Spent 45 minutes troubleshooting a fridge that just needed the door switch cleaned

Yesterday I was at a house in Arlington for a customer whose fridge stopped cooling. Compressor was running, fans were spinning, everything looked fine on the surface. After pulling the back panel and checking capacitors I was about to call for a new control board. Then I noticed the light wasn't turning off when I closed the door. Stupid little switch had a layer of grime keeping it stuck open. Cleaned it with alcohol and a q-tip, fridge kicked back on in 10 minutes. Charged them $85 for a service call and felt like a fraud. Anyone else have a repair that should have taken 5 minutes but took forever because you went the hard route first?

2 comments

2 Comments

fionaa351mo ago

Oh man, I once replaced a perfectly good thermostat because I forgot to check the batteries!

mary_wells1mo ago

Can't believe you swapped out the whole unit because of some dead batteries, @fionaa35. That's a rough one, bet you felt pretty silly when you figured it out.