I wanted to post to let you folks who are still stuck with one of these worthless... Well all of the adjectives have been used in previous posts. I bought mine almost five years ago and have gone through three regular thermocouples (And cleaned the screen as well as one can considering where it's located.) and one of the "reset" type thermocouples, (Obtained through the law suit settlement.) which is the last one that went out about two months ago. I would have posted earlier, but I've been doing all of the summer repairs around the house & hadn't thought about it in awhile.
It went out on a weekend and of course the Whirlpool help line isn't available, so it was stove heated water and cold showers until Monday, which I took off of work to deal with this nonsense. I had all of my information ready, Warranty, prior thermocouples, etc. and called the "Help Line." That's funny in and of its self. Started off with a gentleman in Dubai who wanted to send me a new thermocouple that would take days to get there unless I wanted to pay extra to overnight it. Told him that wasn't an option that I was going to take a hot shower that day come hell or high water and I wasn't interested in that option. After explaining my position several times, I asked for his supervisor. I then spoke to someone who sounded suspiciously like his brother & went through the same sequence of offers, my declining them and explaining my position & asked for his supervisor. I then spoke to someone with English as a first, as opposed to a second language & went through all I had been through before & I was insisting on being able to return it. To my surprise he gave me a Return Authorization Number without much more of an argument. I was told that I would need my receipt to return it to Lowe’s. He did say that they would only exchange it for credit, but I was determined not to do that! After a bit of digging (I save EVERY receipt for at least five years!
I found the receipt.
I drained that piece of junk, cut it out, threw it in the back of my truck, and went to the Lowe’s return desk with my truck parked outside. They very cheerfully
refunded my money and had someone go out and unload it. (They probably wanted to hide it as quickly as possible!
) It had been so long that they didn’t have the transaction in their system and rather than credit my debit card, they had to go through extra steps to give me cash! I promptly went to Menard’s and bought a Richmond (Rheem) 9-year model, brought it home and installed it. It’s extremely quiet, works great, with loads of hot water, and they even point out the fact that their air intake is about 1 foot off of the ground, so it doesn’t suck up dust and debris. It was a LONG day, but that first hot shower with my new Richmond water heater was heaven!
So there! Just wanted to let you folks who feel stuck with them; Take heart, you don’t have to be. Patience and persistence paid off & another Whirlpool anything will never darken my door again! It says something about the power and profit margin of large corporations that these companies can survive a multi-million dollar law suit and keep making junk, and keep making a profit.