re: Appliance Repair - Tell me if this is price gauging or not??

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It's a dying field, hence the high prices. Not many people walk through that door, so they make every penny when they can. You can argue that they should lower prices to increase demand, but I don't believe it would really help. People who don't bother getting it repaired won't start lining up outside all of a sudden.

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Part of the deal is that replacement parts are easily found, youtube has made it easy to learn how to fix something, and a replacement appliance itself isn't terribly expensive (in most cases). So the only people calling up the Maytag man are old ladies and people like the OP.

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What if Napoleon's the guy who gauged him?

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that's what I was implying

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At a rate of $400-800 an hour.

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For fricks sake. Does the guy have a shop next door to you? You ever thought about the time it took to drive there, drive back, tools that he has to buy, knowledge and time to diagnose and fix a machine, time spent getting shite out the truck, etc.? Maybe it isn't just a 15 minute job for him, you know, since he doesn't fricking live with you.

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You can argue that they should lower prices to increase demand

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Actually I believe that the higher prices for getting things fixed has caused us to be a "throw away" society. If it costs nearly as much as a new one, to fix the old one, why not just buy the new one? That's a huge problem with our culture.

My family used to be in the industry, appliance parts wholesale. This is why it's a dying industry. It's just about always a better option to just replace broken appliances. They're cheap new. Repairmen are expensive.

my dishwasher was recently giving me trouble. I did some research and found the part online. Maytag wanted $386 for parts and labor (book said it would take 50 minutes to change). I spent $65 for the part and 20 minutes to replace it. The dishwasher was $600 new and I was not going to pay $386 for a repair. Yes, repair men are expensive.

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Well I was $102 in before he looked at my machine. When I called the person SAID the $102 would be put toward the work if I chose to have them do it. I assumed $102 would be more than enough in labor to do the job.

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Your assumption was wrong. Maybe they have a minimum number of hours they bill? The point is that they were up front with their costs and didn't mislead you in any way.

You just didn't like the price. People who get mad at what something costs are funny to me...so many entitled people.

also, my dad was throwing out a LG flat screen a few years ago. It was one that had the bad capacitors along with a lot of other brands. I bought the new parts for $11 and repaired it myself. I sold it for $300 on craigslist a week later.

I remember being charged a high arse fee for changing out a part on my plasma TV. The guy shows up with power tools, opens up the back panel, and simply unplugs the part and plugs the new part in. It took all of 10 minutes, but he charged me like $120 labor lol. I guess you pay for convenience and what you don't know. Can't get mad at him for charging you an amount you agreed to pay.