$75 bucks......

[flytire 0]

.....to replace a broken door handle on a GE microwave oven!!

highway robbery

 

[chugbug27 0]

Brave new world,, replace don't fix....

Fwiw my microwave went out in2019 and now I just use the stovetop. And oven, which broke three months ago.... Fancy junk all of it

[niveker 0]

8 minutes ago, chugbug27 said:

Fancy junk all of it

No doubt. 

Appliance repairs are a rip off in general, unless you can do it yourself. 

I've replace more igniters on gas ovens that I care to admit, at least one a year.  Now I keep a spare or two as a backup. 

The condensate drain on my parents' 12 year old high end fridge with bottom freezer got blocked.  Spent all day last Saturday taking it apart and defrosting.  Took about an hour and a half just to melt a huge ice ball that had grown behind the interior wall around the cooling fins/tubing.  PITA.   

[mikechell 0]

Might be expensive, but I don't consider it "robbery".  There's a lot of training and experience in a good technician, no matter the trade.  A badly disassembled/reassembled microwave can actually kill some people.  The liability insurance a licensed business isn't cheap, either.

My feelings on the issue ... if it's beyond my capabilities, then it's worth paying a good company to do the job.

[SilverCreek 0]

^^^^ What he said.

I also assume that the repair person has to drive his service truck to your home to do the job. If that is true, I think $75 is quite reasonable.

If you have to take the appliance to his shop and leave it there, then it is expensive.

So which is it?

[Ephemerella 0]

Given you can buy a 1000W unit at Wally World for about $80 or less, I'd say replace it. I suspect the retail cost of the parts is driven by the cost of storage and a large number of unique parts - the parts that fail on microwaves typically are the handles, keypads, keypad plastic overlay - all unique to each brand and model. The electronic innards are often the same across brands. The sad fact is that a microwave lasts between 4 and 10 years, and then it begins to have parts failures.  Washing machines (the old-school top leaders, anyway) on the other hand are mostly made by 1 manufacturer and have common parts regardless of model or "quality" implied by the brand, which are cheap to stock compared to the number of washing machines out there, and their unit cost ($400 -$1500).  Except the computers and other wizardry in the control panels, which are unique to brand and model - and hence ridiculously priced. So one can generally keep an old school top-loader in repair for 15+ years easily, and there's a you-tube video produced by parts suppliers for nearly every diagnosis and repair. Just watch your phone as you slowly dissect and repair the washer following the on-screen pro.

[flytire 0]

okay guys

the microwave is an "in the cabinet" model not a countertop model so i'm not buying that just to replace a silly door handle

that microwave is 16 years old and still going strong

i didnt need a $$$ expensive repair man to replace the door handle. i replaced it all by myself and was quite easy to do

now i did have a roto rooter guy replace my leaking kitchen sink faucet and you dont want to know what that cost!👎👎😢😢

 

[Poopdeck 0]

Where do you guys who thought 75 bucks paid for the part and installation by a qualified technician live? I want to move there. 

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

Having replaced a plastic part or two on my own microwave (and paid full retail for the part....) it was disappointing to realize that the nice new plastic part - wasn't one bit better than the part it replaced (and soon cracked in the same places... in ordinary use...).

 

Something not generally noted is that you can pre-determine the life of anything made of plastic by the ingredients used at the time it's made.  Need a piece of plastic to last for years and years - very do-able... Want something made of plastic to "expire" in a year or two... yep - no problem.  I learned about it the hard way with a plastic bottle of liquid car wax.  Left it on the shelf for a year or two - grabbed it and it crumbled in my hand, liquid and all... 

 

The plus side is that the belief that plastic is forever in our landfills, might not be exactly accurate any more (the chemical components probably are a long term problem but that plastic milk jug, etc will soon disintegrate over time from what I've read).