Thermador to the rescue

The dilemma:

A dinner party for eight is planned for Sunday evening, and one week prior to the event, the Thermador double ovens truly lose their minds.  This is made crystal clear when an attempt is made to prepare food in advance to freeze and the oven temperature begins to fluctuate by as much as 50 degrees, or more – in both directions from the set point.  Many ugly words, and ruined ingredients later, it is obvious that something has to be done, and soon.  For those of you who know us, it won’t be difficult to guess which of us went into total meltdown, and briefly considered taking a meat mallet to the oven doors…  After calming down and checking the web, we were not encouraged! All of the postings stated that the oven did not work properly and that Thermador was unresponsive to the problem; when we contacted Customer Support some time ago for a related problem, they were not at all helpful to say the least. We were undecided on exactly where to turn and we did not have much time to come up with a fix.

Our attempt to resolve the problem:

Initially, there did not seem to be a viable solution. We first looked at repairclinic.com for pointers on how to approach the problem. Their technical support crew sent us a list of tests to run to isolate the problem and offered a huge inventory of parts to purchase once we had identified the malfunctioning component. However, before we went down this road, it occurred to us that we should at least attempt to contact someone at Thermador for some assistance.  A detailed, and pointed e-mail was sent off, and much to our delight, we received a response on Tuesday.  In the following days, numerous people at Thermador became involved, and by the latter part of the week, we were moderately hopeful that a solution was in sight.  Although the local repair people did little to facilitate a “fix”, Thermador stuck with us, and sent out the needed parts via Fed Ex on Friday.

The solution:

At Thermador’s repeated insistence with the local appliance company, the repair did take place on Saturday.  By noon that day, the ovens were fully functional, and we were indebted to everyone at Thermador who played a role.  While we won’t name names (nor share e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers), everyone we were in contact with made an effort to resolve the problem to our satisfaction, and in time to entertain our guests.  Of all the customer support people we have spoken with over the years, no one can top the delightful person on the other end of the phone at Thermador.  We can’t thank them enough, and we were happy not to call the invitees and tell them that we were suddenly hosting a “bring your own toaster oven” event.

Now for the menu which we all enjoyed…  We decided on a grazing, tapas-style menu that included, among numerous other dishes, the Ham and Cheese in Puff Pastry from an earlier post; the Teriyaki Chicken Burgers that were done in miniature this time around, grilled on our pannini griddle, and drizzled with the Simple Aioli; a Black Bean Tart with Chili Crust, and much more.  We were inspired to turn dessert into a small Julia Child tribute in the form of dessert crepes with some wonderful orange butter.  In all, a successful end to a stressful week – thanks, Thermador!