Knowing What I Know

“How do I know what I know?”

Well, I know that I know a lot of stuff. After all, I’m working on my Master’s degree. So, I can’t be that dim of a bulb, right? My education spans the last 19 years, which is by far the longest amount of time I’ve committed to anything, other than existing. The long and short of it is I know what I know because people have told me what I know. People whom I’ve viewed superior to me in experience and knowledge taught me everything I’ve learned so far from using sheetrock mud to calculating probability. Outside of my formal education, I know most of what I know about pop culture, trends, and current events through the social media I use, like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

There wasn’t a whole lot going on on my feeds this dreary Sunday morning. A few friends were running in 5Ks, there was the occasional motivational quote or picture to get to the gym even with it being Sunday, and the government is in a partial shut down, so the tweeting interns were probably sent home without pay untill further notice and left the Democratic and Republicans to their own devices. However, there was one voice this morning that was louder than all the rest, and that was simply because the person it was attached to was pissed. Naturally, Facebook became their soapbox.  

This person had bought a fridge from a supposedly reputible appliance retailer—Sears—only a few months ago and woke up this morning to find that it had crapped out over night. A less than helpful call to customer service revealed it would be 10 days before service would arrive because well, there just wasn’t a high demand for a service tech in their area. Apparently, nobody else bought their fridge from Sears.

Scrolling to the end of the post, there were already several comments about poor customer service from Sears and similar experiences with other appliances from the retailer:

“We bought a matching front-loading washer/dryer in red from Sears. They delievered a red dryer and a white washer!”

 “I will never buy appliances from Sears again. Three of the four appliances I bought from Sears have had problems.”

Other users said that it took similar wait times, (10 days), or longer to get a service tech out to their homes to try and repair an appliance.

Normally, I would take what I read on social media sites with a grain of salt, but social media is known for being a sounding board for consumers. What friends and other users write and post on Facebook and other social media sites influences other friends’ and users’ purchasing decisions. A bad review from anyone on Facebook can spread like wildfire; case and point. So, let it be known that I will not be making any major appliance purchases from Sears either.