Delivery woes

Our new washer/dryer arrived today. The delivery company called at 10 AM to make sure that I would be home to sign for it. By 12:30 the truck arrived and I got my first look at our $1000.00 washer... Not good. Right off the bat I noticed that the bottom of the washer was smashed in about 6-8 inches. I took off the piece and looked inside to see if anything important was damaged. It looked mostly cosmetic and being on the bottom I figured that I'd just bang it out and ignore it. We unloaded the unit and I started taking it out of the box. All of the Styrofoam on the left side was broken into small pieces. There was a small dent in the back, but I didn't notice anything major. The driver made a note of the damage on the delivery bill and started around the loop of the RV park to head off. I found a couple of bigger dents on the left side that were dented out instead of in... The driver made a note of the dents and got back in the truck. I figured that someone had dropped the unit on it's side hard enough to dent out the sheet metal, so I decided to take a quick look inside before the driver took off. Sure enough, all of the shipping bolts that hold the internal drum solid during shipping were literally sheared off. Someone had dropped the dryer from quite a height to break all 4 of the 1/4 inch bolts. I ran down the driveway and stopped the driver just as he was heading out of the parking lot. I had him take a look at the broken internal parts and then said what I should have said from the beginning. I refused it. The delivery guy loaded it back up, wrote "Refused" on my copy of the deliver slip and then headed out... As he was closing up the back of the truck he commented that it might be several weeks with the unit sitting outside the delivery company as they are quite back logged...

I spent the past hour on the phone with the company that I ordered the unit from. They wanted me to wait until the unit was returned to them with a claim number and then credit me back. Then I could order another one at that time. Optionally I could pay for yet another unit then wait for my credit. I argued that I should not be paying twice for something that already took over a week to be delivered and then arrived in pieces. After 1/2 hour of back and forth "let me check with the operations manager" kind of stuff they agreed to ship another unit right away so I wouldn't be charged twice or have to wait weeks for another one.

So, another week or two of doing laundry at the laundromat instead of in our own cozy home. I have my fingers crossed that it won't get as messy as the bike trailer incident...