July 9th, 2012
This is a copy of the letter i sent to the owner of this company:
My LG dishwasher stopped working the night of June 28th, 2012. It displayed a TE error code on the panel. I looked up the code on the LG website and it stated that it is a "Thermal Error" and that the water temp is too high, and to check wiring and to check the Thermistor.
As we were having company that weekend we needed it to be fixed asap. The morning of the 29th, I looked online for a registered LG service provider and your website came up.
I arranged to have a service done for that afternoon. Your servicemen arrived and began to examine the problem. They were told the information regarding the error code.
My wife had them call me at work after they arrived. They said that it would cost approx. $250 to fix the machine. I agreed to this work and price. An hour and a half later I received another call at work from them telling me that the “motherboard is fried and to replace it will cost $1000”. I thought this was a very expensive price for a repair (the same cost as an entirely new machine) and did not agree to them going ahead with such expensive work.
The next day I called both LG Canada and Sears Canada (where the unit was purchased) and enquired about the part. The 1st thing that both places asked me was which of the 3 parts needed to be changed. I told them I did not know. They told me to call you and ask. They also informed me that the price of the most expensive of the 3 was $145 for the part plus approx 1-2 hours labour. The other 2 parts were $45 and $65. They also informed me that the motherboard comes in 3 parts: heat control, machine control and light panel control.
I called your company back to ask for a more accurate diagnosis. I was told by your receptionist Nadia that I had already been given all the information I would need and that you are a private company and are allowed to charge whatever you want for repairs. I attempted to explain that I needed to know what specific part needed to be replaced but she was very frustrated with me and my questions. I asked her to call the service tech and just ask which part it was. She refused and asked me to email her the complaint. I told her I did not need to email her because I had just explained it all to her. She said she would find out.
After 4 hours I had no response so I called back. She was very angry that I had called back. She said that the worker had not responded to her email. I asked her again to call the worker and just ask him the quick question. She grew very angry with this and told me to not tell her how to run her business and to tell her what to do. At this point speaking to her was futile so I asked to speak to the manager. She claimed she was the manager. I then asked to speak to the owner and she claimed that she also owned the company.
The next day I awaited a call and of course, no call. I called back myself the following day and spoke to her again. She had no answer for me and said that despite charging me $282 for labour, a diagnosis was not done because I did not want the $1000 of work to be done. Does this make sense to you?
How can you know something will cost $1000 to fix if you do not know what part it is? If you are authorized to service LG appliances why do your service people not know about the 3 parts?(see below). How did they know which of the 3 motherboard components were broken?
A quick seach by myself online revealed: “This type of failure will require using an ohmmeter to check the value of the thermister. The thermister is located on the heater assembly mounted to the sump/motor and comes together as one part.
The thermister should ohm out between 11-14k ohms. If the thermister checks good I suspect a wiring harness problem. The thermister harness runs through the door area & has been known to cause problems. If the wiring harness & thermister check good you will need to replace the main control PCB.
I am writing to you, the company owner, as a company owner myself, to help correct this problem.
Sincerely,
