Wednesday, October 3, 2007

No Fun Buying Appliances

This week our clothes dryer went kaput. I called Sears to arrange a repair appointment. After being on hold for an extended period of time, the phone line went dead. Somehow I lost my connection. I then went on the web to sears.com and tried to schedule an appointment. The next available appointment was Monday October 8th. We decided that wasn't quick enough for our needs. The broken down dryer is a Maytag that we've had for some 20 years. It has been dependable for all of those years until now. Where is the Maytag repairman when you need him? He's nowhere to be found!

We decided to "look" at dryers at Sears on Monday evening. When Jan says, "Let's look", that pretty much indicates that we're buying. It's like when you tell a child "Maybe", in the eyes of a child that means "Yes". Of course I headed to the least expensive models first. "Hey it says here this one is on sale for $50.00 off". It was a Whirlpool gas dryer. It seemed like a fair price until everything was totaled up. It's an extra $65.00 for a gas versus electric dryer, another $40.00 for the vent kit, $65.00 for delivery and another $10.00 for the disposal of the old unit. That's an additional $180.00 before taxes. Talk about sticker shock! The actual retail price is always much higher than the sticker price.

The last time I bought tires for my car I had the same feeling. After you add up the tire, mounting/balancing, and disposal of the old tires and multiply by 4, the cost becomes unreal.

Well, I'm happy to report that we now have a new dryer. It even has a light inside the drum! It is a lot more efficient than the old Maytag. Hopefully it will be another 20 years before we have to buy another major appliance. Yeah, right!

3 comments:

Jacki said...

The Maytag Repairman wasn't available because he's too busy fixing the cable and garage door like on those stupid commercials. :)

BananaBuzzbomb said...

Sorry to hear about the dryer. We understand, but at least our appliance purchase we can "enjoy" a little more. Like you said....David gets a tv, you get a dyer...not fair.

Anonymous said...

Good luck with your new dryer. You will really appreciate it after using the 20 year old one.
love=====mom