alt Hacker News> In the end people generally don't care to actually fix shit, and I imagine the majority of people would have just thrown up their hands before looking for the service manual, called the tech, he would have made it obvious a new unit would be a better deal, and they would have taken it.
Is that the conclusion to this whole story?
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Sure, pretty much. A hired tech didn't bother understanding the deeper issue would prefer me to use his coupon code to buy a new unit of great cost to me. Chances are a simple reseating of a connector and additional support would have prevented several hundred pounds of otherwise perfectly fine materials going to a landfill and cost me almost $1,000 for a similar replacement unit.
And if I didn't have enough knowledge and determination past a standard consumer it would have been trash. Sadly most consumers and support techs don't care enough.
I agree. I feel like this story specifically illustrates how much time, labor, and knowledge you need to have to fix a "modern" appliance. Not only basic mechanical and electrical understanding, but having to troubleshoot the combination of circuit board and software problems puts this well out of the realm of most people. I sacrifice features for more repairability in several of my appliances (Speed Queen washer dryer, Dualit toaster, Kitchenaid mixer, etc) but that takes money, and just isn’t a realistic option for all things.
How many hours of labor did he spend testing, researching, retesting, ordering parts, trying something new, etc. all without a working washer? If that is something you enjoy and take pride in, that is one thing. But as a pure utility proposition for most people, it is way more expensive to rip apart complex machines for the possibility of being able to repair them.