Sunday, December 23, 2012

Dryer repair

Our dryer gradually stopped working. This time, we caved in and called the repair guy. Work is crazy busy, it has been raining a lot, and we had a bunch of wet sheets and clothes. And I had not experience with the dryer. (Had it been the summer vacation, then we could have probably made the attempt...

When I fixed the washing maching we ordered the part from Amazon.com and I fixed it myself. (We are now also watching the free films from the prime membership.) Total cost of the repair was under $100 for the part. Add in the prime membership, and it was less than $200 for the repair and a year's worth of videos.

This time, my wife called around for a while before she could find somebody that would come out on Monday. (The dryer broke on Thursday.) The Monday guy ended up with some space on the schedule and came Friday. So, we lucked out. They came, looked at the problem, replaced a $20 part, and gave us a bill for $200. Part + labor + service call charge.

The washing machine part was under $100 on Amazon put retails at places like Sears for around $200. It also looked like a more complex repair job. So, we would have been looking at $300-$400 for the second repair. And that would have come two months after the first repair, which would have been around $200. I think that series would have easily been enough to justify the purchase of a "low efficiency" dishwasher.

I guess this is what we get with the "iPod" generation. Stuff tends to be really cheap. Repair costs tend to be really high. So, instead of trying to get things to work better, we simply through them out and buy something new. Viva la waste. Ughh.

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