The Customer So Nice, I Got Called Twice

Repeat Appliance Repair CustomersNot only did I get my first repeat customer call, but it came from my first ever customer

It was for the same appliance that I serviced just a few weeks earlier – the good news is the problem was unrelated to my first
repair.

After the first call, this guy thought I was a genius, and I wanted to reinforce his opinion.  He said his Maytag Duet was severely out of balance and sounded like it was falling apart when you ran it.  I told him it seemed like he had a suspension problem and I would be happy to take a look at it.

Once in front of the machine, I was not sure exactly what I was looking for.  Wow, it made a huge racket when I tried to run it!

I took a deep breath and reminded myself that this is a mechanical failure, and so the problem should be physically identifiable. Sometimes I struggle with tracing electronic circuitry, but this should be very different to diagnose.

I opened up the bottom panel to look around. Bingo!  Right off the bat, I noticed a shock absorber dislodged and just hanging off the suspension.  It just clipped back into place and looked perfectly good and undamaged.  That was easy!

I continued to look around and hey, another one was dislodged and hanging off in the back.  Wow – two of three dislodged from their connectors.  No wonder this thing sounded like a couple of buses in a demolition derby!

I told the customer that they indeed had a suspension problem, but it was immediately repairable and wouldn’t need any expensive parts.  A suspension problem must have sounded bad because he was so relieved I could tell that he had been sweating it.

I went back and finished reassembling the washer.  I also cleaned out the filter basket in the pump, which had an assortment of coins, paperclips, and stuff.  I asked him where I could throw out the items just so he was aware that I had even done this extra step.

With everything assembled, I ran a test load and voila, running smoothly as a Swiss watch!  Now all that was left was to write up my invoice and enjoy feeling like that appliance genius that this customer thinks I am.