CONSUMER DEFENSE: Our Panasorry nightmare

by Alan Robles
https://www.facebook.com/PanasonicGroup
https://www.facebook.com/PanasonicPhilippines

In 2016 we spent PHP33K on a @panasonicph ref. Now it stands in our garage, a derelict piece of useless junk, a monument to the unreliability of @panasonic products and services.

The ref lasted less than nine years. During that time we noticed a problem: the hi-tech vertical touch display strip in front of the door - the one that controlled refrigerator and freezer modes - would occasionally malfunction and not respond.

This year the @Panasonic ref started going really haywire - suddenly it would defrost, then restart, ignoring any presses on the control panel. Blotches appeared on the display, not an encouraging sign.

Knowing the warranty had long expired, this July we contacted the @Panasonic’s outsourced service center, which sent two technicians. After examining the ref, they said the motor and refrigerant were fine but the front display and gaskets needed replacement. They gave us a copy of their finding, charged us for the visit and said they’d be in touch.

We never heard from them again.

After waiting four months, in exasperation I Tweeted sarcastically about Panasonic’s non-service. Only then did a customer service rep contact me, initially asking for personal info so intrusive it seemed the only thing lacking was DNA samples.

Refusing to fill up the form, I instead provided her a copy of the repair report. She in turn contacted the outsourced service center which suddenly became attentive and promised to send two technicians with the required parts. But first: we had to make a deposit of PHP4,000.

While these exchanges were taking place, the increasingly deranged @Panasonic ref was slowly destroying our stock of food. We would try to reset it by unplugging and then replugging after an hour. Sometimes it worked. The deep freezer would stop, melt all its ice and then start again. In a few weeks it destroyed thousands of pesos of fresh and deep frozen foods - meat and fish, carefully hoarded frozen food, soup stocks and ham bones. For good measure it continuously discharged a foul smelling liquid from its bottom, spreading the stain on the kitchen floor.

We were unable to do more than store water in the thing, anything else would spoil in a few days. We couldn’t cook because we couldn’t store ingredients. Any food we ordered had to be eaten at once, we had no place to safely chill leftovers.

Finally, the Panasonic outsourced technicians arrived and they were quick. It took them only a few minutes to realize that not only had they brought insufficient gasket, but that they had brought a motherboard instead of a display panel. In short they had brought the wrong spare part. It apparently had been given to them by company headquarters, which hadn’t bothered to read the original report.

The punchline of this horrible joke? The technicians discovered only then that the key part, the display panel, was PHASED OUT in 2020. We weren’t informed of this in July. We wasted FIVE MONTHS waiting for an unresponsive @Panasonic company to tell us it couldn’t do anything.

And after all this? All that customer service did was shrug its shoulders and say, in effect, "sorry ha."

I recall reading Japanese consumer appliance companies have high standards of service. I guess @panasonic doesn't export those standards to Third World countries.

A decent company might have given us a discount on a new ref, or some compensation, but nope, we were told that’s not in their policy.

We have since bought a new ref. A different brand. NOT a @Panasonic. Who knows, it might turn out to be as problematic as @Panasonic. Maybe. But at least we have experience to know we will NEVER EVER get a Panasonic.

Although the call center did keep sending plenty of apologies via Twitter. “Our deepest apologies for the inconvenience caused” and “We are sorry we weren’t able to meet your expectation.” It sounded like AI reading straight out of a script.

The most sadistic was probably the message: “We are sorry to hear about your experience. If there’s anything more I can do to help please let me know”

After telling us there was nothing they could do, the customer rep/AI then said “is there anything else we can do?” If it’s AI it has a sense of humor. Panasonic, if only your refs were as consistently cold as your customer service.

What’s the takeaway? Before investing tens of thousands of pesos in a Panasonic ref, consider that in less than 10 years it could fail - all because one component was phased out. There’s no guarantee it will last years. There’s no guarantee that if it breaks down, the parts will be available. And there’s no guarantee that if you approach @Panasonic service, they will attend to you at all.

On the plus side, they will offer you lots of apologies. Lots of it. Maybe they should call themselves Panasorry

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