photos of pretty much everything else, after all. The only one I can find is one I took of the whole kitchen when it was quite messy, so cropping to just the microwave makes it very poor quality:
But perhaps it's still clear that it should say 12:07 and the 7 just looks like a back-slash.
It was still under the standard two-year guarantee for appliances. Should we, we wondered, take it back to Superhome Centre where we had bought it? The trouble was, we use our microwave every day. Yes, I could reheat Richard's coffee in a pan over the stove. Yes, I could bake potatoes for a couple of hours, rather than for just 45 minutes after microwaving them. I could melt chocolate over a pan of hot water, I could thaw things from the freezer in the same way, though I'd have to be a bit more organised. I could possibly even cook frozen peas in a pan, though they're not as nice as microwaved.
But coming up to Christmas I knew I would want it for all kinds of things. And while I could find alternatives for many of them, I daily heat Lady Jane's wet food for 15 seconds in the microwave, since she gets stomach-ache if given wet food directly from the fridge. Any more and she finds it too hot. Any less, and she runs around crying for a couple of minutes after eating.
So we coped. It was only the last digit that was difficult to interpret, after all. I did try checking online to see if there was any possible troubleshooting, and learned that this is not an uncommon problem. I tried turning the microwave off and on again, but that made no difference.
And then the first digit started to go, too. By the time we returned from our UK visit in the first couple of weeks of April, we knew we had to get something done. This was clearly an ongoing problem, and we didn't want to wait until it was totally unreadable and (probably) out of guarantee.
So we chose a period when our guest flat was empty for a month, meaning we could use the guest flat microwave. We took it into Superhome, and explained the problem. They said they would have to send it back to the manufacturer's, and that it would likely take a couple of weeks. But they would send a text to Richard's phone, they told us.
Three weeks later, we had heard nothing. I looked at the paperwork we had been given, and saw to my horror that there was one digit incorrect on the phone number. So we went straight to the store, and explained the problem. We thought we might see our microwave, repaired, waiting to be collected.
Alas, this was not the case. The staff were friendly and helpful, but told us that the manufacturer had only collected the microwave ten days after we dropped it off, and that it would probably take another week. And we made sure they corrected the phone number.
A week later, we returned, having heard nothing. This time, the staff member on duty called the manufacturer, who told her that they were unable to repair the display, so they were giving us a replacement. We were a bit frustrated at the delay, and also at the waste - other than the display, it was working perfectly well, and was probably my favourite microwave so far. We said we needed it: that we were borrowing one, but had to return that. We had guests coming in just a week later, and they would need the guest flat microwave back.
No problem, they said, it would be there on Monday.
And still, we heard nothing.
By this time, it had been nearly five weeks since we dropped the microwave off. Under EU rules, it shouldn't take more than a month. If something under guarantee isn't repaired in that time, it must either be replaced or refunded. So we went in again, and were more assertive than previously. It wasn't there, and they didn't know why. In that case, we said, we need a refund.
The staff member on duty went to call someone higher up, who said that the store didn't offer refunds, but they would give us store credit for the amount we paid. We weren't entirely happy about that, but we do go there from time to time, and the credit didn't have an expiry date.
We checked whether they had any suitable alternatives in the shop, but they didn't. So we went round the corner to Stephanis, where they had exactly what we were looking for, at the same price. And it's a Samsung, a brand we know and tend to trust.
So the last one was with us for less than 18 months. We really hope this new microwave will be more reliable, and won't have any problems.
About three days after we bought the Samsung microwave, Richard had a text message from Superhome, telling him that our microwave was ready for collection. Apparently the fact that they had given us a refund in store credit hadn't been passed through the system. We decided to ignore the text rather than respond and try to explain. Since it was a new replacement rather than a repair, they should be able to sell it to someone else.
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