2/9/2012 Ice by the Bucketful…or Not

Yesterday afternoon our new portable ice maker arrived thanks to our friendly neighborhood Fed Ex driver. It seems like we all know him, he’s in the park everyday.

I was excited to rip open the box and pour the water in to get those ice cubes churning out. Not so fast Bob told me. We have to let the coolant settle. We did take it out of the box and it fit nicely where we wanted it until we noticed the fan/vent on the side next to the wall was an intake vent instead of an output vent. Well, this spot wasn’t going to work. Regardless, since it was only sitting anyway we left it there overnight.

After a pancake breakfast that Bob made for us it was time to check our new ice maker out. We briefly looked at the directions to make sure we knew what we were doing as far as set up was concerned. As I read them out loud we determined that we were good to go, GET THE WATER!

Water tank filled, its time to plug ‘er in and get those ice cubes started. We should have the first batch in 9 minutes.

Bob plugged it in and we just looked at each other. Whoa, this is LOUD! Really loud. We have several friends who have these portable ice makers and I didn’t ever recall having heard theirs at all unless they dropped cubes. This is strange. I called LaVon and asked her if hers was loud when they first started. Nope, not loud at all. Oh great!

I can equate the level of sound coming from this table top ice maker to a washing machine in the wash cycle. Much too loud for an ice maker.

We gave it a few minutes and I called the company. Press one if you want to speak to someone in English. Press two for French. Press three for Spanish. Press for Chi,,,I pressed one. Press one if this is your first time calling this company. Press tw….I pressed one. Press one if you are calling about an air conditioner, a room air conditioner or any other cooling device. I had to listen until I could press 4, for all other small appliances. Press one if you are calling to check on your already placed order. This time I had to listen to five options until I got to Press five for all other questions. What happened to the days when you called a company, a real life operator answered and you said, “Customer Service please”? A click of her finger later and you heard a ring and Voila’ there was a customer service rep. I want those days back! This press one, press three is not progress to me.

“Hello, this is Giselle, thank you for calling Haier today, I hope your day is going well” is what I heard in an unmistakable French accent. Oh great, I called France. “Hi Giselle, my brand new out of the box ice maker sounds like a washing machine.” Quickly, too quickly, she responded, “Yes, it will be noisy for 24 hours and then will settle down.” Really? Really Giselle? “Uh, ok thanks.” Click.

I went through the instructions booklet again and couldn’t find where it said our brand new out of the box was going to sound like a washing machine and that it was perfectly OK for it to be very loud.

Nah, I’m not buying it will be noisy for 24 hours and then settle down. I called back. Luckily I remembered the order of numbers that had to be pressed and didn’t have to listen to all the instructions again. This time I talked with Rinald. I told him what it sounded like and he said right away that it wasn’t supposed to do that and that they would be happy to replace it. All we had to do was peel the sticker off the back of the icemaker and attach it to the invoice and include 8 inches of cord starting at the plug, pack it all up and send it to New Jersey. In 15 days they’ll ship us a new one. Hmmmm,,,,we don’t have to return this one?

That didn’t sound right. I made a third call. This time I got Lisa. She did confirm the sending the eight inch cord length, the sticker and the invoice. So, that’s on the agenda for tomorrow.

In the meantime, we put the ice maker in the basement because it was making ice. Yes, we could still hear but it was muffled so we let it go.

So, ice by the bucketful? For a day anyway.