If you’re planning on doing a house-wide spring cleaning activity, prioritize a maintenance check for appliances. Both old and new units need tender loving care to prolong their useful life. While you may be tempted to resort to buying new appliances to replace malfunctioning ones, that may not be the most cost-effective solution, especially if it only needs minor repairs.
Before calling an appliance repair expert in GTA for a service appointment, make sure you prepare ahead so the visit will be easy and breezy — not just for you, but for your technician as well.
Make Time for the Service Call
Ideally, service providers encourage customers to book their appointments days ahead. This allows both you and the service provider to prepare so they can ensure that the technician’s schedule coincides with yours. Pick a time and date when you have no major activity.
Clear your schedule for the day, so you can accommodate time adjustments in case your technician might come in early or late. Scheduling assistants usually provide you with a time window when you can expect your technician to arrive. To save you from the stress of thinking, “Are they coming over yet?”, just be available for the most part of the day. Rest assured, if you secured a good contractor, they’ll let you know once they’re on the way.
Issues, Receipts, and Other Details
If the reason for your appointment is a damaged appliance, you need to know what happened before it started malfunctioning, or stopped working altogether. Try to remember if the appliance was abnormally making noises, jittering by itself, or having electric sparks. Take note of details that you think will help your technician diagnose the problem more easily.
Hopefully you kept the receipts and warranty slips of your appliances because they will be useful when the technician determines there’s a faulty part. See if the service warranty hasn’t expired yet, and covers repairs or parts related to the damage determined.
Has your appliance gone through a previous maintenance check, or has it been repaired in the past? Details regarding the history of your appliance, as well as paperwork to match as proof, provides your technician with a clearer picture of the issues of your appliance. This way, they would know the best course of action to take so you can enjoy using your appliance again.
A Space for Your Technician
Appliance service calls are bound to get messy because your technician (and you) might need to move stuff around so they can have ample space to perform the repair or maintenance check. To provide this much-needed workspace, make sure to clean up the immediate surroundings of the appliance. Allow enough room for busy movement, and a dedicated place for the technician’s tools, paraphernalia, and clutter. Provide good lighting so your technician won’t have a hard time checking the darker corners of your appliance.
Designate a clear path for the technician to walk through, to lessen the chances of breaking or bumping into objects that are in their way. If you have pets and kids, it’s best that you keep them out of the repair vicinity. Imagine the hazards that might endanger the lives of your innocent dwellers.
Health and Safety Protocols: Home Edition
The COVID-19 pandemic has surely changed the way we receive visits from service providers. While companies have their own rules and regulations in ensuring that they are well protected from the virus, you are also responsible for protecting your own home. To ensure that your family, and the visiting technicians alike, are safe from possible exposure, you can enforce your own health and safety protocols:
- Observe safe physical distancing. People should be at least 2 metres away from each other. Don’t crowd around the repair vicinity. If your technician shows you something (a broken or missing part) during the check, avoid touching each other.
- Masks and gloves on at all times. Avoid face-to-face conversation. If you need to ask questions, make your voice louder than usual, while maintaining a safe distance from your technician.
- Have a disinfectant footbath mat ready at your doorstep. If you’re feeling extra, you can provide your visiting technicians with shoe covers, so they can walk around the house with added foot protection.
- Keep cleaning agents reachable. Have your hand sanitizers, rubbing alcohol, and disinfecting wipes ready for use always. Your technician will be touching a lot of stuff other than your appliances, so it’s best to ask them to take a quick break so you can disinfect their work area.
Ask Your Technician
The best way to learn about basic appliance repair is through your own technician. You might be wondering why the fridge won’t cool anymore, or your dryer hasn’t been drying your laundry efficiently. Whatever the issue, your technician will have a simplified answer. Technicians also have tons of useful wisdom you can partake, like the best products to use to maintain your appliances, and what you can do in case something happens to your appliance again.
To make the most out of your appliance service call, don’t be afraid to ask them for preventive maintenance and DIY repair tips. Additionally, take the opportunity to ask them if they offer bundled service discounts for multiple appliance maintenance checks or repairs.
Money Matters
Before requesting the service call, ask yourself: Can I afford it? While talking to the scheduling assistant, don’t shy away from asking how much each service costs, and if their company charges a service visit fee. You have to know also what the payment options are, so you can assess your finances accordingly.
An Attitude for Gratitude
It helps to be nice to people. This is one important reason why you need to prepare for your service call. Stress has a negative effect on how you communicate with others, and you should be able to establish a relationship with your service technician.
While you may not need their help on a regular basis, being on good terms with service providers helps you feel more at ease with asking for their help again in the future. Positive experiences with your appliance technicians require more than professional customer service from their end. You, as the customer, must also be able to level with them when it comes to basic communication and rapport. When you work together, solutions become easier to find.
This doesn’t mean that you’ll have to fake being nice, too. Remember to provide honest feedback on their work, and take note of both their merits and shortcomings. This will help improve their work processes, as well as their relationship with their customers.
Don’t forget to thank them for helping you fix your appliance. You can even offer a light snack to make their day.
What If It’s An Emergency?
If you have no time to prepare for a service call, Toronto Appliance Repairs is open 24/7 to provide same-day appliance repairs and maintenance checks in GTA. Call us now at 416-918-2700!
