Unsuccessful Repairs

[Phidom]

I wondered what others do when they fix one fault only to discover a more expensive fault which rears it’s ugly head during subsequent testing. I had a job a few days ago on a 14 month old Ariston A1635UK. The machine was dead apart from the door locked LED, which stayed on regardless of whether the door was open or shut. I sent the module away to Re’Lectronics for repair and it came back making the correct sequences of flashes on the Power LED. Unfortunately, now I was able to do a functional test I discovered there is a motor fault, the drum just turns a tiny amount before to motor gives up the ghost. If I had repaired the module myself I would just charge a basic callout but I will have to pay for the subcontract repair. The customer has actually paid me the quoted amount for the module repair but I feel badly about accepting this money when she is still left with a defective machine that we now know is not worth repairing.

[Dave_Conway]

Re: Unsuccessful Repairs

This is a total pain to be honest and I saw it start to happen with our brown goods repairs about 10 years ago.

Power supply fault would render a TV/VHS totally dead, repair the power supply only to find another fault that may or may not have caused the power supply failure in the first place….

Now we have a similar scenario where almost all white appliances are electronically controlled, dead machine with a duff PCB, order a new PCB, fit it only to find subsequent faults elsewhere rendering the machine BER.

It’s not an easy one as Phidom says, morally you feel that you can’t charge the customer for parts fitted that may have resolved one problem only to reveal another more serious problem, but…….

…. if the manufacturers of the budget appliance that invariably this happens to as they give no protection to the electronic control unit then I would say we have to charge them, why should we loose out just because:

1/ the consumer has gone for the cheapest appliance on the shop floor

2/ the manufacturer has failed to install any protection for the control unit

I think in time the consumer will come around to the understanding that not all washing machines/dishwashers etc are all the same and “just buy the cheapest”, there will always be exceptions though 😉

What we have to remember at times is that the appliance belongs to the customer, they made the choice to buy it, it’s in their home, it’s their problem that it’s gone wrong, we are there to try and help resolve the problem for them which is what they are paying us for.

I learnt a lot from the Corgi process on “responsibilty of ownership” and who “owns” the problem, ultimately the customer does. That does not of course negate the issue of customer relationships which we are all well adept at handling 🙂

We as Independant repairers are by far and away the largest engineer workforce out there repairing appliances on a multi-brand basis, we do have some “clout” 😉

I’ll leave you to dwell on the last paragraph 😀

Thoughts please (this is a late/tired post) ?

Dave.

[Lawrence]

Re: Unsuccessful Repairs

This reminds me of a Smeg DwF 64SS I had not long ago ,Dishwasher Little under two years old two beeps and nothing ,Open circuit solenoid on the dispenser ,Lovely thinks I ,change the solenoid and lo and behold I get an immediate E8 diverter valve is absolutely jammed solid so I order the valve return to fit I then fit the valve only to find that the motor is knackered luckily the customer was watching my every step and understood that every time I cleared one fault I was presented with another ,I took the whole appliance in leu of callout in the end and stripped it for cosmetics now the Smeg is regarded as a premier brand but why they make them so complicated I will never know after all it only washes the dishes !

And as for your last paragraph Dave you are right but it seems the only people that don’t see it is some of the Work providers and manufacturers we deal with ,perhaps one day they may appreciate us more ,but I somehow doubt it ,its all about money at the end of the day
Lawrence

[Del]

Re: Unsuccessful Repairs

For god’s sake how much would it cost the manufacturers to inlclude a soddin fuse on the machines control or display pcb’s, a fraction of one penny probably.

Your right though dave the responsibility lies with the customer but we all know where the blame lies. 😉

Del

[Phidom]

Re: Unsuccessful Repairs

It’s not so bad when you have fitted new parts as you can take them out again and use them on another job (hopefully). In this case I have had the repair done on the customers board so I can’t put the machine back how I found it and just charge a minimum call-out.

[Martin]

Re: Unsuccessful Repairs

I had one earlier this year, a Bosch WFO2865 making a knocking noise as it started to spin. I was convinced it was the L/hand Damper. I ordered a replacement and returned and fitted it a couple of days later. Trouble was that the replacement Damper was a modification job involving drilling out the locking pin and replacing the unit with a special nut and bolt type fixing.

After completing the mod, I tested the machine and bu**er me the noise was still there 😕 😯

Not a clue what was causing the knock but had to charge the customer for my time and the new damper and they were left back at square one.

Very embarrassing 😳

[andy_art_trigg]

Re: Unsuccessful Repairs

I usually aim to cut my losses and not to profit from the situation. I usually charged cost price (or near to) it for parts that can’t be reclaimed and charge cut price labour. I just didn’t want to appear to profit from the situation – but there’s no justification for losing out either.

I would usually pre warn customers that I can’t guarantee that it won’t develop into a bigger job once I’ve got the machine up and running, and if it does, then the customer can decide whether to continue with the adjusted repair costs or cut their losses and scrap the machine – paying a reasonable amount to cover my costs.

That being said, pre warning customers that the cost could escalate is likely to put some customers off and cause many to decide against even trying. Therefore it boils down to a calculated risk on our part. We either pre warn, and can charge if it goes pear-shaped but risk losing some jobs, or don’t pre warn, and take a chance that the customer might refuse to pay with the ones that do go pear shaped.

If I feel I have misdiagnosed the fault, then unless I pre warned them I couldn’t guarantee it would fix it, I would not charge anything. My mistake shouldn’t cost customers anything.

[NWAR]

Re: Unsuccessful Repairs

andy_art_trigg wrote:I would usually pre warn customers that I can’t guarantee that it won’t develop into a bigger job once I’ve got the machine up and running, and if it does, then the customer can decide whether to continue with the adjusted repair costs or cut their losses and scrap the machine – paying a reasonable amount to cover my costs.

That’s the stance we tend to take, but as you say it can put some people off. As much as we hate to lose a potential customer we prefer to do it that way than get burned when it all goes pear-shaped.

It’s hard enough to scrape a living from this game without fighting with disgruntled/upset customers to get them to pay for a machine that still doesn’t work.

In the cases where we do find out after fitting a part that the appliance is BER we end up taking a hit on about half of them, with the other half just covering costs if we’re lucky.

Pretty much an occupational hazard and there’s no easy answer 🙁

You’ve just got to remember that you’re a business and not a charity and claim as much of your fee as you can, or as much as you feel comfortable charging under the circumstances.

Craig

[Phidom]

Re: Unsuccessful Repairs

Chatting to a colleague who sells secondhand spares, it seems my customer bought a motor from him and fitted it himself so the machine is now up and running. As with Andy, I don’t charge at all if I make a wrong diagnosis but once or twice I have walked away from a job rather than order an expensive part that I am not certain will cure the fault.

[andy2]

Re: Unsuccessful Repairs

Usually I ask the customer if the machine was working OK up to the present fault and that there were no other problems before ordering and fitting an expensive part.

If another underlying fault does manifest itself which they had omitted to tell you about then you do have some come back, although obviously this does not cover all circumstances.

Andy

[chalky]

Re: Unsuccessful Repairs

so i am not the only one 😳 🙄
good point about “responsibilty of ownership” and who “owns” the problem as I tend to take on all the responsibilty and as a result get very stressed 🙁

[Author]

Posts