Customer Service

Just a brief note about a recent experience - not a good one - with customer service.

During the recent ice storm that hit southwest Missouri, I bit the bullet (OK mastercard bit, I'll just nibble at it.) and bought a generator. Our home was without power for 4 long days - how long? They must be more than 24 hours long when you have no heat, no running water, no power, using water out of an above-ground swimming pool (after you break the thick ice) to flush toilets and water animals.

I got home one evening with the generator and after dinner by lantern light, chores in the dark, I began to put it all together. Normally - and my wife can attest to this - I don't spend a whole lot of time with directions. But on something that could be potentially life-threatening if I do it wrong, out come the reading glasses and I peruse the fine-print. In this case maybe I shouldn't have.

This is a Coleman Powermate 5000 which has a Briggs and Stratton engine. Basically a generator is like a lawnmower without any blades and it somehow takes that motor energy and turns it into electricity. I followed every step in the manual to the letter and I get to this part about oil. having made a mistake once with another piece of expensive power equipment (putting in too much oil) I paid VERY close attention. I wanted to see exactly how much oil to put in. Short version of this part - you fill it up until you can see oil in the throat of the pipe where you put oil in. Have you ever tried to measure exactly 21 ounces out of a 32 ounce black plastic bottle? But the rub here is that the instructions that come with the engine say if temperatures are below 40 degrees, use synthetic oil. Well folks, the temp about now is somewhere in single digits and dropping. It is also about 10 p.m. on a Monday night which in addition to being Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday (God rest his soul.) is day three of a terrific ice storm that has perhaps 100,000+ people without power, businesses, schools, even gas stations are closed - and did I mention this is 10 p.m.? I have lots of 10W-30 oil, some 5W-30 oil but synthetic? I'm from Texas, OK? Down there synthetic oil is a four-letter word. My daddy, who taught me everything I know about cars (which is not very much - my fault; not his) but one thing he drummed into me was never use synthetic oil.

Plastered on the side of generator and in the manual is the 24/7 - 800 # for customer service. So I call Coleman. After listening to a few ads and some bad music, a gentleman comes on the line. I ask him about the synthetic oil thing and he says basically to use any good 5W or 10W oil I have. I mention to him about what the manual says and he responds with "I'm won't argue with Briggs and Stratton, so you'd better ask them." Of course B&S only has people answering their phones from about 8 - 5 Mon-Fri as if they were a bank or something. I call a couple of friends with knowledge of such things AND generators to ask their opinions and can I please, pretty please borrow some synthetic oil. No one is familiar with the syth oil dilemma and no one has any to lend.

Fearing that use of the wrong oil could damage my generator - it says so in the manual - I decide not to use regular. I start calling around to find some. Did I mention that it was now past 11 p.m. and the temp is dropping and we have no power, no heat, etc.?

A Wal-Mart 45 miles away (God Bless Sam Walton) has some and they will put some aside for me. My wife and I climb into the van and head to town. She is THAT eager to get out of the house after 2 days at this point of no power. We drive 45 minutes, venture inside and yes, waiting for me at customer service are three quarts of synthetic oil. Man is that stuff expensive! The good-ole boys in Texas should have started selling this stuff years ago. 45 minutes back home and I'm ready to fire up the genny.

Not quite. I have one more question for the Coleman Powermate people. Ringy-dingy. I get a different voice and this time no ads, no bad music. Why? This is their after hours answering service. It is now after midnight. While unfailingly polite, the young man who answered the phone knows less than me about generators and he is simply supposed to take names and numbers for call-backs tomorrow morning. I decide to take my chances without further advice.

Now I have to ask: I always thought 24/7 meant - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Not 18/7 or some other such numerical acronym.

Trust me - as soon as I had my internet back, Coleman got a piece of my e-mail mind. One - for not knowing exactly precisely what their own cotton-picking manuals said for their products and two for advertising a 24/7 line for help that is NOT. To their credit they got back to me in a day or so and you know what? The guy still said using regular oil was OK. So why does the manual say otherwise?

One post-script: a friend and co-worker had offered me the use of a generator but had to rescind when someone else needed it more badly than me. But then a day later it had to go to the shop because it wasn't working. The culprit? Most likely using regular oil at low temperatures.

Second post-script. The genny worked just fine but until I get some sort of connection, switch etc. that allows me to feed my power back into my house, I can use only extension cords and power just a few things. It was almost enough and fortunately we got power back within two days.