Why I Love Shopping Locally

This story starts a while ago...like this past summer. This area has very hard water. You really need a water softener or otherwise you start to get mineral deposits on everything. Our house came with one, but this summer it was starting to appear like it wasn't working so well.

My handy husband first thought he would look at it. He did everything he could to try and get it to work again. He cleaned it, took things apart, talked to technical support, but nothing worked. Finally he broke down and decided we needed to get a real technician to come and look at it.

Our water softener is a Kenmore brand from Sears. So he called their technical support and tried to make an appointment. However, the person that you make a service appointment said the technician is only in our areas on certain days and the technician will some between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. That is it. You cannot get them to come at 4 p.m. when we would be home at school and then don't come on Saturday. So, in October we made a appointment when we had a half day of school. But when technician called to make sure we were home, we were not yet, so we missed our service call. Thankfully, we didn't have to pay since he didn't come. But we didn't have another opprotunity to make an appointment until January, when we had time off of school at the new year. How do people with full time jobs all year do this?

By now our water softner display was reading "Error" which the manual said meant you needed to call for service. The service technicion came and we paid him $65 to tell us that it would be better just to get a new one, sine our water softener was about 10 years old, had already been serviced once, and it looked like the whole motor was going to give out soon. Of course, he gave us a cupoun to use for a new one.

But we were frustrated. We had been living with icky water for this long and it was such a hassel to get service and all of that. So after the service tech left, Wilbert and I decided to get a new water softener and to get it from a buisness in town. We went in yesterday to see what they had. The owner of buisiness, who is also a father of two of our students, showed us what he had and we said, "We'll take it." And then he said, "I will bring it over and install it tomorrow."

And in the next ten minutes, I will be able to do landry in nice, soft water. Even if it is a bit more expensive, the time saved in hassels and knowing that if we do need service, it can happen our schedule is great. I love shopping locally and supporting our local businesses.

Comments

Han said…

I don't have an email address for you. Can you send me a quick hello? hah04 at fsu dot edu

January 13, 2009 at 11:17 AM

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