Rheem Heating & Cooling Technical Support

When you call the Rheem Manufacturing Water/Heater Technical Support Center, you're greeted by an automated message system. The message system advises customers calling to receive diagnostic assistance to please have their model and serial number available, and states the following phone call may be recorded for quality or training purposes.

In addition to this, before presenting the phone menu, the message system interestingly offers a privacy notice. It states, "In connection with your providing us with your personal information, we must advise you that information about Rheem's practices regarding your personal information is located in Rheem's privacy notice, located on rheem.com."

(As a caller, I appreciate the transparency; although, it makes me wonder what happened in the first place for higher-ups to presumably deem such a disclaimer necessary in the first place.)

After these three statements, the phone menu is presented: press one if you're a homeowner needing assistance, and press two if you're a contractor or business partner. If you don't make a selection, the privacy disclaimer repeats for a second cycle, then the two options are presented once again. If you again don't make a selection, the message system says your phone call cannot be completed at this time and automatically terminates the call.

I dislike when phone messaging systems don't offer an immediate option to speak to a representative and/or terminate the call automatically. Regarding the former, such an option increases caller accessibility. Regarding the latter, a better option would be to automatically connect the caller to a representative for further assistance, again to increase caller accessibility.

I pressed option one, the option for homeowners, and clicked through a few options before a recording told me I was calling outside of business hours. So, ultimately, I wasn't able to get through to anyone and instead utilized Rheem's website. That felt like the safer option, honestly; I was rather put off by the opening privacy disclaimer, so perhaps it's for the best.