Guest Room

General Electric Can Be A Dim Bulb

The Wizard

It would be difficult to find a business that is more profitable, prolific, ubiquitous, or more represented in American homes than General Electric.  Their management systems are legendary.  Jack Welch and his heir Jeff Immelt rule the nobility of business.  GE quality control systems such as Six Sigma, can operate flawlessly.  Wall Street appreciates how predictable their stock performs in concert with prescient annual and five year plans.  However, their inability to satisfy consumers' expectations that GE products will perform as advertised is becoming a huge canker on this capitalist rose.

Thousands of service records are 'mislaid' or magically evaporate into the ethers.  Remediation programs for defective products are loudly proclaimed to waiting walruses in the Bering Sea, but carefully hidden from irate consumers.  Judges advise GE's expensive attorneys to counsel their client to fulfill their legitimate responsibilities.  But the invitations to unhappy consumers to seek redress go into the ethers, to be read by orbiting astronauts.

One is left to think that General Electric can do anything they want; and they obviously don't want to be an icon of business ethics or responsibility.  General Electric performs its role of maximum consumer abuser with style and élan.  But when consumers - using the aggregate power of the internet -  communicate their  level of dissatisfaction for Wall Street to appreciate, only then will these 'titans' start paying attention.

The Wizard

Pearls of Wisdom

Variably known as the Samurai Appliance Repair Man or the Appliance Guru on his site FixItNow.com, Scott Brown and his  Master Appliantologists give sage  and hilarious advice to consumers looking for solutions to their appliance dilemmas.  Though an expert in all brands of appliances, Scott has a particular affection for GE.  Following is a proclamation he published that everyone can appreciate.

Scott M. Brown, MS, PE

First let me clarify for the ambulance chasers reading this, that the following is my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of German Shepherd dogs or small children.

Modern GE appliances are built with one thing in mind: making money.  That means cutting out unnecessary steps in manufacturing appliances like, oh, good engineering, using quality components, and implementing even minimal quality control.  Interestingly, their older stuff was pretty darn good and lasted way too long to be profitable.  GE corrected this design flaw by firing all their engineers and hiring migrant vegetable pickers to replace them.  Their new stuff does a much better job of making money for GE because of the new, shorter design life - 3 years vs. 20 years previously.  And they also make good targets.  I have personally pegged the timer knob on a GE washer from 200 yards away using a Browning 30-06 with a scope in the standing position!

Bottom line - stick with Maytag or Whirlpool and you can't go too wrong.

Samurai Appliance Repair Man Website:

We Invite You To Contribute!

We're not shy about expressing our opinions and if your emails are any measure, not only do most of you have opinions, some have a particular 'gift' for expressing them.  Since we have received so much enjoyment from many of your missives (more often laughing until we cried), and have been so extremely impressed with the opine talents of others, we would like to invite you to submit an Op-Ed pieces for the The Guest Room.  Your personal commentary, humor, essay, poem, creative video or photograph can be featured in the Guest Room.  Some ideas:

• describing your experience dealing with GE or the effects of living with a defective appliance (good, bad, or funny);
• commentary on GE as a corporation;
• the inconsistency between GE's public image vs. their behavior

All submissions become the property of BringGoodThingsToLife.org.  We reserve the right to edit content as necessary in keeping with (somewhat) good taste.  Your name and contact information is required in case we need to contact you.

Don't get tied up in knots trying to write the new War and Peace.  Make us laugh or make us think; just get our attention.  To submit a Guest Column, click HERE.  Good Luck!