Appliance Parts why are they So Much $$$

 When it comes to appliance parts the questions customers often have are:

 When it comes to appliance parts the questions customers often have are:

1: Why does this part cost as much or more, as the labor?
2: Why are you charging me four times as much as I can get it for   online?
3: What happens if this part does not fix the problem or if this part breaks down again?
4: Why does it take so long for an appliance part to be ordered. 
Read this short article that describes the reasons why answers to the above four questions are not as simple as we would like them to be. 

Repair People are their to Help You

When it comes to appliance part’s prices, installation, and availability it is important to keep a couple things in mind: appliance repair technicians did not build your machine. Appliance repair is much like auto repair, we fix what you or someone else broke. Repair is not as simple as reading a manual or plugging in a computer that tells you what is broken on an appliance. If you are in luck, a repair will not need a part at all, but if you are like the vast majority of people with a broken appliance, then your repair will either only work once a part has been replaced or will benefit greatly from a new part. For example, your appliance may not have a broken part, but your technician recommends a new part so that you can get longer use from your appliance or so that you can maximize the value from that in-person repair visit.  

1: Why does this part cost as much or more, as the labor?

We arrive at the biggest question when it comes to appliance repair vs replace or part cost vs labor cost. A technician often has to ask themself the question, “should I replace this part or just repair it?” It is similar to the way you, as the consumer, must make the financial decision to repair or replace your appliance as a whole. Owners of major appliances have many questions to consider when repairing or replacing appliances. I am going to tell you what a technician must consider when they are in your home faced with your broken appliance.  As an experienced technician, I often have to contend with many things aside from just fixing an appliance. Many times I have to consider things such as how long is this appliance going to last after I leave, is my customer convinced that their appliance is fixed, and is the replaced part really going to fixed the appliance. Because this is an article on parts, I will focus solely on the effect of parts and their impact on an appliance repair and how you, as a consumer, can either make the decision to repair your appliance as a DIY project or pay a professional to do the work for you. Saving money is not as simple as comparing two numbers and going with the price that is the least of the two options. There is a saying good work ain't cheap and cheap work ain't good. 

Let us compare a common repair on a common appliance. Everyone has a stove in their kitchen, be it gas or electric, and the part that most often fails on both of these major appliances are heating elements. Let’s say that your stove is no longer baking as it should. You have the decision of going to the department store and buying a new stove or taking some steps to figure out how to get your appliance back to its usual working order again. Unless you are made of money, you more than likely want to know why it is that your oven no longer works. So, you open up the oven and check if you see anything out of the ordinary. For one, you can see that the oven does not get hot when you turn it on; it is completely dead. Well, here is one of the key things I will tell you as a self-anointed technical person— your skills of observation are often directly proportional to your skills of fixing. That is to say, your ability to fix something is tied to your ability to tell to what degree it is broken. So, back to our example, your oven is not baking, and most ovens have a broil— is that working? How about your stovetop, is that working? Is your oven not baking at all, as in it is stone-cold, or is it just getting a little bit warm, but not enough?

When to fix & when to replace

These questions, and others like it, are all great questions that you can ask yourself to help you determine if you can fix the issue on your own or if you should call a professional or maybe even go ahead and buy a new appliance. But let’s get back to how this pertains to parts on your appliance repair. When faced with the question of repair vs replace the question you, as the owner of the appliance should ask yourself are: how often does this part break down; how difficult is it to replace; and lastly, how much does it cost to replace this item? The cost of replacing a bake element on a standard electric oven is about 20 dollars for the part itself, another 60 to 100 dollars in labor, and maybe a dispatch fee for a technician of another 100 dollars. I can tell you that replacing a bake element on most ovens is not a difficult task and takes about 20 minutes; it is the bread and butter of any repair shop because the part is cheap, the repair is straight forward, and the failure rate on a bake element is high. Bake elements fail often not because human civilization is in its infancy and we just cannot figure out how to make a good oven, but rather it is because the bake element, along with the heating elements on the stop top is the hardest working components in a stove. Everyone cooks at least once on a stove each and every day; so, things are going to break eventually. It is commons for ovens to need new heat elements because they do the most work. The question that you need to ask yourself is “do I repair or replace this bake element? Consider that you definitely should not repair anything that is meant to take wear and tear. For example, you do not repair the brake pads on your car, you replace them. As a matter of fact, when one of your wheels starts making a grinding noise, you take it to a mechanic who tells you that one of your breaks needs to be replaced. Under the advice of a professional, you go ahead and replace all the breaks necessary. Likewise, if you are going to take the time to replace one heating element on your stove you may as well save some money and replace all of them, or at least the ones that you can afford.  In summary, on the question of “should I repair or replace an appliance part,” the answer is to replace parts that are wear and tear items. Check out this list of wear and tear items. Table 124z********: Drain pumps, heating elements, door switches, anything that either carries a lot of currents. Or replace it if it is something that is likely reaching the end of its useful life and is hard to get to. For example, I may replace a drain motor that is five years old, even if I could remove a clog, and the homeowner would still get some use out of the existing drain pump. New parts are always going to be better than old parts for an appliance. The more appropriate question is would the homeowner be better served by a new part or not. That decision is better left to the homeowner. It is the job of a technician to provide the homeowner with as much information so that they can make the best decision. Keep reading so that you know what kind of information you should get from your technician.