Ken's Appliance & Services LLC — Attraction in Ames

I gave Ken’s Appliance and Services a rating of 1, however, I wish I could give a zero, or even a negative number. Please read on and you will understand why.

On Saturday March 30th, 2019 our KitchenAid refrigerator stopped cooling. We called Ken’s Appliance and Services and they came out to our house very quickly to look at the refrigerator. After running some tests, he determined that the refrigerator needed a new evaporator, and suggested that it would be easier for him to take it into his shop for the repair. He picked up our non-functioning refrigerator on April 3rd, 2019.

Since he was taking our refrigerator, he brought us a loaner ‘fridge for us to use, but originally wanted to put it in our garage rather than bring it into our kitchen. He finally agreed to bring it into the kitchen, but maybe in hindsight, that wasn’t such a good idea. The refrigerator he loaned us was absolutely filthy, both inside and out! The outside was covered with dust and dirt, and even worse, the inside was absolutely disgusting with spoiled food throughout the refrigerator! It took my wife most of a day to clean it enough so she was even remotely comfortable putting our food in the refrigerator. Ken hooked up the ice maker but it worked only intermittently, and when it did make ice, there were shards of metal in the ice cubes.

Ken said that the repairs would take 7-10 days, but the days turned into weeks, which turned into months! Every time we called for an update, he had a different excuse on why he couldn’t work on the refrigerator, the most creative being “it’s raining, so I can’t work on your refrigerator today”. We called the KitchenAid company on October 28th to complain but they were absolutely no help! I was told by the KitchenAid rep “Give the man a break. He’s 83 years old and he will eventually get it repaired. Just be patient”.

Finally, after I threatened to get my attorney involved, Ken finally delivered our repaired refrigerator back to us on December 9th, more than 8 months after he picked it up from our house!! And of course he chose to deliver it on the same day as the first snowstorm of the season, and the whole time his men were complaining that they had to bring the refrigerator into our house across a snow-covered driveway. Really!! You had all summer to deliver it back to our house and you choose the one day it was snowing and then you complain!

Please do not call Ken’s appliance for any sort of repair or purchase! Please learn from our mistake. The man should not be in business!!

2/17/2021 ADDENDUM: Two years after Ken finally fixed our ‘fridge, it stopped working once again. It turned out that the problem Ken supposedly fixed had broken once again. The repairman ordered the parts and was back at our house in 48 hours. He had the ‘fridge repaired in 2 hours. Compare this to Ken, who took 8 MONTHS to fix our ‘fridge the first time. NEVER, EVER let this man repair any...

They were nice people (4 of 5 stars), the rest of the experience was negative stars. If you need appliance service in Ames, IA better to call someone in Chicago, fly them over into DSM, get them a rental car, and even if they need to make another trip they'll solve your issue sooner than Ken's. Home Warranty required I use Ken's. Let's start with scheduling - took 3 phone calls to simply get on their schedule. They have no scheduling system for the 21st century (pretty sure it's a handwritten schedule). Took 5 days for first service call - couldn't replicate issue, so no fix. 10 days later same issue occurred. Took another 5 days for a service call, then minor fix done. Fix fails 10-15 days after 2nd service call. New part ordered, took 2 weeks, then 3rd service call was done a week or so afterwards (couple times rescheduling or no-showing with no phone call). Nice guy, but couldn't fix it. Ended up with filing for a replacement with home warranty, at which point Ken's is totally hands off. Total cycle time took 60 days, highly frustrating. If you're filing a warranty claim with Ken's... spare your trouble and hassle, go to Lowes and order a new one because you just don't want to deal with the headache... Again, nice people, but horribly managed business resulting in terrible...

Called a few days ahead and made an appointment for Friday morning to have our dishwasher looked at. It's a workday so I moved things around so I could be home between 10 a.m. and 1p.m. as they asked. I called a little after 11 to make sure I was still on the schedule. They said the guy had some personal business to attend to but was due in at noon and then would be right over. At 1:15, I gave up as I had to head in to work. I guess as one of the only appliance repair places in town, they have so much business they can afford to treat people this way.

-- Upgrading my original review from one star to three. A staffer followed up, apologized, and asked for a second chance. I rescheduled the appointment and the tech showed up within the period we'd agreed to. He diagnosed the problem and suggested either replacing the machine or swapping out the whole sump pump and motor module, which would have run $400 parts and labor. I ended up getting a used agitator pump on eBay for $35 and doing the job myself, which ran about $100 in total. Still, I get why they would recommend the larger replacement job on an old machine like ours. To sum up: I would call them again in a pinch. Good customer...