The following is another scenario that I run into a lot in the course of running an appliance repair service. Usually, it also involves a disgruntled customer who has just lost a fair amount of time and money. Sometimes they will have voided the warranty on their appliance as well. All of these are caused because the client tried to repair the problem with their appliance themselves.
Sometimes this is a good idea if the problem is only a minor one and your appliance is currently not under warranty. Keep in mind that most factory warranties are voided if you attempt to repair the appliance yourself before calling an authorized service representative, so if your do have a current warranty your best bet is to let an authorized tech take care of it.
If you don't have a warranty, you may be able to save some money by doing minor repairs yourself. On the other hand, you may also waste a good deal of time and money, something you may want to consider. Let me give you a few examples of these kinds of cases I've run into lately.
Not long ago, I ran into an individual who had voided the warranty on his range because he had attempted to fix a bad heating filament himself. He had pulled the range out and taken the back off before deciding to call the dealer who sold it to him. When the tech came out and saw the appliance had been dis-assembled, he informed the owner that the warranty was void. In addition, he flatly refused to work on the range because the home owner had already taken it apart, something a lot of appliance repair companies do.
Another example, last month I was called out to an expansive mansion on a local river. The owner was alocal contractor, obviously a very wealthy individual and one who was accustomed to working on things himself. His refrigerator's ice maker had recently gone on the blink and he had attempted to repair it himself. He had gone on YouTube, found out some of the most common causes, gone down to the local parts store and purchased a part he didn't need.
All together, he told me he'd spent about 4 hours of his weekend trying to fix the ice maker. He was not happy when I inquired what his time was worth by the hour, he said he normally billed out at about 95.00 per hour. So including the part, his attempt at repair had cost him around 450.00, and then he still had to pay me to perform the repair on the correct part.
Yesterday, I visited a young married couple whose mother had given them her old refrigerator, which had worked well for years except for one lower corner of the door seal which didn't close quite properly. The young man had ordered a new door seal which is usually about a hundred bucks and attempted to replace it. However, he had bent the door in several critical areas as he performed the replacement and when he had it back together, the door wouldn't seal at all and the refrigerator was shot.
Sadly there was nothing we could do to help him, you can order a replacement door seal but you can't order a new door. In addition, they had to pay us a service charge for coming out to look at and diagnose the refrigerator; a bad day all around.
While there are repairs you can easily take care of, replacing a busted water hose on your washer for example, many of the more complex repairs may be better off in the hands of a qualified technician.
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