In the 7 years I have owned my clothes washer and dryer, they have both needed repairs. The first set of repairs were covered by service plans that I purchased from the retailer. Although the value of the repairs paid for the cost of the service plan, both instances were far from fun.Both the washer and dryer required parts that needed to be ordered, so both repairs needed 2 visits to complete, with about 7 days in between. I am a fairly handy guy and the thought of waiting 7 additional days after the first visit was hard for me to swallow. If I did the work myself I would have cut the wait by 50% or better!
About 1.5 years ago the dryer was on the fritz again and started to emit a burning smell. Instead of calling the repair man I decided to open it up and see what I could do myself. You know what I found inside? It turns out the inside of a dryer is simple and not very hard to figure out at all. As a matter of fact, I was able to deduce the issue in less than an hour, and that’s with zero prior repair experience. I learned right then that not only could anybody do this, but I personally may never pay for a repair like this again.
That particular repair did not require any new parts, but even if it had, the experience would have been far superior to calling a serviceman and waiting a week or longer. With resources like Wiki for information and parts suppliers like ApplianceHelp, I cannot imagine that I will call for a repair again without first attempting to do it myself. And you know what? On top of saving time and money, it feels great to do it yourself and builds your home owner street cred!
