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jennm_gw

Ongoing Problems with my Bluestar Range

jennm
15 years ago

Well, I'm afraid that I now officially count as another frustrated Bluestar purchaser.

My 48" bluestar range was installed about 9 months ago, as we were completing our house renovation. I had chosen bluestar in significnat part because of the discussions on this site, and I purchased it from Eurostoves.

Once it was installed, the broiler didn't work, the simmer burner didn't light, the griddle didn't heat adequately, and the small oven was about 50 - 100 degrees below temperature.

I called Trevor at Eurostoves, who promptly contacted Bluestar. After Bluestar made initial contact with me, actually getting the repairman to come was something of an ordeal, but it's hardly worth going into those details now. FInally, after a couple of months, the repairman actually showed up.

Unfortunately, to call him incompetent would be unduly generous to him. He told me, for example, that the broiler worked fine, if I would just set the oven to 500 degrees instead of setting it to broil. "Look," he said, as he turned the oven on, and pointed me to the flames visible at the oven base -- he literally didn't realize that the broiler was at the TOP of the oven. He also put several deep scratches into my backsplash in the course of replacing the ignitor in the simmer burner. Not only had he never worked on a Bluestar, it wasn't clear to me he had any knowledge of ANY high end ranges!

At this point, I told him that I did not believe he had the necessary knowledge to work on the range. I emailed and phoned Matt Schutte, who to his credit phoned me back almost instantly and was extremely helpful and responsive. He agreed that this inept repairman should stop immediately, and he said he would arrange for another service to be used instead. Matt Schutte was both pleasant and repsonsive. I was impressed, especially because the earlier service person at Bluestar with whom I had dealt was rather dramatically non-responsive, so Matt's responsiveness was a welcome change. He even (appropriately) sent along a new backsplash piece to replace the one with the deep scratches caused by the repairman. 'Great! They stand by their products,' I thought to myself.

To make a too-long story short, the next repair service has indeed been terrific. I have no beef with them. The only problem is that I've been seeing them way too often! They repaired my simmer burner, my broiler, and modified my small oven temp. They repaired my griddle too, though frankly, it still heats very unevenly (and I also get uneven performance from my small oven).

But then the large oven stopped working! And the repair guy came back to fix it -- but now, days after his repair, it isn't working AGAIN!

So, all in all, I've had problems with 1 burner, the griddle, the broiler, the small oven and the main oven.

Still worse, Matt Schutte, who began his interactions with me in an extremely impressive way, has stopped responding to me. I phoned him two weeks ago when I first had my oven problem, and never heard back. I emailed him on Monday when the oven failed again after being repaired, and he has yet to respond in any way to either this phone call or this email. Needless to say, I am quite disappointed that he does not see fit even to respond.

My wonderful repair guy is due back at my house again this Saturday, He's squeezing me in knowing that I have 15 people for whom I'm cooking THanksgiving dinner. BUt frankly, this is ridiculous. At this point, I am kicking myself for not buying a Wolf range (which I had in my old house with which I never had a single problem).

To be fair, there are things I truly love about my Bluestar range. The 22K burners are great and now that the broiler works, I'm very happy with it. I like the size of the ovens, and when the large oven was working, I was pleased with it too.

But the real test of a company is how they respond to problems with their product. ON that score, Bluestar is greatly disappointing me.

I'd welcome any thoughts or advice on my saga -- or perhaps at least a few of you can learn from my experience!

-Jennifer

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