Recently, my gas dryer stopped working. I called a repair service. I waited two days before the ‘repairman’ came. He checked the dryer for a few minutes and then told me that I needed a new motor at a cost of $78.00. Since this expense would have completely wrecked my budget, I gave him a polite refusal and handed him $7.50 for his “house call.” My husband removed the motor that night, discovered that it was choked with lint, cleaned it out, and within half an hour had the dryer working again.
Some time before that we had had a similar experience with an air-conditioning unit. At that time, we were more naive and more desperate for the use of the air-conditioner, so we paid tor a new motor. We insisted on keeping the old motor however, and later on, a friend who knows about air-conditioners showed us what was wrong with the motor and how easily it could be repaired. He did it in less than five minutes.
I am infuriated with repair-service men who come out to ‘repair’ something but only know how to ‘replace’ it. Of course it is much easier to replace a broken part than repair it — it takes more skill to be able to fix something than to screw in a replacement — but it a repair-service doesn’t have men who can fix things, the men who come to service our appliances should have a more appropriate title. After all, consumers have won a truth-in-labeling law. Repair-service men should be truthfully labeled too. How about calling them replacemen?
This is an anecdote from the 1970’s. I wish appliance repairs were under 100 dollars, and that the base service call rate was still less than $10.
Lady M.
