Ok, I'm pissed. And disappointed in my employer.
The Gladiator Freezerator touts itself as a "second refrigerator." That's directly from the marketing material on the web site. And it looks like a traditional top mount refrigerator. A smaller, upper cavity where traditionally you'd find a freezer, and a larger lower cavity where you'd traditionally find a refrigeration compartment. Take a look at the site... wouldn't you agree?
Sorry, not the case. We left it plugged in for a couple of days. After all, we did read the manual on usage due to the nature of the product being designed for garage use. And it recommends to run for at least 24 hours before putting anything in to cool (and the manual uses the word "cool" as opposed to "freeze").
Today, my wife throws in our cokes and bottled water around noonish. By the time she gets home from the grocery store this evening at 10ish and goes to put stuff in the fridge, everything is frozen solid and the two cases of cokes have exploded. Pull out the manual, read it carefully, and finally on page 10 it does say that the lower compartment is for freezing only.
Hello? Maybe Gladiator/Whirlpool could have mentioned that in their marketing materials ya think? (For those that don't know, I do work in Whirlpool's Innovation and Technology organization). Or maybe something to make it obvious that the lower compartment is a freezer? Bad design, bad marketing, bad documentation. Disappointment all the way around. I'm a believer of the Tom Peters philosophy that misuse due to bad design is the manufacturer's fault, not the consumer's.
I'm dying to hear what Whirlpool's customer service reps have to say when my wife calls them on Monday! What sucks is that our customer care organization is chartered with making consumers happy due to problems creating by our engineering, manufacturing, and marketing organizations.
This type of outcome should not be acceptable at Whirlpool! My job as a leader is to embed that thinking into the organization.
I will say, the mess was easy to clean up =)
I will also say that the Executive Program that allows managers to get free product into the homes is not just a perq. In this case, I got to experience what a consumer really sees. I would love to see our call center data and see how many similar complaints have been received (Aaron, are you reading this???). That is assuming that we're selling very many Freezerators =)
Ah, I feel better. Now off to play some Rainbow Six and kill some terrorists.
