How We Got Paid for a New Washing Machine

January 26th, 2010 Despite being able to perform surgery on the water pump two weeks ago, the family washing machine gave up the ghost. But, thanks to some online searching and a credit, we were able to not only break even, but come out ahead in the end.

The horrible grinding noise from the vicinity of the laundry room, followed by a request from my wife to join her in said laundry room, were indications that the evening just took a turn for the worse. Now, things were pretty bad to start with, having just watched the Packers end their season on a fumble recovered from a touchdown 2 minutes into overtime. But, we were coming to terms with that when the washer demanded our attention.

The washer and dryer has just come out of their 5 year warranty on December 22. Literally two days later, the first problem with the units occurred when the dryer heating element broke. We managed to fix that on Christmas Eve. Exactly one week later, on New Years Eve, the washing machine pump started leaking. We fixed that too. So we had two repairs for $45 each, saving the cost of the service call. I must admit I was thinking we dodged a bullet and the units will now run for years of worry-free clothes cleaning.

So here we were with another problem. This one, I couldn’t fix. The tub was not spinning and there was a little bit of oil and gritting shavings on the floor under the unit. Everything we read was pointing to a motor seizure and the only advice was to call a service repair person. It was time to run the numbers. To get the person to darken the door to our home was $55. Then, $18 every 15 minutes of his time (yes, that’s $72/hour, or nearly $150,000 for a full-time equivalent position). Then the cost of any replacement part plus tax. If you figure the part is $75, we were looking at $190 or so figuring a half hour project.

Enter the Lowes Credit
While lamenting this situation, my wife pointed out the Lowes credit we had on “gift cards” from recent returns. Here’s a tip– if you have an unopened tool from a project, the major home centers will typically take it back for a credit even if you don’t have a receipt. And it turns out that we had a brand new, spiffy DeWalt Framing Nailer in our garage that never came out of the box. Even though it was far past 90 days, they accepted the return and we had $250 on credit. Then, add to that an earlier return and we had about $320 on hand. So, we figured what would happen if we got a new washer. We did the research and, despite reviews that bounced all over the map, decided on a Maytag unit that was about $430 plus tax.

But wait, there’s more! We looked up the Lowes price guarantee and they will take 10% off the competitor’s price. And it turned out that Home Depot had the same unit on sale for $398. So in the morning, my wife went and confirmed the unit was good enough for us, and we got it for $358.20 plus tax. Minus our “gift card” refunds and the total out of pocket turned out to be about $60.

Cash for Clunker Appliances
We then had one final revelation this afternoon. The installers let us know that we basically qualified for “cash for clunkers” for appliances. The new unit was energy efficient enough that we qualified for a $100 cash rebate back from the Focus on Energy program. So, after our $100 arrives, we’ll be $40 ahead for a new washer! Granted, I don’t have another $320 in returns lying around the house, but overall it was a great experience and a great blessing to have things work out like they did.

Posted By: Home Buying, Renovation and Selling by rocket_scientist