The Continuing Saga

courtesy of 123rf.com

The continuing saga of the freezer, that is.....

After my experience last week and having made an appointment for an AEG engineer to call back today, I was a little nervous that all would not go smoothly. I was reassured somewhat last night, when I received a  mobile text message to say the engineer would call between 1200 and 1500 today. As I had not been sleeping brilliantly this week, I was pleased that it gave me the chance to have a much needed lie-in this morning. As it was, I woke several times in the night and again at 7am, but turned over and went back to sleep.

I was woken rudely at 7.45am by someone hammering on the front door and ringing the doorbell at the same time. I jumped out of bed half zombie-like and got to the front door to discover an elderly AEG man, toolbag in hand, all ready for the repair. 

"I wasn't expecting you until at least 12 noon", I said bleary-eyed, showing him the text message on my phone.

He proceeded to mumble a very long monologue to the effect that AEG always give him a terrible schedule which basically covers the whole of London, Kent and Surrey. He can be in Twickenham one minute, Ashford, Kent the next call, then North London for the next call and so on. He spends his life travelling one long distance to another with little thought by those who arrange the schedule for how much time is needed, plus of course trying to deal with problem appliances inbetween. He had therefore decided, as his previous call-out was close to mine, he would put the two together and come earlier. He said he was planning to quit before Christmas and find work locally. He was no spring chicken, so I wondered what work he would find. He also  confirmed that the AEG telephone system was bad and even he had trouble getting through to talk to his managers.

He set out about dismantling my freezer to solve the problem - a blocked evaporator drain hole apparently. He also had to rearrange the hosing at the back to allow the water to flow freely from the freezer to the evaporator plate to allow self-defrosting (which my freezer was clearly not doing!) He worked fast, was a little gung-ho, ramming drawers back into the runners and I had to point out that he was about to sever the electrical cable, when pushing the freezer back into position. He was gone in less than an hour, on to his next long drive. I couldn't help feeling sorry for him.

The freezer is now plugged in and I am waiting for it to reach its -18C before I do a big shop to stock it up again. I'm not holding my breath. I'll wait a week or two before I really fill it up. I'm not that confident the problem is solved.......