Why do appliance repairs (dishwasher, laundry, fridge, etc.) seemingly cost as much as the appliances themselves?
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A few reasons:
* [Planned Obsolescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence). The longer a product lasts, the fewer the manufacturer will sell. Manufacturers who engineer long-lasting products tend to go out of business, and we’re left with the ones that break often enough to keep the manufacturer in business.
* Difficulty of repair. The time and skill required to do the repair increases the cost of the repair. Learn to do them yourself and save lots of money. Youtube instruction videos are invaluable here.
* The cost of the replacement part can be prohibitively expensive itself. This tends to happen when the manufacturer wants to avoid you doing your own repairs, and the part is specific enough that there are no alternatives. Find an alternative anyway.
That last point happened to me when a piece of plastic broke for my Samsung dishwasher at 1 month after the warranty expired.
* The replacement plastic piece costs as much as the dishwasher and could only be acquired from Samsung!
* The plastic piece holds the dishwasher door closed.
* It was uniquely shaped and very specific to each model and version of the dishwasher.
* The forums were filled with Samsung customers complaining about this plastic piece breaking within months of warranty expiration (Planned Obsolescence)
* Replacing the plastic piece would take hours because of how it was housed (difficult to repair).
* Dishwasher would not function without this plastic piece because of a sensor to determine if it was in place.
In order to “fix” it, I “fooled” the sensor mentioned above and used a babyproofing cabinet lock to hold the door closed.
It’s been working ever since.
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