Frustrating Doesn't Begin to Cover It

by wurbur

Submitted 07-02-21

clear No, I would not recommend this to a friend

www.ge.com

The trim plate is fine. It looks nice and matches the microwave. The problem is with the mounting hardware that installs the microwave in the cabinet and attaches the trim plate to the cabinet. Problem 1: the screws provided had a diameter larger than the holes on the bottom of the microwave to screw the mounting rails to the microwave. That's a major design and product testing failure. GE should be better. Certainly at this price. Problem 2: the plastic slots through which one must drop a (very short) screw into a corresponding hole on a plate beneath are designed so the screw inevitably misses the hole, lands sideways and rolls down into an inaccessible well within the trim plate. How difficult would it have been to design them so they do not open to a space that swallows the screw and doesn't want to give it back? Could it not have been designed to be a channel of just the right diameter to deliver the screw to the hole right-side up? Surely. Problem 3: I followed the directions very carefully as regards measuring and finding the center line of the cabinet opening to mount the upper bracket, and yet I still ended up with the upper screws off target by just enough to be impossible to screw in. And I only discovered this after I'd finally gotten the bottom screws attached. Color me enraged. Turns out it is difficult to unscrew those bottom screws once they are in place, too. So at the moment, I have the plate anchored on the bottom and loose on the top. Out roughly $200 on a project that has to be right if I'm ever to sell the house. And, of course, I'm now aware that microwaves are built to fail after 5-7 years, so undoubtedly I'll have to repeat this whole exercise in frustration again about the time I've forgotten how angry this has made me.