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The "always replace the whole pump" advice on that Facebook group cost my customer $340
Saw a guy in one of the big appliance repair groups tell a newer tech that you should just swap the whole drain pump assembly on a front load washer instead of checking the filter housing and hoses first. I bit my tongue there but I'll say it here. Back in March I got called to a house in Fairview where the washer wouldn't drain, and the last guy had already put in a $180 pump plus $160 labor, and it still wouldn't drain. Turned out a sock was jammed in the hose between the tub and the pump and the pump was never the problem. I pulled the hose, cleared it, ran a cycle, done in 25 minutes. That pump replacement advice is just guessing with the customer's wallet, and it trains new techs to skip the basic flow checks that actually solve the job. I get that time matters and you can't always pull everything apart on a service call, but there's a big gap between being efficient and throwing parts at it. So for the folks who do this daily, do you check the hoses and housing before quoting a pump, or do you just replace and move on?
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beth_ward8017d ago
The thing that gets me is nobody talks about how the pump fails after you fix the clog. That sock or whatever was stressing the pump for who knows how long, and the motor windings cook a little every time it tries to push against a blocked hose. So the last guy might have actually saved that customer a callback down the road, just for the wrong reasons. Problem is he never checked the hose, so he got lucky on the diagnosis and unlucky on the bill. My rule is if the pump tests good on a direct power jump and spins free, the clog is your problem, but I'll still warn the customer the pump took a beating and might go in six months. That way when it does fail they aren't mad at me, and if it doesn't, I look like a hero for not selling them a part they didn't need yet.
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