SOS: Veridian makes good on dryer repairs

College students squeezed by a massive housing shortage and surging rents are paying too much for moldy apartments, commuting long distances or sleeping in their cars to get an education — and that doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon. College students across the U.S. are looking for h…

Carolyn Jacobson hadn’t gone in for the extended warranty on the brand-new dryer that came with the brand-new house she purchased from Veridian in 2018.

But then she shouldn’t need one if her dryer was effectively breaking on the day it was installed.

Jacobson, 73, said her dryer had been failing to heat up (although it still tumbled) for many months by the time she decided to call the repair service for the retailer that Veridian had hired to install her home’s appliances before she moved in.

That repair service’s tech said he needed to order a part, Jacobson told SOS in a Sept. 18 email, but when a second tech arrived in early May, he noted that all the thermostats needed to replaced and, on further investigation, discovered that an improperly wired electrical outlet meant her situation could have been a lot worse than a dryer that doesn’t dry.

“He removed the cover of the wiring and found that one of three prongs was not attached,” she said. “He said this meant the electricity had been arcing and that I was very lucky to have had no fire. He said it was faulty installation and I should contact Veridian.”

The second tech made the repairs to the dryer caused by the wiring problem, Jacobson said, but by this time she’d paid for two service trip charges of $47.48 each and two service charges of $119.74 and $243.49.

So she took the tech’s advice and contacted Veridian, which sent out a tech for the company Veridian uses for electrical installations and this third tech — at no charge to her — got the wiring done right.

“He was very nice and helpful and attached the unattached prong,” Jacobson said. “He also said it was a faulty install and let me take a picture of it and his work order before he did his repairs.”

Jacobson understandably didn’t feel she should be responsible for the cost of the repairs to the dryer, given that Veridian’s first, faulty wiring job had made them necessary, but she said when she raised the possibility of reimbursement with the customer service rep, things got a little, um, hot.

Jacobson said the woman told her Veridian’s contractors should have been given the opportunity to make the repairs, to which Jacobson “tried to explain it was already too late because the dryer no longer worked and that there’s no way the average lay person without electrical knowledge ... would even know it was faulty wiring.”

SOS sent Jacobson’s story and documentation to Veridian marketing manager Chelsey Lammers, and she promised to look it and report back.

Which she did on Oct. 4: “It sounds like our warranty team is siding with the homeowner on this,” Lammers said “They are working to get things corrected in our system figuring out a way to make get he reimbursed.”

That way was figured by Oct. 16, when Lammers said Jacobson should expect “a check in the mail early next week.” On Oct. 24, Jacobson reported: “I have here a check cut by Veridian Homes PB, LLC in the amount of $458.19. Imagine that.”

“While we wish the situation had gone differently, when it was brought to our attention, we moved quickly to make it right with the homeowner,” Veridian production manager Eric Willman said in a statement. “We have learned from this situation and are doing our due diligence to avoid issues like this in the future.”

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College students squeezed by a massive housing shortage and surging rents are paying too much for moldy apartments, commuting long distances o…