I stopped by a friend’s house today to pick up Alex’s cousin, Roxanne. How were things going? “Better than last night,” Roxanne’s grandmother said, “when I had 12 members of the Cambridge Fire Department here.” What was the problem? “The Viking range caught on fire, some insulation internal to the stove,” she explained.
This is why a Viking costs ten times as much as a GE. You eventually get a new house with the Viking.
[My parents saw this posting and wrote that their next-door neighbor moved into a dream McMansion with a brand-new Viking refrigerator-freezer. It apparently required 13 service visits before they got it working.]
“No, it’s pillage *then* burn.”
Other bonuses of owning a Viking
1) one of the worst repair records
2) absolute inability to use low heat- 15000+ BTUs are great for heating water but tear apart your foods and pans. Oddly enough not quite hot enough to keep Chinese mother in laws from complaining about woks not getting hot enough to cook properly.
Have Roxanne’s mom look into a Thermador with the nifty low heat settings. They also have a rotten repair history per consumers reports but I personally have had no problems nor my 3 yuppie neighbors I talked into buying the same model.
My folks’ Subzero fridge sounds like that McViking – several trips out with a large time interval between trips. For ourselves, we got a COTS GE Arctica from Sears (no frills, just energy efficient) and it works great. It would make more sense to get two of those than a Subzero, in my estimation. Our GE dishwasher sucks, though, so I think you have to buy from their more expensive lines to get any quality.
@Cincy Steve – you can pick up a 110K BTU/hr jet burner for $80 or so from some of the Cajun cooking suppliers. That’s about enough to boil a gallon of water every two minutes.
I thought we got energy efficient fridge one as well. But it turns out that they are tested with the icemaker and water filter off. And to top if off manufacturers test them themselves without any oversight. So the official numbers mean diddley squat. Consumer Reports came out and plainly said that the Energy Star ratings are worthless. Example – 92% of dishwashers qualified.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/home-garden/resource-center/energy-star-has-lost-some-luster/overview/energy-star-ov.htm
Cincy Steve,
You should be grateful: if you are actually cooking with a wok at the proper temperature, you’re basically going to fill your house with smoke unless you have SERIOUS ventilation fans set up. Go to a Chinese kitchen store. All the fans are commercial, the one with the integrated microwave isn’t going to cut it.
The best way to do it is to put a turkey fryer burner out on the deck.
HaHa! We get to do some McMansion visits via friends and have to spend time and effort to get the high end applicances working/repaired.
The skiing at Sun Valley was great and the diving and snorkling in Hawaii was fun. At least the snow and ocean still works. We haven’t burned down the McMansions – Yet!