There Might Be a Cheaper Fix to Your Expensive Appliance Repair
Some appliances are more or less necessary to survival these days, like a refrigerator. Others, like dishwashers or laundry machines, save us a lot of time and personal labor. These appliances can be a significant investment in terms of money, but the time and effort they save is kind of priceless.
If there was just one initial cost to an appliance and you were set for life, that would be great. Unfortunately, like everything else in this world, appliances have a useful life span and eventually break down. And then you go through the rite of passage known as Finding Out How Much Appliance Repairs Cost, which is a number economists have defined as a lot. If your hair turns white when you get a repair quote on an appliance, don’t despair: There’s a much cheaper option for many appliance repairs.
Why repairs can be so expensive
What’s frustrating about repairing an appliance is that it’s essentially paying money to get back to zero, the situation you were in yesterday when your dishwasher wasn’t blinking an inscrutable error code and making a weird grinding noise. And the money you’re paying can be significant: The average cost to repair a major appliance like a dishwasher or a clothes dryer is about $175, and some appliances like an oven can cost as much as $500—which means the repair can cost as much as a new unit.
There are many reasons for these costs. Companies have to manufacture and warehouse replacement parts for a long, long time after introducing an appliance to the market, and that costs money. And the older an appliance gets, the harder it can be to find those parts, making them even more expensive. And then there’s labor, which averages between $50 and $150 an hour. That means that with some repairs, you’re already going to be $300 in the hole without even paying for a replacement part.
With some appliance parts, like small motors or mechanical items, your only option will be a repair professional or a replacement model. But many modern appliances malfunction because of failed control boards—essentially a circuit board that runs the mechanical bits of the appliance. The control board is kind of your appliance’s brain, and it can be one of the most expensive parts to replace. If you’re getting an error code on a display, it’s often a control board problem. And you can get control boards repaired through the mail—often for less than $100.
How to mail in the control board
Step one will be to identify the specific control board you need repaired, so you’ll need to know the model number of your appliance. If you kept the manual, you’re golden. If you didn’t, or inherited the appliance, there are some typical locations where model numbers are located. Home Depot’s appliance repair center can help you locate the model number if you’re not sure.
Once you have the model number, you can use Home Depot’s site or a site like PartSelect to look up the precise part number of your control board, then go to a mail-in repair site like Electronic Restore, Circuit Board Medics, or FixYourBoard.com to check on availability and price. Typically, repairs cost a flat fee between $70 and $100, plus shipping, so this can turn out to be a lot cheaper than hiring a professional.
Of course, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Handiness. These sorts of repairs require you to be handy enough to identify the part you’re looking for, remove it from your appliance, and then put it back. Home Depot’s Repair Clinic can be a great resource for this, but if you’re not comfortable doing this kind of stuff you’re better off hiring a pro despite the extra cost. There are also plenty of videos out there that will show you how to remove a control board from various appliances.
Certainty. Be sure to diagnose the problem correctly. Control board problems tend to show up with error codes on display panels or blinking lights on the appliance. If there appears to be a physical problem with the appliance—no gas to the burners in a stove, for example, or a dishwasher that runs but doesn’t drain properly—it’s probably not the control board that needs fixing.
No guarantees. The repair sites don’t make any wild promises of success; you might spend $100 on shipping them a control board only to be informed it can’t be repaired.
Keep in mind that if you’re handy enough to pull a control board from your appliance, you’re probably handy enough to replace other parts on your own. You can order parts from PartSelect, for example, for a relatively low cost compared to a repair call.