Warranty’s up on the Appliances!
Okay, so you know you’re taking your chances with the home appliances when the warranty period is up!
We bought a lovely self cleaning range when we built our new house three years ago. I used the self clean feature rarely, but I figured a couple of weeks before Christmas would be good time to give ‘er a good cleanout. So, I take the racks out, set the self clean for the minimum clean cycle, four hours, punch the start, and the door locks up like Fort Knox, and the temperature starts to climb on the digital display.
Great! I say, and I pull on my coat and grab my purse. I will put these four hours that I don’t have to spend oven cleaning to good use, that’s right, Christmas shopping! I tell Paul I’m leaving and he mumbles a reply between snores, and I head out the door to the local Walmart. ” Isn’t this marvellous” I think to myself. Oh the wonder of modern technology and labour saving devices!
Back at the old hacienda, Paul is shocked to consciousness by the shrieking of the fire alarm. He blunders awake, rubbing his eyes, only to realize that he can’t see across the kitchen for smoke. He jumps up, then skids to a stop in front of the oven, which is throwing off heat like the boiler on the smokeroom of the HMS Kyle! He sees through the soot on the glass oven door a small flame. Damn that Monday night lasagne! The sauce had been splutting like a field of miniature volcanoes and the spillover was now forming a blackened lava flow as it irrevocably burnt itself onto the bottom of the oven.
A thumping at the front door drew Paul away from the scene of the disaster as he greeted the local fire crew who were staging their giant pumper out by the front door. The neighbours were all out on their stoops in their pj’s and housecoats, wondering what all the commotion was about. Despite Paul’s assurances that all was well and that it was only a false alarm, the fire captain, dressed in full bunker gear, asked if he could inspect the house. Paul took him to the kitchen and had to physically restrain the man from smashing open the oven door with his fire axe. “Look, it’s nearly gone out.” he insisted grabbing the man by the arm and stopping him from having his way with the oven door.
Later that night.
I arrived back at the house at quarter to twelve, and smugly unloaded the packages and parcels from the back of the family car. I opened the front door and could smell the acrid odor of smoke. “Oh, yeah. The oven must have finished its cycle,” was all I thought as I packed away my treasures and headed to bed.
It wasn’t till the next morning when my next door neighbour, Wanda Nicholson called to make sure that we were all alright, that I realised that something unusual had occurred in my absense the night before. I noticed the instruction for the self clean oven was open on the kitchen counter to the warranty information page. Two years unlimited warranty. I wondered what Paul was looking that up for. Just then the phone rang, and picking up the receiver I recognized the voice of my long suffering husband, who suggested that I try the oven to see if it would heat up.
“What’s up with that?” I asked, not really wanting to hear his reply.
“Well, the firefighters who came to put out the fire in the oven last night said that sometimes the elements get overheated with a fire and the whole thing crumbles. But it might be covered under the warranty.”
“Wha? Fire?” my muddled brain was having trouble processing the new information.
“Yeah, and the next time you decide to turn on the self clean, check the oven for spillovers and stay home and watch it!” he advised. “You might get more than you bargained for for Christmas dinner.”
And so began the trials of the household appliances we were plagued with that year.
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