CANDY Machine repair advice - seeking an engineer

[nightofjoy]

Hi.

A little before Christmas, our (13 month old) washing machine packed in.

We did a bit of investigating locally and found an engineer with good feedback.

He came out and assessed the machine, and decided that the problem was the motor, and that we’d need a new one. 

His prices seemed reasonable and he knew his stuff, so we had him order the part.

£135 for the motor and only £30 to fit it. Plus £30 for the initial callout fee, so £195 all in.

He came the following week and replaced the motor, but afterwards he said he’d discovered a fault on the circuit board control panel that was causing the problem with the motor, and that if we tried to use the machine as is, it would also destroy the new motor.

So we’d paid out almost £200 and still did not have a working machine. All we have is a useless machine and the old motor in a box.

I’m now trying to gather some second opinions from engineers as to whether the fault on the board should have been detected in the early stages when he assessed the machine. My stepdad in an engineer and he immediately said that it seems odd that it wasn’t spotted.

Seems like repairing a puncture by purchasing and fitting a new inner tube but not checking the tyre for nails or glass first.

Any thoughts from those in the appliance repair trade? Thanks.

[Whitegoodshelp]

Not sure why you would have been expected to pay £200 our before it was repaired? As an engineer, if that happened to me and I had quoted a customer to fit a part but it failed to fix the machine I would take back the motor and refund the cost. No question. You may need to take advice from a consumer group. Either there was nothing wrong with your old motor and he just misdiagnosed it, or if the pcb has damaged the motor (not something I'm aware of happening) then he needed to warn you of that possibility before you agreed to the repair.