http://www.aefactoryservice.com/ae_consumer/index.html

These guys are scammers.

We had a Whirlpool washer timer fail. My wife places a service call and someone from A&E Factory Service comes out and identifies that the timer has failed.

He then says the part isn’t in town and will have to order it. Even though they say on their website:

Fully-stocked vans with the most frequently used parts — Our goal is to do the job right the first time.

So, my wife pays for the call and the part on one check and he leaves and leaves a washer down for days.

I hear about this service call, and tell my wife to call around and see if she can find the part local. She does on her first try. I tell her to call back and cancel the part order. She goes and picks up the part less then 19 miles from the house and has a working washer again, same day. This is where it gets interesting.

She tells me they can’t cancel the part order. What? Seriously? In this day and age? You can’t cancel a part order?

So I call and speak with a Joe who is a supervisor. He tells me that they can cancel the part, but it isn’t in the system yet. He also says they order parts directly from Whirlpool for warranty reasons. I am to call back the next day and they will cancel the part.

So I call back the next day and get a completely different story. A&E Factory Service says they can’t cancel the part and that I have to call Whirlpool, remember they order directly from the manufacturer? I escalate as far as I can, and get denied at every level. At this point I am asking for a refund on the part, which they insist that I have to wait for the part to be delivered and then return it. What a waste to ship a part and then ship it back, when canceling the part order would have been easiest.

So I call Whirlpool to see if there is any way to cancel the part, since A&E Factory Service says they order directly from Whirlpool. Guess what, Whirlpool has no record of the order. What? Could A&E Factory Service have lied to me once more? After this many lies, what’s one more? I filed a formal complaint against A&E Factory Service with Whirlpool, but I am guessing that won’t go far.

Anyway, a couple days later the part arrives. Guess where from? A local address. Confirming that the service tech lied, the part shipped from a location less then 25 miles from my house. So, the tech lied, A&E Factory Service Customer Service lied about not being able to cancel an order, the supervisors lied about where the part was ordered and about giving me a refund.

End of story for now. We will see if I can get my $90+ back from A&E Factory Service for the part they shipped, especially considering we found the part locally for $70. What a scam.