Appliance repair

Most appliance repairs finish between $300 and $500 once a part is replaced, and a visit where nothing needs replacing is $99. Those numbers come from our own completed invoices, not from an industry average: across 19,761 repairs where a part went in, the median ticket was $370. Read what customers say about these visits in our customer reviews.

What appliance repair actually costs

The single most useful thing to understand about repair pricing is that the part is rarely what makes the bill. The service call and the labour do. That is why a cheap component and an expensive one land within about sixty dollars of each other, and why every appliance in the table below sits in the same narrow band.

Figures are the median full ticket: part, labour and the service call together. Diagnostic visit with no part replaced is $99, credited toward the repair if you approve it.

There is one repair that breaks the pattern. A sealed-system compressor replacement runs a median of $956, roughly two and a half times any other job on this list, because it is hours of work on a refrigerant circuit rather than a component swap. That single distinction is the whole repair-or-replace question in practice: if the diagnosis is the compressor, the maths changes; if it is anything else, repair almost always wins on cost.

What breaks most often

Across 51,435 completed visits, the work is concentrated in two appliances. Refrigerators and washers together account for well over half of everything we are called out to.

Share of the 19,761 completed repairs where a part was replaced, across our service area. A separate breakdown counted against all service visits, including those that ended at diagnosis, is on most commonly repaired appliances and uses a different denominator, so the percentages there are not the same figures.

Microwaves sit at the bottom of that list for a reason worth stating plainly: a countertop microwave is usually not worth repairing, and we will tell you so rather than take the booking. Built-in and over-the-range units are different, because replacing one means cabinet work and mounting on top of the appliance itself. The rule of thumb we give people is simple. If you can carry it out of the kitchen yourself, replace it. If it is fixed to the cabinetry, repair it.

The other microwave complaint that arrives on built-in and over-the-range units is odour rather than heat, and the cause is usually the filters or the food rather than the cooking side. That one is on microwave smells bad.

The parts that fail most

Component-level failures cluster tightly. These are the replacements that come up most often, with the full ticket each one carries.

• Oven igniter, $348. The most-replaced single component in our whole workload. A gas oven that will not reach temperature, or takes forty minutes to get there, is usually a weakening igniter rather than a control fault.
• Dryer heating element, $356. Clothes still damp after a full cycle. Worth checking the vent run at the same visit, because a blocked vent is what burns elements out in the first place.
• Refrigerator defrost heater or timer, $378. Frost building up at the back of the freezer while the fresh food side slowly warms.
• Washer drain pump, $361. Cycle stops with water standing in the drum, often with an error code.
• Dishwasher drain pump, $335. Standing water in the base after the cycle finishes.
• Washer shock absorbers or suspension, $368. Violent shaking on the spin cycle, walking across the floor.
• Refrigerator evaporator or condenser fan, $415. Noise that changes when you open the door, or uneven cooling between compartments.
• Control board, $413 to $516 depending on appliance. The most expensive routine repair, and notably not the most common one on any appliance. A quoted board replacement is worth a second question about what was tested first.

When the numbers point to replacing instead

Around 63 percent of diagnoses end with the repair approved. Where one does not, it means the technician priced the job honestly and the customer decided with the number in front of them. On compressor replacements specifically, a new appliance is often the reasonable call on a unit already eight or more years old.

What is worth noticing is that the decision does not track price the way people expect. The cheapest categories to fix go ahead about as often as the expensive ones. What actually drives the choice is the age of the appliance and whether the fault is a component or a sealed system.

How a visit works

1. You book online or by phone and pick a window. Roughly a quarter of jobs are handled same day, and about half within twenty-four hours of the request.
2. The technician diagnoses the fault on site. That visit is $99, and it is credited against the repair if you go ahead.
3. You get the full price before any work starts, parts and labour together. Not a rate, not a range, the actual total.
4. You approve the work or keep the diagnosis. Declining costs you the $99 diagnostic and nothing else.
5. Approved work is covered by a 90-day parts and labour warranty.

We do not quote repair prices over the phone before a diagnosis, and it is worth explaining why rather than sounding evasive. The same symptom has several possible causes at very different prices. A refrigerator that is not cooling can be a $386 thermostat or a $956 compressor. A number given blind would be either a guess that is too high to be useful or one that is too low to be honest.

What we service

Refrigerators, freezers, washers, dryers, dishwashers, ovens, ranges, cooktops, ice makers and built-in microwaves. Domestic and light commercial laundry. All major manufacturers, with Samsung, Whirlpool, GE, Frigidaire, Maytag and LG making up the bulk of the work simply because they make up the bulk of the kitchens.

What we do not do, so you do not waste a call: water heaters, HVAC, television mounting and coffee or espresso machines.

Which brands we see most

Manufacturer share differs by appliance, and it reflects what is installed in kitchens rather than any judgement about reliability. A brand appearing often here means it sells in volume and we service it, nothing more.

Percentages are the share of branded calls for that appliance. This measures how much of the installed base we service, not how often a brand fails per unit sold. For a reliability discussion see most reliable appliance brands.

Repairs are seasonal, and it matters for booking

Demand is not flat across the year. July is our busiest month at 10.3 percent of annual volume and October the quietest at 6.9 percent, a difference of roughly half again. The warm half of the year, May through August, carries 38.5 percent of the work against 28.9 percent for September through December.

The pattern differs by appliance in ways that are worth knowing if your booking is not urgent. Dryers peak hardest, running about two and a half times higher in June than in February. Refrigerators peak in July. Ovens and ranges invert the whole curve and peak in November, because that is when a fault that has been developing quietly gets discovered rather than when the appliance actually wears out. Dishwashers are the one category that peaks in winter. The full monthly breakdown is on when appliances break.

Practically: if your appliance fails in late spring or midsummer, book earlier in the day and expect windows to fill faster. In autumn, same-day slots are easier to get.

Worth checking before you book

A handful of faults are not faults at all, and it costs you nothing to rule them out. We would rather you check these than pay $99 to be told about them.

• Power and the breaker. A dead appliance is sometimes a tripped breaker or a GFCI outlet that needs resetting, particularly on a garage refrigerator or a laundry circuit.
• Demo or showroom mode. Microwaves, refrigerators and ranges ship with a display mode that lights the panel and runs nothing. It is more common on newer units than people expect, and it clears from the control panel.
• The dryer vent run. Clothes that come out damp after a full cycle are as often a blocked vent as a failed element. Disconnect the hose at the back and check for lint packed solid.
• Water supply valves. A dishwasher or ice maker that suddenly stops filling can be a valve that got knocked closed behind the unit.
• The door seal and latch. A refrigerator that runs constantly, or an oven that never reaches temperature, may be losing what it makes through a seal you can see has failed.

Past that point the work needs instruments. Sealed refrigerant circuits, gas connections, control boards and anything behind a panel with mains wiring are not places to experiment, and on gas appliances specifically the failure modes are not recoverable by trial and error.

Where we work

Our coverage is concentrated in Florida and Georgia, which together account for 84 percent of the work, with Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and South Carolina making up the rest. Each metro has its own local team, its own phone number and its own Google Business Profile, which is why ratings and review counts differ between them.

Metro pages with local pricing and neighbourhood coverage: Atlanta, Miami, Tampa Bay, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Philadelphia, Dallas and Houston.

Local repair costs run slightly differently from the national medians above, because labour rates and the mix of appliances differ. Florida sits a little higher than Georgia on refrigerator work, for instance. Where a metro page quotes its own figure, that figure is calculated from jobs completed in that metro, not from the national pool.

Discounts

An annual membership at $179 covers five free diagnostics a year, priority scheduling with a 24 to 48 hour response, $30 off labour on every repair and an extended warranty on Bozmanfix work. Discounts are applied automatically, there are no codes to enter.

Frequently asked questions