Consumers champions Which? have slammed products that are impossible or expensive to repair, highlighting a Beko washing machine in which to change the drum paddles you have to swap the complete tank unit on!
Which? reliability expert Matt Stevens says: ‘It’s madness that consumers are faced with repairs costing as much as a new machine. Manufacturers need to make machines that can be repaired cheaply and easily and need to share all of the information they hold about how to repair their machines with independent repair specialists.’
Many appliances we see these days have spares prices that make repair of them not viable to repair. Complete assemblies are supplied rather than just the actual parts that break or wear out, a very common example being motor carbon brushes where manufacturers list complete motors and do not make the carbon brushes available as a seperate spare part.
Also there are now electronic boards that have to be programmed with instructions that are either hard or impossible to get a hold of for cookers, dishwsasher and washing machines among other products. But still worse, there are some manufacturers such as Bosch and Miele that have electronic controls that can only be installed by them and they will not allow access to the required tools or information to allow anyone other than them to do it. This behaviour, in our opinion, is tantamount to holding customers to ransom.. pay up, take out a costly maintenance contract or buy a new one.
And yet many of these manufacturers, that are quite happy to see their products consigned to a recycling centre after a few years, also continue to preach the virtues of how energy efficient and supposedly “green” that their wares are.
It is, as Mr Stevens points out, madness!
But it would suit all manufacturers just fine if there were no repairs, but they will be only too happy to sell you a new appliance.
The article highlights a Beko washing machine model on which the plastic drum paddles cannot be changed, you have to remove and replace teh complete drum and tub unit! To replace a £5 spare part?
Many manufacturers would argue that they limit the avaialbility of technical information for safety reasons, citing that only qualified personel should be able to repair their products but we dont’ agree for several reasons. The most important being is that often the manufacturer engineers or agents are no more qualified than independent traders other than having had an in-house training course, there is no officially recognised standard other than that set by the manufacturer.
But, for customers there’s only one thing that really is of any great imprtance to know, if we cannot repair it and we’re professionals, what chance does a customer have that wants to repair their own domestic applaince? The answer is, none at all.
You can find an approved appliance repair company using our Engineer Search facitlity complete free of charge and often save a lot of money over using the OEM service and, in a lot of cases the companies listed there are OEM repair agents. Do be aware that when you call for service these days you will often be routed to a sales adviosor in a call centre that will try to sell you a maintenance contract or be pushed onto a fixed cost repair service, you can learn more about that from articles in the repair section.