claire.bickley in St. Catharines

We spent $16,000 on appliances at Tasco's Dundas St. and Winston Churchill showroom for our new home. Our $1300 Avantgarde wine fridge is a lemon, dead on arrival. After two months of asking for a credit or replacement, we've instead had two service calls and two part replacements and nothing has changed: the fridge heats the side set to the low temperature, chills the side set to high. Oh and if you fancy a high pitched alarm that can only be turned off by unplugging, then this is the unit for you! How naive were we to expect this could be simply and efficiently sorted by contacting Tasco? Our Tasco salesman took a week to reply and then - and repeated since - only to say it's on the manufacturer, not Tasco and we have to deal with them. Seriously? Zero standing behind the products you sell? FYI Tasco, other retailers have Customer Satisfaction guarantees under which they'll take the product back if the customer is not happy even if there's nothing technically wrong with it. The purchaser of a broken brand new product should be made whole by the seller. But because we were getting nowhere with them, we did contact Avantgarde directly. They said they'd arrange a service call. Five weeks later ... crickets. It took several more emails to Tasco and another direct call to Avantgarde to get someone out. The two service calls were by a third party service company. The second service call technician seemed unfamiliar with the product and spend most of his time calling in for assistance. Both times, a part was replaced. Nothing has been fixed. Interestingly, the only promising and prompt reply from Tasco to date was when I called them out publicly on Twitter. I guess they just wanted me to stop talking about them because their looking into it has amounted to ... zero response or followup. FYI if you're shopping for appliances: Goemans is also owned by them so consider whether you want to risk giving them your business as well. UPDATE: Situation resolved. Lemon collected and replacement delivered this a.m. Right fix but wrong process - 2 months of frustration and buck-passing ended only after I took my complaint public online. It makes me uneasy to think people who know how to leverage social media to publicly call out a company get results. What about everyone else? Review your after-purchase customer service practices, Tasco.

Significant renovations began the day after we moved into our 170-year-old home on Lake Ontario this fall. High on our list of To Dos was restoration of the original wide plank heart pine floors in the principal rooms, including in the dining room where newer hardwood had been laid on top. Our search for a specialist with extensive experience with and regard for historic properties led us to NewRidge. Great communication from the beginning: they were responsive to our questions and concerns and a comprehensive quote was delivered quickly. They did test strips to help us choose the floor colour, which we ultimately decided to change from orangey gold to a gorgeous grey. Having floors refinished is necessarily one of the most disruptive reno projects because of the need to remove all furniture and stay off the floors for hours at a time during each of the several stages. We only did the main floor in this phase 1 and were living in the house throughout construction. Duc worked cooperatively with our other trades to coordinate and was considerate in scheduling his visits to minimize our required absences. Every time I was offsite and texted him a question, Duc would respond literally within seconds. That he and his team are also great guys was a bonus. The floors are beautiful. Duc came back Christmas week to do the finishing touch - install custom-made and stained reducer strips between the kitchen tile and the dining room hardwood. When it's time for Phase 2 - the upstairs floors - we'll be calling NewRidge again.