In February I noticed our microwave display had stuck pixels or whatever you call them on it.
I unplugged it and plugged it back in but it didn’t go away.
I kept an eye on it and within a few days it had gotten worse, so I contacted Panasonic.
Long story short, they told me I had to bring it into an authorized repair center, of which there are two in the entire state of Illinois. I guess I should consider myself lucky that due to where we live both were only 45 minutes away. Imagine if you lived downstate!
The one we were siding with was due east but it turns out the guy who does the repairs is technically retired so doesn’t keep a storefront and doesn’t work weekends. So we had to go with the one out west. We ended up dropping it off there on March 23rd.
Two weeks later they called to say they’d been using it, then unplugging it and plugging it back in for the last week but it wasn’t until the day before they called that the LCD weirdness finally showed up for them. According to them it wasn’t there after we had it unplugged for an extended period to bring it to them. They explained they don’t open up a unit until they can reproduce the error. So that’s all to say that now that they were finally able to see it, they would be opening it up and checking if maybe there was a loose connection or requires replacement parts and then they’d call with another update.
Another two weeks went by and the Panasonic authorized repair center called to say the issue wasn’t happening consistently, but they identified the part causing it. They checked all the parts places they’re authorized by Panasonic to use and none of them have that part. The repair place made it sound like Panasonic doesn’t make that part at all for repairs and suggested it’s because the model # is hard to locate and might be a Target exclusive.
I caught the fact that the woman who called said “they checked the parts sites last night”. Last night? But they should have opened up the unit and identified the part at least two weeks ago. I was so aggravated but said nothing.
We picked up the un-repaired microwave on April 25th and on the 29th I e-mailed Panasonic to ask them what they were going to do now to make things right. On May 6th they replied asking for a copy of the work order which I emailed them. They replied back a few days later stating they would be sending me a check and sure enough, they did. Not sure how they came to the total they did but by my calculations it was around $4 more than we paid, which isn’t enough compensation for all the time and gas we wasted, not to mention the aggravation going back and forth with them and their sad excuses for repair centers.
Needless to say, we will not be purchasing another Panasonic microwave, but will use this “free” one until we can no longer see the display.