When it comes to household appliances, we all want them to work flawlessly without causing us any headaches. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case, and when something goes wrong, we need to call a professional technician to help us out. One such appliance that seems to cause a lot of problems is the stacked Electrolux washer and dryer system.
Recently, I was called out to a house on Shem Creek to take care of a leak in their Electrolux stack system. When I got there, I saw that their brand new hardwood floor was covered in water, and they were understandably upset. The problem with the Electrolux washer is that there is no way to run a diagnostic on it while it’s working, which makes it almost impossible to determine the source of the leak.
On older front-loading washers, there was a front access panel that could be easily removed so that the technician could watch the washer go through its cycles and see where it was leaking from. Unfortunately, the Electrolux system doesn’t have this feature. Instead, to access the interior of the machine, I had to remove the dryer from the top of the washer and then completely disconnect the machine and remove the hoses before I could even take the back off.
This is a huge problem because it makes it almost impossible to target the source of the leak directly. Instead, I had to make guesses about where it might be leaking from. This is not an ideal situation, especially since there are often multiple leaks in a washer.
The reason for this design is to prevent clients from working on their machines. Electrolux wants people to call professional technicians to advise them to buy a new machine instead of repairing it. However, as a professional technician, I expect to be able to access the machine with reasonable ease and reasonable access panels to the interior of the machine.
When I encounter machines like the Electrolux system that require ten times more work and effort to repair than I can reasonably charge for, I have to switch to commercial prices. This means that I charge $125 an hour, which is a lot more than I would charge for a typical repair.
Unfortunately, situations like this are not uncommon, and it’s important for consumers to consider access when they’re buying a machine. As a professional technician, I’m not required to adopt every headache that crosses my path. I’m there to make money on reasonable repairs and reasonable locations for reasonable people. When I encounter outliers from those conditions, the smart thing to do is to pass it off to my competition.
In this case, even though this was a client I’ve had for years and hope to keep for years to come, I had to explain what was going on and recommend that she call the people she bought the machine from. In my opinion, this machine will need to go to a shop to be worked on.
In conclusion, as a professional technician, my job is to help people solve their appliance problems. However, when I encounter machines like the stacked Electrolux system, which are almost impossible to diagnose and repair, I have to charge commercial prices. Consumers should be aware of the access requirements when they’re buying appliances and be prepared for the possibility that some machines are simply not worth repairing.
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