the Cost of Refrigerator Repair

The price included 1 hour of labor at $80/hour, minimum 1 hour for work done, and necessary parts to repair a refrigerator on an emergency weekend call. They diagnose and repair residential appliances of all sorts from all manufacturers, and only charge for actually fixing the problem, not the time spent diagnosing it.

Seeing as my fridge is past its service contract and the part that made it be a refrigerator stopped refrigerating, I called a repair service. I called around and since it was the middle of the weekend everyone was quoting time and a half to even look at the problem. I found a place that said I would only have to pay if they fixed the problem, and then only for the time spent fixing that problem. Their price per hour was quite a bit higher than average, but I figured that I'd end up paying less for these guys than any of the others I'd called so far, so I hired them.

It took them a bit over two hours to get someone here. When the repairman did, we were in the middle of a pint of ice cream that was well on its way to melting. The guy was all business, he pulled the fridge out of its nook, made sure the thing was plugged in, that the compressor was compressing, etc. Turns out the compressor wasn't compressing, but he had a replacement part in his truck (we didn't need an entire compressor, as it turns out, just the bit that actually does the compressing). He went out and got it and then spent the next 45 minutes installing it and topping off the lost refrigerant.

Bonus was that the fridge was much quieter after the repair than before. Seems it was telling us it was dying, but we just hadn't paid attention.

Get an estimate first. Over the phone if possible as they can't charge you if they don't know who you are.

A modern fridge stays cool for quite a while if the doors are kept closed, so if yours breaks, you can give yourself the time to call a repairman by not opening the fridge. Extended service contracts are usually just scams that cost more than the basic repairs you might be expected to perform in the years after the warantee expires. And you might be able get the company to send someone out if it's just a couple weeks past expiry.

For a very old appliance, repairs may become regular as everything starts to wear out. Considering the efficiency (and fairly low price) of modern fridges, if a repair estimate even comes close to half the price of a new fridge, consider buying a new one instead.