Just curious....Were they sending the fan to you or to a local service company? If they were sending it directly to you, were you supposed to install it?

They're supposed to be sending it to me directly - I asked them if it was something I could install myself and they said "most likely". If it's simple, I prefer to do it myself than take time off from work to wait for a technician. Anyway, it's still not here, and I still have no responses to my emails or phone message. I'm so disappointed in their lack of professionalism.

It seems to me that the lack of professionalism is borne out as much by Capital not automatically arranging for a service professional to handle the problem as by not sending the part to you in a timely manner. To say that you could "most likely" handle the repair yourself shows an attitude that one would not expect from a company that builds high end products. I think most manufacturers would insist on a professiional servicer handling a warranty repair of this nature.

I agree half and half with kitchenkat regards having the parts sent directly to a service company, having said that some fixes are easy and can be done by willing customer, where as some should not be handled by a customer, in the case where its an easy fix I don't see the problem sending the part to a customer directly to get the job done and fixed fast.

Of course the above statement requires the manufacturer to send the parts out FAST, in this case that clearly was not the case. From the description of by the OP's problem above this sounds like a service company would be needed.

Can I think of an excuses for Capital that will cover not returning calls or replying to emails or such a delay on sending parts to wherever .....NO.... I am sure even the Capital management would agree with me on that one.

If you have not heard from anyone yet or you don't have the parts in hand you can give me a call and I will do all I can to highlight your problem with Capital.

I am seriously considering buying a Culinarian soon and this does give me pause.

I hope this gets resolved quickly. I look forward to reading about a speedy resolution!

Thanks, Trevor, I appreciate the offer. I sent them another email today, so let's give them a little time to respond, and hopefully they'll step up and do the right thing.

As a factory representative of Capital Cooking, I sincerely apologize for the inconveniences and trepidations you have all recently experienced.
Capital is continuously striving to provide quality in both the products manufactured and the service provided to these products, both pre and post sale.
I am working with our service manager to determine what has happened and to resolve your specific issues as soon as possible and also to determine how our communication chain broke down so future incidents such as your, do not occur.

To zfrankle

I�ve been investigating your service experience and have found some of our stumbles.

After your call, our service manager input the order for your part... but forgot to process it. He�s an extremely competent individual and this is not the norm. Your parts have now been shipped and should arrive tomorrow. If you require help, please call for instructions on installation.

After reading that you e-mailed customer service I went to check and found that your message had not been received. This uncovered a problem with our e-mail server which was receiving e-mails but didn�t make them visible to service. This has now been resolved and we�re reviewing all e-mails from the time this occurred (including yours).

Phone responses have also been discussed internally and we will work to continuously improve our response time and etiquette.

I will continue to follow-up on all these matters and intend to fully convey Capitals commitment to quality.

Thank you very much for the follow up, JKCapital1321! I did get both an email and a phone message last night clarifying what happened, and notified that Capital overnighted the part to me.
I'm very happy to learn that this was just an isolated mistake, I was getting a bit worried there. It's great to see that you listen to your customers - everybody makes mistakes, what differentiates a great company is how they respond to them. I greatly appreciate it. Hopefully I'll be cooking by the weekend!

Ah, the power of the internet and GW in particular! LOL.

I take it since the intro of the Culinarian the volume of work has increased for everybody at Capital.

I am sure they are debating if this is just a temporary rush of orders or a new permanent higher level of sales. In which case they need to hire new people.

This is a problem all small companies experiencing rapid growth encounter.

As long as problems get resolved in a "reasonable" amount of time it is all good as far as I am concerned.

Well it is Friday the 13th, I should've expected this. As promised, Capital did send me the new fan. However, it is faulty - the fan is assembled so that the front part hits the electric transformer when it tries to turn.
The old fan was making a racket because three of its 4 securing tabs had broken off, and ALL the screws and bolts were gone, I assume somewhere within the bowels of the range.
How this can happen to a range that had never been used is beyond me. I can only guess that quality control from the fan supplier is very poor. Now I'm really worried - is my range safe to use at all? I called Capital again, but I guess they clear out at 5 sharp, because there was no answer. Doesn't look like II'll be cooking this weekend either.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2188/5716978207_51c57eabf9_s.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2216/5717543708_341f88ace9_s.jpg

Sorry, I messed up the photo upload. Will try to figure it out later.

The old fan, with only one of its 4 tabs:

the new one, where the fan hits:

That's a blower and it moves a lot of air (maybe 240 cfm). Not the fan next to the motor shown on the left of zfrankle's top pic--but the outlet of the part, facing down. That's a blower most often used on a stove or fireplace for heating a room.

It's probably cooling electronics. If that blower fails to cool the range (electronics, door, sides, back) under normal operation they probably have a hi-limit switch to shut everything down.

Where was the blower mounted?

That's correct Cassity, the blower itself is a cage type that runs the full length of the body, the part in the close up is the small fan outside the body. I believe its function is to cool the fan's own electric motor, but you can see that if it turned the blade would hit the black frame. As I understand it, this fan kicks in at temperatures above 300 degrees to cool the oven door latch. It's mounted in the back of the range above the oven cavity, blowing towards the front.

Probably not to cool the latch but the electronics and the door, knobs, knob control panel and steel panel under the door. I couldn't find any numbers on the Precision, but I'd guess that's the same fan used in the Culinarian to get an 89 degree door (oven at 350).

The bad thing about having a blower is that it's another part to fail and if it does the unit (at least the oven) will probably shut down as the unit relies on that blower to keep it cool.

The Capital CS rep told me the fan's purpose was to cool the latch; not sure if he was accurate or not. Had I known this cooling fan existed it would've made me think twice, because one of my goals was to buy a range with a minimum of things that could fail - I thought the convection fan was the only thing I had to worry about. There's no mention of this fan in Capital literature, and the salesman where I bought it didn't mention it. (not that you can expect salespeople to know every detail of every product) I just hope this gets resolved soon, I already had to throw out the roast I intended to make for the inaugural meal from this range.

zfrankle,

Whatever way they're locking the door, that mechanism has a motor and electronics and that's what the blower is cooling-that's what the rep meant-it's not cooling a metal latch per se.

That blower moves a lot of air so I would bet its job is to cool more than a door latch mechanism.

I agree 100% with you though, all things (roughly) equal I would have went with a range that has a minimum of things that could fail.

I would have also avoided self-clean. In my opinion that's the best way to kill your range. Very high temps (900 F) that make blowers necessary to make the unit safe.

I didn't want and would never use the self-clean feature, but that's the only model that comes with a rotisserie. That I'll definitely use. (once the thing gets fixed)

I think that's a wise move (not using self-clean).

Anyway, the best of luck to you.

I've had my Culinarian about 6 months now, and have needed service from Capital a few times, so I thought I should post my experiences.

So far I have been extremely pleased with the service and support I have received from the factory. As one of the first adopters of the Culinarian, I was not expecting perfection so the need for service was not surprising nor disappointing to me. One wheel bearing on one gliding rack was deffective, the factory quickly shipped two replacements. My ignitors needed to be adjusted, which was easy to do with guidance from Trevor. I still had a problem with one igniter that would click on simmer. The factory sent a technician to my house (I'm about 1-1/2 hr drive away fromt the factory with moderate traffic, much longer during rush hour) who replaced all four burner assemblies. More recently, after finally using my rotisserie, it stopped rotating after about 10 minutes. The factory sent a technician to my house to fix the problem. (zfrankel...he discovered a bad spot weld that failed on the doo-hickey that sits atop the motor shaft that is used to engage the down rod of the rotisserie assembly - the motor was rotating, but it could not translate that into rotisserie rotation. Because they designed it as an assembly, the entire motor needed to be replaced, which he did on the spot. Yes, I checked the appearance of the spot welds on the replacement, they looked fine!)

My dealings with Bob at the factory have been very pleasant. He has been prompt and informative. There was a mix up on one service call, the technician was sick and I was not notified. So I sat at home for nothing. Not good, but stuff happens. I must also say the support I have received from Trevor has been nothing short of outstanding.

That's just my experience, hope it helps. I remain very satisfied with my Culinarian.

Jon

The assumptions that the fan keeps the door latch cool is correct. It's the only electronic part within the range within the hot area above the oven. Unfortunately it appears that the cooling fans secondary blades were damaged during shipping. I will talk to service and notify them of this issue immediately and you're right, we should have scheduled for shipment prior to Friday the 13th!
FYI, The fan turns on when the area around the door latch reaches 140 degrees and is required by the safety standards to protect the electronic door lock.
We will work to resolve this right away. Sorry for the troubles this is causing.

Great to hear about Jon's exemplary service; it's good to live near the factory. I agree, Bob's been very responsive and helpful. Unfortunately (in terms of servicing a Capital at least), I live on the east coast, so everything is much slower, since the local service company has to wait for parts from CA. I'm still waiting, but hopefully it won't be much longer.

I'm disappointed to report that despite constant promises of swift action, nothing has been fixed yet. In the last email from Capital they apologized for the delay and promised that the local service rep would call me today to arrange a service time, but that hasn't happened. I'm now going on my fifth week without a working oven. Not sure what to do or who to turn to anymore.

@zfrankle. I understand your disappointment and apologize again. To update you on what has happened, a new fan, screws, and nuts were shipped to your servicer who should have contacted you upon receipt. Those parts were received by the servicer today (5/23/11) so our Service Manager will call in the morning to follow-up and find out what has happened. You should expect a call tomorrow. Once again, sorry for the inconvenience. We hope to have you up and running shortly!

JKCapital13211 is there a way I can contact you directly? I don't mean for every detail of this to be played out in a public forum, but I don't know how to reach you and I'm getting no results from the factory.
Your service manager did not call yesterday. Moreover, I called your servicer and they had no knowledge of having received any parts for me. So far everyone is very nice and expresses concern, but there has been no action taken, and it's unlikely that i will have a functioning oven in time for the holiday weekend, since we'd need to schedule the repairs around my work schedule, and there are only two days left.
Funny thing is that yours was the only appliance for which I did not get an extended warranty, because I thought your coverage was very good. Looks like I made an expensive mistake.

zfrankle..... This is ridicules, please give me a call today

I think I will keep my 11 year old stove. If I had to go through this with a new, expensive product I would deposit it on their doorstep and demand a refund. You can get better service from Lowe's.

trevorlawson,

Capital should put you on retainer for putting out fires for them on the gardenweb--you give it heck.

They're lucky they have you monitoring this forum.

If this unfortunate customer calls me I will fix the problem, if not there is not much can do.

Really I shouldn't not have to do anything, but sadly all manufacturers screw every now and again.

Hopefully me emails and calls have moved things along today.

Trevor,

I know you are also an American Range dealer.

Are you going to give the new open burner range from AR the full battery of test and let the chips fall where they may?

Thanks,

Sorry to do a one post Highjack but just this one.

Promise.

I think I will keep my 11 year old stove. If I had to go through this with a new, expensive product I would deposit it on their doorstep and demand a refund. You can get better service from Lowe's.

You can also get much worse service from Lowe's.

Try getting a replacement part for a Jenn-Air BBQ with a lifetime warranty that at the time was a Lowe's exclusive.

Try getting that part for under 5 phones calls and some nasty threats and strongly worded letters.

Nancy Pelosi has a better chance of being elected Gov of Texas.

But this Capital thing IS rediculous.

Hi Trevor, many thanks for your help. (I wish I had bought my Capital from you!) The local service agency did finally call and schedule the repair for today, so hopefully this will be behind us soon. And I greatly appreciate the support of the community here.
I don't think the Capital is a bad product by any means, (though I question their choice of fan suppliers) I think this whole thing is an unfortunate series of miscommunications, followed by a rather lax attitude towards arranging a repair. i.e. if someone has already waited weeks, don't ship small parts by ground across the country. That adds a minimum of another week. It's a good thing they have people like Trevor in their court.

I bought mine from Trevor and I had a small problem with the metal range knob. Bob from Capital called me after I spoke to Trevor. I will have new knob fittings sent to me.

@zfrankle. I hope today's service call finally resolved the issues you've experienced with your range. I'll make no excuses since we do understand that we dropped the ball here, but will promise that we've been working on taking steps to assist us in preventing this type of incident in the future. You will receive a follow-up call Friday to see how everything went.

A happy end: At long last, It's fixed! Thanks JKCapital13211, Trevor, and everyone who helped, I really do appreciate it. I understand that these things happen now and again; i'm very glad it's finally resolved and I can get down to cooking for the holiday weekend. Looking forward to many years of great meals from this range.

My issue is not directly related to the matter outlined above, but I sent an email to Capital on October 25 after two unanswered phone calls, making a simple inquiry regarding product specific information and to date have yet to receive a reply.

I'm about to purchase a Precision range, but now this thread has me thinking. Sure would have been nice to have received a timely response and removed any lingering doubt I had.

Not sure what to do now...

TominLA: Buy the Precision range and then fire Surjit Kalsi's bottom. Cause as a customer of Capital you are his boss.

Thanks, but that seems a bit extreme. Just an appropriate reply would suffice.

All in all, I think I'm going to move ahead with the Precision. I can get a GCR304 for $2999, and it seems a price that is too good for me to pass up.

Seriously tyguy, fire the president of a company because someone in customer service isn't being responsive enough. Maybe someone in customer service is lazy, or maybe they are just overwhelmed as their business is growing at a rate that they can no longer keep up. Surgit has even addressed some issues on this forum personally. I can't recall that happening with any other manufacturer. I got my CC in less than 2 weeks as they had it in stock at the the factory and it's LP. I hear there is a much longer lead time now. TominLA, the reputation of the Capital Precision is very good, and the only difference from the Culinarian is the burners. Watch some older episodes of chopped and look at how huge those sealed burner caps are, most of the flame goes up around the outside of the pan. That caused problems for many competitors. I think I would be very unhappy with those burners. If you could stretch the budget another thousand, I think you would be much happier with the CC or a BlueStar. I heard that American Range came out with an open burner residential range targeted for a lower price point. ARROB430N $2999 at AJMadison. The higest powered burners on the American Range are 25,000 btu and the oven will hold a full sized baking sheet just like a BlueStar. Yes, the open burners are so much better. Capital has all their owners manuals online on their website, so you may be able to find the information you were looking for there.

Lol....sorry...My sarcastic humour doesn't sit well.

At any rate, the American range is really fascinating me. The specs seem great, and I love the looks of it.

Trevor: have you investigated these units yet? It may be the new "best range in the US". (i am not being sarcastic here)

tyguy..... I have not seen the anyone report back here about the new AR open burner, in my experience with AR they make a good products, they are deeply entrenched in the Restaurant market so residential is a filler / second line.

The only problem I had with AR was delivery of products, off the top of my head I think I gave more money back to customers who's ranges and wall ovens never arrived than I made selling them.

As for the "Best in the US" comment (not taken sarcastically) if I test the AR open burner range and it is the best in the US overall, I will declare is as such and promote its as such, unlike many others on this site have no problem so called flip flopping to another range, I have no problem selling the best to my customers, When I do flip flop I do it so I can maintain my companies end goal "SELL THE BEST"

If I had my way / money I would get 15-20 of the most prolific posters on this site together in one room and design, build and test the ULTIMATE COOKING MACHINE, That way just maybe everyone would agree ....lol

Right now I will be sticking with what I know to be the best in the US ;).

> The only problem I had with AR was delivery of products, off the top of my head I think I gave more money back to customers who's ranges and wall ovens never arrived than I made selling them.

Definitely not good from your perspective. Maybe there has been changes?

> If I had my way / money I would get 15-20 of the most prolific posters on this site together in one room and design, build and test the ULTIMATE COOKING MACHINE, That way just maybe everyone would agree ....lol

If you do this, make sure the site is in MA. I could really use a nice visit to beautiful New England. Oh, and summer months please.

> Right now I will be sticking with what I know to be the best in the US ;).

I'm assuming we are talking BS here :)

Joking aside, I would love to see you investigate this range more.