Beware of the Fast, Cheap Appliance Fix

Authorized Appliance Repair Never Takes Shortcuts with your appliances.

However, you need to understand two important points about any proposed fast, cheap, shortcut in the world of appliance repair:

We recently had one customer who had a problem with their Viking refrigerator not cooling properly. They called us and another company out to give an estimate for the repair. Both technicians identified the problem as being a bad fuse on the inverter board. The other company’s technician offered to replace the blown fuse with a new one for $3.19 plus labor. We offered to replace the entire board for $800 plus our diagnostic fee.

At first, it might seem that the $3.19 repair is the obvious best choice. However, the Viking factory recommendation is to always replace the entire board when any parts malfunction. This helps ensure the reliable operation of the appliance in the future and saves the customer from the hassle of dealing with future malfunctions that are likely to arise from a bad board. Viking does not sell individual parts for the board; they only sell complete boards. This makes it impossible to perform a factory-authorized Viking refrigerator repair that will comply with the provisions of the warranty without installing a whole new board.

The other technician may not have known this or may not have cared. The new fuse he proposed buying came from a generic parts store such as Radio Shack, was not a factory-authorized part, and would have resulted in a non-authorized repair that could put the customer’s warranty coverage in jeopardy.

The best way to ensure you do not fall into the trap of gambling your warranty coverage and appliance performance, reliability, and service life on a cheap shortcut repair is to only use professional appliance repair companies like Authorized Appliance Repair for all your work. We will always recommend the factory-authorized solution to every problem and never compromise your appliances with non factory parts.