Our friend, JT, sent me a video the other day. It was in a scandinavian country, although they spoke English. It was about a chap who had a fully automated, voice controlled, house, which included his laundry, ironing, music, breakfast, schedule, and the opening and locking of his front door.
He went to the dentist and had some fillings, which meant his gums were numbed. It was raining on his return. The house couldn't recognise his gum-numbed voice and wouldn't let him in.(It was a bt more nuanced and a lot more funny than my synopsis suggests). Meanwhile, his neighbour came home and got straight into her house using a key.
The message was that sometimes simplicity is best.
I didn't phone Miele when the dishwasher errored. I tried the online system, which gave me 19th January as the first available date for an engineer. We tried the suggested remedy from an online search (from a sensible site), and got it working again.
A week later, the same thing happened. We wondered if it was our stacking technique causing the issue, so DH did the fix again, and the machine started working again. We took extra care in fillin gthe dishwaher, and we never left it on while we went to bed.
On Saturday morning, it did it again. Today I phoned Miele to book an engineer visit. The chap on the phone was really helpful, and it was quite painless. I'd amassed all the relevant info and dates, but he had it all on file. If I'd realised it was going to be so easy, I'd have called them the first time it happened. It's certainly made me reconsider my "effing Miele" stance. I gave them a score of 8 on their post call survey. I know it's not fixed yet, but the score was about how I felt as a result of the call I'd just made.
While I was sorting out stuff that was not working, I decided to contact SimpleHuman about my sensor soap dispenser.
I bought a really lovely dispenser last February. It is USB rechargeable, not too big, and worked really well. You can adjust the amount of soap dispensed just by where you put your hand: the nearer the spout, the less is dispensed. I liked it so much, a week later I bought a second one so we had one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom. We were very happy with both of them.
A few months later, we started having problems with the first one. It wouldn't turn on again after charging. It became erratic, snotting out soap when we hadn't asked for it. It would pretend to be turned off, and not want to turn on again after charging, and then it would snot on the table. We went through the suggested remedies, but no change. Eventually, it woudn't turn on at all after being charged, and I contacted Simple Human. They were great, and replaced it (with a different coloured model).
Recently, the second one has started playing up. We put it on to charge, it charges, and then it discharges rapidly. I have to make sure it is turned on before I take the charger plug off, otherwise it won't turn on. I thought it might just be that we use it a lot - it's in the kitchen so is used many many times a day - but the one in the bathroom goes aaaaaages between charges.
I tried putting it in the downstairs cloakroom, to see if it was that we were just using it too often in the kitchen. But no, it died in there after a couple of days as well.
So, I've contacted Simple Human to see if I can get it sorted out.
In the meantime, I've bought a battery operated version to use in the kitchen. It's a bulkier unit, not as pretty, holds less soap, but it works really well. When the other one is fixed or replaced, it won't be going in the kitchen.
Of course we could just use a normal, manual, contactfull pump. The idea was to reduce disposable plastic use and, of course, superior hygiene in the current climate.
If I hadn't been sorting out the dishwasher, I'm not sure I'd have bothered contacting Simple Human. Or maybe I would have done, when the unit failed completely.
When I was looking for the Simple Human inf relating to my last claim, I noticed the name of the lady who had responded to me. I wondered if it was an invented surname, a generic name used so that the user feels like they are chatting to a specific individual but actually it could be abyone from the help desk replying,
When I got the auto response today, I was interested to see that the surname had changed, although the first name was the same. I wondered about sending a friendly "by the way, congatulations on your marriage" message. Common sense prevailed. Maybe she's got divorced instead.
I've got more calls this week which require me to consolidate a lot of information, so I'd best get on.
Hope you are doing OK?
