Recently our refrigerator suddenly decided that it just didn’t want to pour water anymore! Well actually that’s not entirely true… the plastic actuator arm you push the cup against was so old it just snapped off, probably from hard water build-up. So you could still pour water… it just became incredibly painful trying to hold down a small sharp piece of plastic for 30 seconds.
But it’s just a piece of plastic right? No big deal, probably cheap to fix…
I’m always an advocate of shopping online and looking for a website article or YouTube video to see if something is a simple fix or at least something that a DIY’er can take on reasonably and tackle in an hour or so. This wasn’t the simplest repair, but it wasn’t the hardest by any stretch either. What surprised me though was how many resources were available for the exact problem I had – articles, videos, parts lists.
So lesson 1 here was to take 5-10 minutes to see if you can fix the problem on your own first. It may save you $80-$120 on having a technician having to visit your home. Not to mention all that time you spend waiting for them to show up (sometimes in those ridiculous 4-hour windows they give you).
Now that I knew how to fix it, I just had to find the right part.
Your appliance should always have a sticker on it somewhere with the serial number, brand name… basically any information that identifies the product. With that in hand, you should be able to either call the manufacturer or hop online and search the model number and part name.
Surprisingly (but not really) there are websites with full databases of all kinds of crazy parts. It took me about 15 minutes of searching and some cross-checking to make sure it was the correct part, but eventually, I found what I needed. The only problem – to my shock and horror as a frugal shopper – this 3-inch piece of plastic was selling for anywhere between $70-$90+tax on appliance parts websites! The piece did have two very small wires and a tiny plastic connector that goes into a circuit board… I assume those 1/2 cent pieces of plastic with pins justify the extra expense,,.
This wasn’t my first experience with highly overpriced appliance parts. We also had a plastic drawer crack on our old fridge and I spent a while searching for that part at a reasonable price. Molded plastic drawers usually run around $110 each, right? …Sigh
Lesson Two in this adventure was to simply stay determined. Check your local classifieds like Craigslist or Kijiji – sometimes you’ll be surprised what people are selling on there and the prices are usually lower than larger online retailers. Also, check places like Amazon as they have a lot of 3rd party retailers. Last, don’t forget about places like eBay. It’s amazing how many replica parts there are from China/Japan – just be sure to read reviews to make sure the quality is up to par.
I ended up finding what I needed for around $30 on Amazon, but unfortunately no shipping to Canada. So that didn’t quite work out, although it may for some people as there are some great ways to get products over the border using friends or renting U.S. post office boxes. Luckily I also found the part on eBay, which ended up costing $35 including shipping from the US and only took about a week to receive. Not bad at all. So to summarize:
Appliance Service Call $120 + Parts $80 = $200 + tax = $226
DIY Fix – FREE + Parts $35 = $35 (and some time)
Total Savings = $191
In the end, the total savings was about $120 on a service call, and I would imagine the part plus taxes would have been in the neighbourhood of $90. My cost total was $35 and about an hour and a half of time (but I’m cancelling that out with the satisfaction I got fixing it on my own) for a total savings of $191 after-tax money. That’s a full day’s work for many people so not too shabby at all!
