Best Christmas gift I ever received was the smile on my newborn’s face nineteen years ago. The worst was when my ex-husband bought me a chain saw. That is another story. My built in refrigerator door bladder is still leaking air after my attempts to “fix” it.
I am very “handy.” I can repair just about anything. I operated a crane and calculated maximum loads of a bridge, built commercial and residential buildings but I now prefer to hire someone to fix the refrigerator. The problem arrives in perceptive image- by this I mean the repairman sees a blonde woman in a flowery house who weighs 110 pounds and he thinks I have no idea. This can be useful or costly on the bottom line of the bill.
So how do you budget shop for a repair on anything?
1. Recommendations from neighbors ( as proximity limits your options to hire someone who might have to charge for his or her travel time).
2. Browse the internet and enter the City name with your repair item. Look on UTUBE for repair videos.
3. I don’t have a phone book at home anymore so that is out of the question.
4. Ask other contractors or general contractors for a recommendation.
5. Ask someone at the local hardware store, see if they have a bulletin board.
The next step is contacting them, describing exactly what you need and asking for an estimate of cost. They can tell you the hourly labor cost but often they have no idea what parts might be necessary to repair your appliance or thing from a telephone call.
Then there is the waiting for them to show up for the appointment. When they arrive try not to be so agitated about them being late, this is only going to waste time of their hourly labor cost.
Lead them directly to the problem, which hopefully you have cleared the area for space to work.
Then watch and learn something out of the way.
Unfortunately, the repairman went through the same steps I had tried and the door seal worked for three days, and now the freezer is back to meltdown. So now what?
