one appliance at a time

I called around town last week looking for someone to come and look at my dryer. No one I knew had any recommendations for appliance repair people, so I just pulled out the phonebook and went down the list. At all but one place I talked to the 'desk jockey'. You know what I mean. The one who answers the phone, has no understanding of the industry they're in, and simply schedules an appointment while telling you how much you'll owe just for having a technician come and take a look.

The one exception was Brian (who will forever in this house be known as 'the dryer guy formerly known as John'). Just another routine call to find out how much to have someone look turned into a "What's the dryer doing?' conversation. At first I was a little frustrated figuring I was going to tell someone who didn't really need to know what was going on just so they could forget to give the notes to the technician who would then arrive blindly and without parts to fix my dryer. As it turns out, Brian was the technician. He told me what he thought the problem was, quoted a price, and put the 'desk jockey' on the phone to schedule the appointment.

Fast forward to yesterday. Brian was scheduled to arrive between 1pm and 5pm. Don't you just love those four hour windows of time where you're held like a hostage in your own home? At 12:45pm Brian arrived. And 20 minutes later, with the exact part he said was the problem replaced and the dryer humming nicely, he was gone. Oh, and he told me what to do about my dishwasher too - "Buy a new one... or at least that's what I'd do," he said. Talk about great customer service!

So, last week I got a new computer. And this week my dryer's fixed. One appliance at a time I'm getting back to 'normal'.