We recently purchased a town home (new construction) which came with brand new appliances that had been purchased at Sears, by the builder.

The other day, our dishwasher almost caught on fire...and the worse part is that our 19 month old son was not 10 feet away from the dishwasher when this happened.

I had started the dishwasher as I normally do and it was about 40 minutes or so into it's cycle. All of a sudden I heard this extremely loud clanking noise that sounded as though someone had stuck a metal utensil in the garbage disposal while it was running.

I ran into the kitchen to thick smoke, some ashes and a screaming child. I immediately called the Sears Repair line as the dishwasher is only 6 months old and is still under warranty, to see about getting someone out ASAP to look at the dishwasher to determine what was wrong and why it almost caught fire! It was on this call that I was told by a CSR that it would be 2 WEEKS before someone could come out to my home. No exceptions.

When my husband got home, he pulled out the dishwasher to look under the control panel at the bottom (where all the wiring is located) and discovered that the wiring was charred and all the components, as well as the cover were covered in a thick black soot.

Seeing this and realizing exactly how close the dishwasher came to catching fire, he contacted the same repair line that I had called earlier in the evening, in an attempt to have someone come out sooner than the 2 week appointment we were given.

It was on that call that my husband received the worst possible customer service. The reps my husband spoke to (including a manager) made absolutely no attempt whatsoever to accommodate an earlier appointment. They acted like robots whose very actions of talking and walking were controlled by a computer, as they explained they just couldn't do anything for us b/c there weren't any earlier appointments in the system sooner than 2 weeks.

The worst part is that when my husband explained his anger and frustration was due to the fact that we have a potentially volatile dishwasher sitting in our kitchen, that our 19 MONTH OLD SON, was sitting next to when this happened, and that he would like to get this resolved as soon as possible, the csr's demonstrated absolutely no empathy whatsoever.

What I want to say is that, god forbid, had something happened where our son was injured, I can insure that there would have been a lawsuit due to either the faultiness of the dishwasher or the installation, yet these customer service reps behaved as though that meant NOTHING to them.

In addition to the above, the csr's had the gall to tell my husband that he basically had to do all the leg work, that he would need to call back the following week to see if he could talk with a special recovery team that might be able to come out sooner. These people took absolutely no accountability for providing assistance to a customer.

I can say that we are a long-standing Sears customer, however, after this incident I can insure you that we will no longer be shopping at this store as we have been shown "how important" we are to Sears as customers.

Treat us as the valued customers we are and provide us with an earlier repair appointment. 2 weeks is a ridiculous amount of time to wait given the situation!