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So, it’s one right after the other, but it’s a lot of fun doing it.
Hi, I’m David Breedon and I’m a major appliance service technician, and I work for Camco, which is the major appliance manufacturer of GE and Hotpoint.
I’ve been in the business over twenty-five years, and I’d like to say it’s an excellent type of business to be in.
A typical day of an appliance service person is actually dealing with the customer one-on-one in their home.
Most people have five appliances, and usually one of them can break so they call somebody to fix it,
and we come in and gladly try to do that for them.
Typically to get into this business you have to want to be part MacGyver and part Sherlock Holmes, and you have to have grade 12 minimum, with good marks in science and electrical.
Some community colleges courses have electronics, which is something you should have,
and you also should have your gas licenses, because a lot of appliances work on gas as well,
so you have to go to community college for that as well up to ninety hours a week, plus also doing a French program.
We’re going to look at a refrigerator and a dryer; we’ll take a look at both of those for our first service call.
The best skills in this job are to be able to listen to people in their homes,
because customers use their appliance every day, so they can give you a lot of good clues on how to pinpoint the problem.
Well, it never made this sound before, it went boop-boop-boop, or beep-beep-beep,
and then you have a better idea where you want to take your next step to try to fix it.
The other thing is you want to enjoy taking things apart and put them back together;
it’s a lot like the game of concentration, you have to remember that that little thing goes there and that big thing goes there, in that order.
In this case, we found that the controls were set okay, and there was a slight noise they were concerned about,
and that was actually the gas travelling within the system, which is a normal sound, so we just try to give them the benefit of the doubt that there was something wrong.
Checked it out and now they’re more comfortable that we took the time to look at their appliance.
A fair part about my job is dealing with the public on a one-on-one basis,
because after you do eight to nine visits a day and you continue to see the same customers over and over again,
that pat on the back saying thanks a lot for fixing my problem and not overcharging me, or you become like their relative once removed, and they’re glad to see you,
that’s the part I like about my job.
One of the things that’s kind of negative about this job ─ it’s not that big a deal ─ is traffic sometimes, because part of our job is driving,
You have to drive to each customer’s home, and the weather conditions change.
The odd time you’ll find the odd mechanical problem you cannot find, or you have trouble with and,
sometimes, the customers can be a little bit aggressive. Also, the odd dog bite is not very pleasant.
Years ago, appliances all were just pretty basic; now you have solid state sensors.
It isn’t just a matter of going in and just guessing.
You actually have to have specific skills to try to find the problems with electronics so that you make a good, accurate decision for the customer
because most of these parts are over $200 each. It’s hard to guess, so you have to be good with electricity and get comfortable with dealing with diagnostics.
Dryers are a really common used appliance,
so I’m just going to check the terminals, using my meter to see if the continuity of the elements is good, so the customer has heat.
My instrument tells me that the element is good, so the problem is not electrical.
In all likelihood, the problem is that a bird built a nest in their vent, which makes it take a lot longer to dry, so I’ll just put it back together and try it again.
The money in this business is actually quite good; you get a lot of satisfaction from doing the work and your pay is usually very good.
Someone could start in the bracket of forty, and it can go up to as high as seventy.