Spare Part Faults

If you buy a spare part, doesn’t really matter where you buy it from being it us or anyone else and you think that the part you got is faulty then in all probability your assumption will probably be incorrect.

Spare parts like most products these days (including the appliances!) are produced in huge batches, even small runs are several scores if not hundreds and they all use the same molds, the same processes to put them together and so on meaning that to get a single one with a unique defect is such a remote possibility that we in the trade will discount it as being so close to impossible, it may as well be.

Normally where there’s a known issue we would halt the sale of a part as, if one’s faulty, they’re all faulty just due to the way they are produced.

There’s no point, to our way of thinking, of selling goods that you know are or could be a problem.

Some of this article people might think a bit crazy as, after all, we often advise people not to buy spare parts even although this is a site that sells spare parts. Crazy eh?

It may seem that way but it’s really not, we want people to order the correct parts and the ones that will save whatever issue they have. Ordering up the wrong parts or ones that aren’t needed is bonkers and just causes everyone grief and hassle and, we’d rather that our customers and ourselves avoided that.

Not doing that will cause stuff like detailed here where people will think they got a faulty spare part.

  Diagnosing What Spare Part You Need

One of the biggest factors in determining whether a spare part will, when replaced, cure a problem comes down to the person diagnosing the problem in the first place.

It’s all very well going online, finding what you think is the exact same problem and ordering up the same part then replacing it but, will it cure the problem with your appliance?

Sadly we often see people asking almost exactly that, along the lines of, “What part do I need to replace to cure ???? problem?”. The problem is of course that it doesn’t work like that, if only it were that simple and easy.

Without logical deduction and some work figuring out what the problem is it’s often not possible to give people answers to questions like that. Sure, we can take an educated guess at it but you are far better to use the forums and get the technicians to guide and advise you through diagnosing what the problem is before ordering up any parts.

If the diagnosis is wrong then the part won’t cure the problem and people will often incorrectly think that they have been supplied a faulty part when it wasn’t that component that was the issue in the first place.

  Spare Part Fails After A While

Okay so you replace a part and after a shorter time, say a few months or a year odds it fails again.

You’re annoyed and we get that but the chances of that happening all on its lonesome with no reason or underlying cause is, well remote.

Normally what you’ll find is that even if you replace the same part again it will fail again if the reason why it failed is not found and also resolved.

All components or spare parts are interdependent on one another and dependent on things all working correctly which means that one thing working right doesn’t mean all the rest is and if something else is busted or on the way out it can cause the early demise of some components.

Let’s give you a couple of examples of what we mean.

A fan element replaced in an oven fails again after a few months, it just splits and pops. The top cause for that happening is a fan motor not running correctly and so it doesn’t push enough air over the element, the element overheats and fails.

It’s got nothing to do with the part that was actually replaced.

Another is integrated door hinges and it applies to oven hinges as well. People replace one thinking that only one was needed and was faulty despite our constant nagging to replace both to save a little cash.

The other one is failing, it’s worn as well but might not have totally failed but, it’s going to be allowing the door to move off where it should be and that can strain the new hinge. Then the other one pops, it gets replaced but the one that was previously replaced is all bent out of shape as it’s been used with a faulty one and can fail prematurely.

Again, this is nothing to do with the replacement parts or the quality of them.

  Faults On Replacement Spare Parts

We are not saying that parts can’t be faulty, of course, they can but it is extremely rare and as we said, it’ll be all of them that will all be faulty in the same way.

The chances of getting a part and it has the exact same fault as you had previously, zero. We are sorry but that just doesn’t happen. If you experience this then you’ve got to look for the problem elsewhere as whatever part you’re replacing is not the cause of the issue.

  Guarantees On Parts

This is why guarantees on spare parts across the industry is a bit of a nightmare.

The field techs will warranty spare parts as they fit them and they should know what they’re doing and check the machine out thoroughly when they work on it. So they have a clue what’s needed and what else may fail or indeed be faulty.

Spare part vendors on the other hand don’t have that insight, all they can see is the faulty part at best if that.

Understanding that the chances of parts failing on install or after many months is extremely improbable and that something else is almost inevitably going to be the root cause is understood across the industry. Even the techs get it that, if the same thing fails again there’s sure to be another issue that has not been resolved.

This is the reason why spare parts often carry little to no warranty and when they are looked at by anyone technical they will often see immediately that there is almost no chance the problem wasn’t caused by another fault or failure.

This gives an issue in that, do you send another part to replace it only to have that fail again or, do you encourage the person to look for the root cause of the problem and actually resolve it?

The easy way for a customer service department is just to send a replacement and let it be, the customer is “happy” for a while but the problem will return and, then the person often thinks that there’s a problem with the part/s.

Or, you take the harder route and try to help the person get to the root of the problem and cure that and, hopefully, the entire issue far more permanently.

For us, the first is like a band-aid, solve the immediate problem but doesn’t cure the disease.

The second is harder and takes more time but we feel it’s a better service to the customer in the long run.

  We Are Helping You

If you skip here and only see this bit great but please take the time to read through this and other help articles on the site with spare parts and fault diagnosis as it may well save you money, time, and hassle.

We want to help you, we want you to repair your appliances with as little hassle as possible and we really don’t want to sell you stuff you don’t need. We are trying to give you as much information as we can to aid you in that.

Spare parts are not like buying finished products as we call them. They are specific to makes, models, and even production runs and they are reliant on all other things around them being right and working correctly.

Replacement also requires a degree of skill and logic in finding out what to replace on the part of the person doing that.

We will do our level best to help you but we would ask that you bear in mind the points made here.