During our house renovations we did a little while ago, not the whole house, just laundry, office and the wardrobes in most of the rooms, I dropped the washing machine moving it out of the laundry, nothing to drastic I thought at the time, but enough to crack a part at the back where the water pipes attach, so I had to try and repair it myself first and then I had to call in the experts, so I thought I’d let you know who we used to repair our washing machine here on Brisbane’s Northside.
I had originally set up the washing machine to work in the bathroom with a bathroom tap to washing machine kit I got from Bunnings, I had to get a few extra parts but it still worked for running the washing machine from our bathroom taps.
It was a reasonably hard process from looking and calling people and even more painful as I am an Electrician knowing that it would probably cost a small fortune for me doing something as silly as replacing a cracked part.
The hardest art is finding the right company that will repair your washing machine for a start and also have the parts, so be aware of this.
I started with ringing the actual company as they have a F and P Authorised Service and Repair phone line and will come out and fix the machine very quickly, very quickly and having the part comes at a price, I think from memory it was $125 for them to turn up to look at it and then around $180 or so for the part also if they had it on hand.
I continued to ring around a few other companies to see if they had the part or not, I found one company in Albion that had the part, had worked on this type of washing machine before and were moderately busy and weren’t to fussed about driving a little extra km’s to get the job done.
I was relieved, as you can imagine the scorn of the hugs n kisses from not only the point of view about the drop, but also having to wait for it to get fixed with two squids and another on the way. Needless to say the appointment for repair was made and they were turning up that next morning and we would have clean clothes easily by the weekend.
They did turn up and what they thought was a part on their shelf was actually from a different model, when you get repairs done on a Fisher and Paykel washing machine you have to make sure you have the exact part, part number and also make sure you have the right model number too, there are so many different types of washing machines that have been released over the years the parts change with each model of machine release too, so I had given them the right part number for the right machine and there was the right amount of solenoids on the replacement part but it was still slightly different to the one that was in my machine, so we were back to square one.
Now that’s where I have praise for this repair company and also the young man that was doing the job for us, he apologised and gave me a few solutions to get me through as he knew there was the exact part in there showroom, he could use that one to repair our machine and order in a new one for their one.
Also as an extra note here, he suggested another way of doing a temporary repair of the machine until the right part arrived and also, as he lived close he was going to come by with the part on the way home and drop it in on the weekend, so from a customer service point of view this was excellent.
The temporary silicon fix for me didn’t work at all, still had water going everywhere, but the part finally turned up in our letterbox over the weekend and I installed it straight away.
The inlet valve has only about 4 cables running to it and they just clip in, it then has to slot back into the rubber seals and then you put the control panel back on, screw it in, connect the water pipes, turn them on and hit the on button, easy.
Easy so I thought, I put the washing machine back into its spot in the newly renovated laundry and within the first 30 seconds I had water running past me on the floor.
I was pretty angry and was thinking it had taken this long to get to here and now it’s still leaking, what am I going to do now, I’ll have to pull the whole washing machine apart down in the shed.
I eventually found out the problem, the rubber tub centering bands had all popped off when I dropped it, so I had to get these four bands on again, this took a while as you have to reach up underneath the tub and then click them onto the washing machine casing, needless to say I was happy after I finished this and fired up the washing machine again.
The four day ordeal was over, new inlet valve with four solenoids installed, washing machine not leaking anymore, the price I was charged from the appliance service was very reasonable and their service was great.
So to cut a long story short, the company we used to repair our washing machine on Northside of Brisbane was Albion Appliance Service and I have no problem recommending them to you for your own washing machine repairs.
You can see their contact details here on my Companies and Trades page.
