Stay Away From Viking

am frustrated!
My husband and I bought, what we thought was, our dream Range from Viking. It is a duel fuel, double electric oven, 4 gas burners, griddle and grill. The works! If you put wheels on this baby, you should be able to drive it for the cost. This has turned out to be a $15,000 nightmare. Our Duel Fuel self cleaning oven has never cleaned properly. Although we've had service come out, they told us to use a little elbow grease after we run the self cleaning cycle for better results. Are you kidding me!

Now, the latest and greatest problem is with our pre-heat board which fried(no pun intended) in our oven after a very loud and scary POP. We called Viking for repair and turns out they will not cover this under the warranty. A FACTORY DEFECTIVE circuit board on a $15K oven is not covered under warranty because we fall outside the one year mark?(18 months)!!! To top it off, we have been without our large oven since 2/28/05. I wonder if the lead-time on this board has anything to do with the amount repair requests they are getting?? I have made several calls including 3 with the Service Manager who denied the warranty work. I have left him messages with no return calls. I only speak with someone if I happen to catch them in their office. There is absolutely zero follow up, but that is to be expected if your service manager is leading by example.

Today, 4/4/05 after repeated messages, I decided to give Fred Carl, President of Viking, a call. I was immediately stopped in my tracks. No one wanted to put me through to his voice mail. Apparently, they are having Voice Mail issues today of all days. The interesting thing was I got a call back from Glen Hite who handles there complaints. I didn't ask for him or leave my number, but 10 minutes after trying to reach Mr.. Carl, my phone was ringing. They got my number from caller ID, which to my astonishment, was working today. Glen actually did everything possible to assist me and even called back when he said he would, but still came back with the same answer which was Not Covered. I did, however get reassured that the new board would be covered for 1 year once I pay to replace it. How nice of them!

Our inexpensive Electric GE worked for years without a hitch. Why did we buy this expensive piece of crap? I guess the old adage isn't really true: You don't get what you pay for with Viking, unless you want an oven that looks pretty, but doesn't work! Maybe that's the type of customer that Viking is catering to. Our advice: STAY AS FAR AWAY FROM VIKING AS YOU CAN! I suppose now my husband won't let me buy that matching dishwasher. See...Viking ALMOST had a repeat customer. (Key word is almost!)
Austin, TX