This was a little unfortunate to read as today a person was telling me how she paid to have a company inspect a washing machine as they didn’t know what was wrong with it. Initially when she phoned the company they simply told her the repairman’s fee would be about one hundred dollars and the cost of parts. So she felt that was reasonable.
So today when the person arrived apparently they did narrow down the issue. The big problem was that the quote to fix it was around $600 or so. You could literally buy a new one for about $900. I was told one of the reason why it would cost more is how he would need an extra person to help him in order to physical move the machine to repair. So you need two workers. After thinking about it she decided it’s better just to get a new one. But she still had to pay for this visit which was over a hundred dollars.
That is a lot that could have been put towards getting a new one from the start. One thing I usually do whenever I request for services like these is I ask if I could see a price list of charges or what could theoretically be the highest repair fee at worst. That usually puts me in a better position to decide if it’s worth risking having someone look at it for hundreds of dollars or just treating it like there is a big sale in buying a new and better item.