The two most frequent questions I hear while on an appliance service call are 1) “How much is a new one?” and 2) “How long should appliances last?” I’ve already discussed the first question in the linked article and this pearl of appliance wisdom will answer the second one.

The notion that an appliance has a definite life-span after which it should be hauled off to the landfill is one that the savvy marketing departments of the appliance manufacturers have carefully implanted into that muck between our ears. One of the ways they do this is by talking about appliance life expectancy. Appliance manufacturers would have you believe that you should replace an appliance after a pre-determined number of years, regardless of brand, maintenance or myriad other life-extending factors. And they’re counting on the fact that most people are so inept at critical thinking that they never see this notion for the marketing tripe that it is.

But not so with you, intrepid grasshopper, for the Samurai shall reveal the truth unto thee. And the truth shall set you free.

Closer scrutiny of the phrase appliance life expectancy reveals a delicious ambiguity which the manufactures hope you’ll never take the time to fully examine. The first concept to master is that anything can be repaired–it’s just a matter of cost. Cost can be measured in Federal Reserve Notes (mistakenly referred to as “Dollars”) and it can be measured in hassle, time, and aggravation, collectively referred to as “aggra-dollars.” The very question, “How long should an appliance last?” seems to ignore the reality that appliances are composed of thousands of different electrical and mechanical parts made at different factories all over the world and slapped together in a Mexican sweat shop. Appliance life expectancy–if there really is such a thing–is the collective life expectancy of all these different parts. Appliances don’t die. An internal part breaks. And most of time, broken parts can be replaced cost-effectively. Given this, does it even make sense to ask, “How long should an appliance last?”

The correct model for appliance longevity is the appliance half-life for a particular type of appliance. Appliance half-life is defined as the number of years after which it would not be cost-effective to repair half of the appliances in the group. For example, if the half-life of all dryers is 13 years, this means that in a group of 10 dryers, all 13-years old, it would be cost-effective to repair only five of them. The other five would be too badly deteriorated from abuse, poor quality, heavy use…whatever, to cost-effectively repair them. I have repaired dozens of 25-year old Whirlpool dryers that only needed minor repairs. I’ve also seen 10-year old Whirlpool dryers that were so far gone and would have needed such extensive repairs that I recommended the customer buy a new one. By the way, I’ve also seen 4-year old GE dryers that were ready for the trash heap the day they were built.

The table below lists the appliance half-life of various types of major appliances. I adapted the data from the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) table of appliance life expectancies. As a Grand Master of Appliantology, I immediately saw through the deception of such a designation. And now, through the miracle of the internet, you can benefit from my keen insight and understand the real meaning of appliance half-life.

How to use this table. Suppose you have a 15-year old side-by-side refrigerator that breaks. You look up side-by-side fridges and see the half-life is 14 years. You correctly conclude that since your fridge is just past the half-life age, that you have a slightly less than 50% probability of making a successful repair. Armed with this information, you can make more informed decisions about whether or not to repair it (with personal guidance from yours so very truly, of course) or to buy a new one. Suppose, on the other hand, that your side-by-side fridge was just 10 years old. In this case, the chances for a successful repair are much higher than 50% and you can proceed with the repair, confident in a happy outcome.

Source: The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM)

Your appliance is broken and your repair quest has brought you to Fixitnow.com. Your knees wobble and your bowels rumble as you contemplate doing the repair yourself. Since he is omniscient (and he knows it), the Samurai hears your question before you even ask it: “What am I in for if I decide to do this repair myself?”

Introducing Samurai’s User-friendly Difficulty Scale (SUDS). Created just for Fixitnow.com Grasshoppers, the Samurai has developed a proprietary scale for rating the difficulty of appliance repairs. SUDS is based on the universally-understood six-pack: the more difficult a repair task is, the more suds it takes to get through it. So now, when I’m helping you do a repair, either in the Appliantology Group or in Live Help, I can quantify the difficulty of the repair task that lies before you using a scale we can all understand: SUDS. Simple. Intuitive. Fermented. That’s the Samurai Way.

After you complete your repair using the myriad resources at Fixitnow.com or the Appliantology Group, you can return the favor and help the Samurai maintain his own supply of suds by giving to the United Samurai Beer Fund. Cheers!

SAMURAI’S USER-FRIENDLY DIFFICULTY SCALE (SUDS) for assessing appliance repair task difficulty
	Cake walk. You’ll be done before your beer gets warm. This is simple stuff that requires few, if any, tools and almost no electrical skills.
	Not too bad, but you’ll need a refill on your beer. You’ll only need ordinary tools, nothing specialized. You may need a multimeter to make a simple continuity check.
	You’ll need a little buzz to get through this one. Basic set of common tools and some specialty tools required. If it’s an electrical problem, you’ll need your multimeter and the wiring diagram.
	Get the kids out of earshot, adult language forthcoming. Settle in and get ready to spend some time on this one. No quick fix here, Hoss.
	A third arm growing out of the middle of your chest would be helpful. Time and pain, that’s what you’re in for here. If it’s an electrical problem, get ready for a brain teaser. If mechanical, you’ll be giving libations of your own blood from the skin scraped off your knuckles.
	What were the engineers smoking when they designed this damn thing? When you’re done with this one, you’ll probably want to hunt down the sadists who designed your appliance so you can give them a taste of the living hell they put you through.

I’ve always had a bushy head of hair and I usually don’t bother trimming my beard. So, this is how I used to look when I’d go out for an appliance repair service call:

But then I started thinking maybe I was scaring my customers. I dunno, little things, like I go up to the house and knock on the door and they’d answer with a shotgun in their hands. So, I figgered I better git me a hair cut and now I look like this:

And would you believe that when I go out on appliance service calls, I still get people answering the door armed!? That’s what I love about this bidness–there’s just no telling what people will do!

Everyday, Samurai Appliance Repair Man helps thousands of people fix their own appliances. Here’s a recent testimonial from a satisfied do-it-yourselfer:

"When my Scrotum Scrubber 2000® broke, I went into a pure, blind panic. The manufacturer, Scrotilia Corporation, was going to charge me $115 for the repair with a turn-around time of more than four weeks! In desperation, I searched the web and found Samurai Appliance Repair Man and, boy, am I ever glad I did! The Samurai helped me diagnose the problem and figure out what part I needed for my Scrotum Scrubber®. I bought the part through an online vendor and was happily scrubbing away in just a few days. Domo arigato, Samurai-san!"

What can the Samurai help you fix today?

Each day, thousands of young men and women give up on their high school education, and, in many cases, on themselves. This means that thousands of young adults enter the working world without the most basic requirement for a decent job – a high school diploma. Dropping out of high school is strongly related to many troubling factors facing kids: substance abuse problems, unplanned pregnancies and involvement in criminal behavior can all cause students to prematurely withdraw from school and never return. Conversely, once a student drops out, he is at higher risk for substance abuse, risky sexual activity, suicide attempts, fighting, weapon carrying, and, most troubling of all, long-term employment with GE Appliances.

In many cases, dropping out of high school is precipitated by other problems, such as stressful family situations or using GE appliances at home. In particular, family background and involvement plays an important part in a child’s academic achievement. Here are some troubling statistics that reveal the breadth of this problem:

• More than 1,300 students drop out of school every day.
• 30% of Hispanic youths are dropouts.
• 14% of African American youths are dropouts.
• 8% of Caucasian youths are dropouts.
• 41-46% of all prisoners are dropouts.
• 97-120% of GE employees are dropouts (according to their statistics).
• High school dropouts make 42% less money in the workplace than high school graduates.
• 50% of dropouts are unemployed. The other half works for GE Appliances.
• Dropouts are three times as likely to face poverty and seven times as likely to own GE appliances.

Just say “No” to GE appliances. And stay in school…PLEASE!

This message brought to you by Samurai Appliance Repair Man and the Ad Council.

Yep, it’s gettin’ frosty outside and all the little vermin are scrambling to come inside for a warm place to crap. Their beady little eyes are fixed on your house and they’re quietly invading at night, while you and your loved ones are sound asleep. A favorite destination: your appliances.

I have repaired many appliances that have been damaged by mouse activity. For example, I recently repaired a fridge that was getting warm because the condenser fan was jammed by a mouse carcass!

The house mouse can live in homes its entire life and reproduce with amazing speed. A female mouse can begin bearing litters of six pups when she is 56 days old. If the offspring begin reproducing at the same time, that means almost 8,000 mice per year can result from one female mouse. That’s a lot of rodents running around!

Mice can nest in walls, attics, cabinet space, and appliances, and can accumulate shredded paper and other soft material as bedding. These piles of nest material within the walls or under appliances can pose a fire hazard. Mice gnaw on just about anything; they can even chew through metal, concrete, and wall boards. These pernicious beasts have caused electrical fires by gnawing on wires.

In addition to posing a fire hazard, those cute, furry little critters carry a smorgasbord of diseases that can infect humans. House mice also are a major cause of asthma and allergic rhinitis in susceptible people.

No house is immune. This time of year, I always find evidence of rodent invasions while doing service calls. Most common hangouts: underneath your dishwasher, behind your range and beside your refrigerator’s compressor.

Now is the time to take the offensive and terminate the invading hoard with extreme prejudice. Place boxes of Decon in the following key locations around your appliances: behind the refrigerator, underneath the dishwasher (behind the kickplates), behind the range, in the cabinet underneath the sink, and behind the dryer. While you’re at it, inspect appliance power cords for damage from chewing.

Personally, I prefer those glue traps with just a dab of peanut butter added. No mouse on the planet can resist peanut butter. I usually only have to leave the trap out overnight and the next day there’s a precious little furball-of-love, desperately struggling to get unstuck. But alas, they never quite make it to freedom before meeting their demise at the end of my hammer. The problem with Decon is that you never get to see the fruits of your labor. But using the glue traps, you get a wonderful sense of closure when that hammer falls.

You animal-rights weenies are probably frothing at the mouth about now, sputtering some typically vacuous comments about, “like, hey man, like, they live here, too, y’know?” I want to hear you say that as you’re staring in disbelief at the smoldering embers that used to be your house which burned down due to mice chewing on the electrical wires behind the walls.

Awwite, load ’em up, Hoss. We got us some rodents to kill. Yee-haw!

The latest issue of Appliantology, The Journal of Appliance Wisdom, has been submitted to the publisher and will rear its hoary head in next week’s issue of the Kearsarge Slopper. This issue addresses the perennial question that all my Grasshoppers secretly ponder to themselves behind closed doors while contemplating the “repair or replace” enigma, “How Much Be a New One, Yo?“

Click and learn, Grasshopper.

Howdy, Brad. Always good to hear from fellow practitioners in the arcane world of home appliances, whether it’s manufacturing, repairing, or sales.

Your impulse to work in the best interest of the customer is really the only way to do business for the long term. Your question about whether or not you’re fleecing the customer by offering extended warranties is wholly dependant upon the actual service that would (or would not) be provided in the event the customer needed to exercise that warranty. In other words, the warranty is only as good as the service to back it up.

I look at extended warranties as a type of insurance which, in reality, they are. In fact, most of the large, reputable extended warranty plans, such as Whirlpool’s Homewise plan, are underwritten by major insurance companies, such as AON Corporation. To this end, true extended warranties, backed up by real service, can be considered no more a rip-off than any other type of insurance. Is liability insurance a rip-off? You might think so as you pay the premium year after year…until someone actually sues you. Then it pays off in spades.

Is the arrangement set up for the insurance company (or extended warranty dealer) to make money? You bet it is! Could it be any other way? Businesses exist for one reason and one reason only: to make a profit. If a business can’t make a profit offering a legitimate product or service then it goes bankrupt. And who benefits from that?

Some customers are willing to pay a premium for the extra security and peace-of-mind that they derive from owning a legitimate extended warranty policy. Others are not. Your role as an appliance salesman is to offer realistic and honest choices to customers. As long as you’re doing that then you should sleep well at night and I charge you to "Go placidly amid the noise and haste…"

Announcing the inaugural issue of the print edition of the Appliantology newsletter which will be published monthly in the Kearsarge Shopper. This issue gives a few practical appliance tips that can save you money and avoid an unnecessary appliance service call. Check out the entire issue here. Each issue will be archived and available for reading at www.applianceguru.com.

Konichiwa, Julie.

Each day I begin my life anew. Zen mind, beginner’s mind.

General appliance rule of thumb: Avoid GE like the West Nile Virus. If you read Consumer Reports and they recommend a GE product, crumple up that page and use it for toilet paper ’cause that’s all it’s worth. Despite horrendous quality problems, outrageous markups on repair parts, and a damn-near universal agreement among appliance servicers that today’s GE appliances SUCK out loud, people keep buying GE and so the freak show continues. Ok, with that out the way…

Refrigerators: Stick with Whirlpool products, this includes Kitchenaid. More information on who makes what here.

Dryers: Either Whirlpool or Maytag. Period.

Washers: You lucked out and picked what is, in my opinion, the best front loader out there. We’ve had our Gibson front loader (a Frigidaire brand, same guts as yours) for about six years, used every day, sometimes twice a day, and not a single problem. A workhorse!

Dishwashers: The Kitchenaid is quiet and under $1,000. Bosch isn’t bad. If you want the best dishwasher made today, buy a Miele. But get ready to plunk down $2,000. 😯

Ranges/Ovens/Stoves: Avoid the once-venerable Jenn-Air range (a Maytag brand). Way too many electronic problems. We have a Jenn-Air and if I weren’t a practitioner of the repairing arts, we would have declared bankruptcy long ago due to all the repairs I’ve done to it. Also avoid Thermadore–way too over-engineered and unnecessarily complicated to work on. There’s a reason their sales are in a tailspin. Beyond these caveats, you have a bewildering array of choices.

Happy Shopping!

Now this is just too handy for words. Sometimes, you don’t need to mess with a meter and test leads just to see whether or not voltage is present at a part of the circuit you’re troubleshooting. You just need to know if there’s voltage there or not. This non-contact voltage light stick gives a quick way of telling that. All’s you do is touch it to the outside of the wire. If there’s voltage there, it lights up! Quick, easy, and safe. You still need your meter, but this just makes it real fast and easy to trace out circuits.

Let’s take a ezzample. Your gas dryer ain’t firing up. You pull off the bottom access panel and notice that the ignitor isn’t glowing. The question immediately pops into your steel trap-like mind: is the ignitor bad or is the ignitor, in fact, good but not getting voltage? Using your handy non-contact voltage light stick, you quickly confirm that the ignitor isn’t getting its necessary operating voltage so the problem lies elsewhere in the circuit. Further investigation leads you to a bad thermal fuse. You just saved yourself a bundle of moola by not replacing a part that was good! Now go buy yourself a beer with all that money you saved.

Wanna save money on your do-it-yourself appliance repairs? Check out the latest hot deals in appliance parts on sale now!

If your household wastewater flows into a septic tank, you should be using Biodegreat once a month to prevent premature septic tank overflows. It’s also a great fix for slow drains in all household plumbing–safely clears the drains without using corrosive chemicals.

The Samurai recently recorded a customer calling from Claremont, New Hampshire, for appliance service. Let’s listen:

audblog audio post