Almost, but not quite. When we left off, I had that altercation with the repair tech. The following Monday, I called the owner, who agreed that I still had a legitimate problem and he would order the new idler pulley, belt and bracket. One week later and no word, I contacted him again and was told that one of the parts was out of stock and they would have to order it from another supplier. Meantime I called Alliance and talked with a customer service rep. He was quite patient and helpful and suggested I find out where this servicer was ordering these parts and let him know. His take was that this was most unusual as there were plenty of these parts available.
Last Saturday, I went to the owner and got the information I needed. He was quite affable and reiterated that the parts should have been changed. Yesterday, I received a message from him saying that the part were back ordered indefinitely and that he spoke to "Kevin" (remember him???) again and he decided he agreed with Kevin that my problem was too much detergent. He went on to say that he would refund the amount of the original service call and that if I insisted on having someone do unnecessary repair work, I should call someone else. Finally, he pointed out that I should just run a load of hot water with 3 cups of bleach to fix the problem.
So, called Alliance again and reported this situation. The rep offered to send me the parts directly and suggested a few other servicers in my area. He also asked me to let him know the outcome and apologized for the entire incident. He was particularly disturbed by the fact that Kevin's original "repair" was to clean the existing idler pulley and spray it with WD-40. Anyway, I probably shouldn't have gone as far as I did with Ted's, but I had paid for the service call and figured I could give the old man a shot at correcting the situation. Unfortunately I didn't figure that Kevin was his son...
Hot water and 3 cups of bleach??? Really!!!!!
