Three days before Christmas, my washing machine died. I paid a guy $49.95 to come out and tell me what I already knew. It would cost more to fix the old clunker than to buy a new one.

Unfortunately, I had piles of laundry as yet unwashed, and we were leaving the next day to spend the holiday with my parents. I debated taking all our dirty clothes with us (a la college), but we already had so much stuff to haul there and would undoubtedly have as much to haul back that it just didn’t make sense. So I sent Ultimate Sportsfan on a quest for a new washer we could have delivered the next morning before we left.

It took him three tries, but he finally found a place who could deliver a washer the next day, and he bought us a nice new shiny one. The washer arrived on time, I did a couple of loads, and we were off. But when we returned and I tried to wash the remainder of the clothes, it wouldn’t agitate.

So I called customer service, who promptly told me they would send someone to fix it in 10 days. Ten days? What? I just bought a new washer to replace one that didn’t work, and now I was going to be 10 days without.

I have to say that normally I’m very nice to service people on the phone. I did phone solicitation in college, so I can appreciate politeness, but I threw a fit. I asked to talk to the manager and their supervisor and everyone I could until they promised to fix the washer the next day.

And the guy who came out did so in about 10 minutes.

But then it started making a loud squeaking noise. At first it was just kind of squeaking. I could ignore that, even though USF bought that washer because it was supposed to be super quiet. But as the days passed, the squeaking got louder. So loud, in fact, that we couldn’t hear the TV over it. So I called again and this time I was fine waiting a few days to have the machine repaired. It still washed clothes…just loudly.

But a day before my scheduled service appointment, the customer service people called and told me that I should cancel my appointment. The squeaking was normal and would go away with use. Well, I’d been using it at least once a day for 2 weeks, and it was getting worse not better. So I said no, I wanted to keep my appointment.

Can you believe the service person actually got mad at me? She was really miffed that I insisted on keeping my appointment. Is this customer service in the recession? Try to convince customers not to fix problems in new appliances that are under warranty and less than a month old?

The same guy came out again the next day, and he told me he saw a note that they had tried to dissuade me from having a service call. But as soon as he heard the squeaking, he knew something was wrong. Again, five minutes later, it was fixed.

So what’s your worst customer service story? I know there are some way worse than this!