Ok, so I hadn't been feeling the love for my Ameda for a little while. Lately it just seemed like it wasn't up to snuff. I was only getting 11 or 12 ounces at work when I used to get 16 ounces easy. I cleaned everything and changed out some parts, but it still wasn't great.
Well, last Tuesday at the end of my second pumping session at work it all of a sudden made this loud whirring sound five or six times and then stopped altogether. Dead.
Damn.
Not knowing what else to do I called the customer service line. I explained what happened and let her listen to the whirring (it would do it six times and stop every time I turned it on). She said something about it being a known problem and that they would send me a new unit with overnight shipping and that I'd have it Thursday (they were getting a shipment in on Wednesday). They would have even paid for a rental for me, but there is no Ameda place anywhere near my zipcode. So I stopped at Walmart on the way home and picked up a little single electric to get me by (Evenflo Simply Go - that thing is so freaking loud!).
My new pump ended up not getting here until Friday because there was a delay. We had left to go out of town at 1:00 so I didn't even try my new pump until yesterday. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that it barely worked. I mean, the unit turned on, but there was barely any suction (at least compared to my old one). In 10 minutes of pumping both sides I got maybe 1.5 ounces. I should have easily have had 4 or 5 by that point.
Ugh.
So I hand expressed 4 ounces of milk and decided that I would just leave work at 4:00 and go home and pump with my loud ass single pump before picking the munchkin up from daycare.
I called customer service back and explained what was going on. She asked a bunch of questions, got the number off the bottom of the pump and had me try some things with the pump to check the suction. When I told her it just really wasn't working she said "I'm so sorry for the inconvenience - we'll send you a new unit and you should have it on Wednesday."
Wow. I honestly don't think that I have ever had such an easy experience with customer service.
Hopefully when the new unit gets here tomorrow it is awesome and has some stellar suction and I will go back to loving Ameda completely. But at least right now I am loving their customer service.
I've had to start helping my Ameda along recently.
ReplyDeleteHalf way through a session I'll have to squeeze the ladies to get all of the milk out. It's and intense pain in the butt, but I get 1-2 ounces more.
Oh yeah, I was already doing that. It could just be that I'm drying up, but I used to easily get 9 ounces my first pumping and another 6 or 7 the second time. Now I'm lucky to get 11 total. Keeping my fingers crossed that the new pump picks up the slack.
ReplyDeleteWOW! I'm glad that was such an easy replacement for you. I hope the new unit will work like a charm so that you can keep your pumping on schedule and ditch that noisy hand pump.
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