On Sunday, our washing machine broke. We didn’t have an owner’s/repair manual because it was part of a set given to us by an old co-worker of mine who fled the country for a contracting job in Hungary (Patrick? You out there anywhere?) and well, gee, it’s a Kenmore and I thought those things weren’t ever supposed to break.

Anyway, the first panicked thing we did was call the Scary People at Sears to schedule a repair appointment with the associated $55 ransom fee. Now, my husband is Mr. Super Duper Fix-It. He can fix just about everything…but is skeptical of appliance repair, especially since we had no information on how the washer works. Fair enough.

The second panicked thing we did was consult the internet because the internet knows everything. I typed the keywords “God please help me our washer broke no repair manual we’re really cheap don’t want to spend any more money than we absolutely have to” into Google and up popped a listing for the RepairGuru’s website, RepairClinic.com. I shot a very specific note off to their appliance repair experts and yesterday received a reply. They were able to figure out what was wrong based on my “the thingy makes a kinda-grindy noise” observations and not only that, but gave us incredibly detailed instructions on how to fix it. We cracked open the washer last night and sure enough, what the RepairGuru said was broken was, in fact, obliterated.

Our closest repair parts center is in Garland and we’ve got some time, so to support Mr. RepairGuru’s ongoing efforts we ordered the necessary part from him and a copy of the repair manual for our washer.

I’m so grateful to this company for diagnosing our washer’s ailment for free and sparing me the agony of sitting around for a 4-hour repair window, during which the repair person may not have shown up at all. If you have any appliance needs, check them out. I’m very quick to throw up a gripe about a company that’s done me wrong but I’m even quicker to provide positive feedback when it’s so well-deserved.