You are given two numbers: the repair is $250, a new one is $900. They are not comparable, and nothing on the invoice admits it. They buy different amounts of time. Divide each by the years it buys and the question answers itself: $250 on a machine with 3 years left is $83.33 a year, and $900 on a machine with 12 years in it is $75.00 a year. The bigger number is the cheaper decision.More
Cost per remaining year is the comparison the arithmetic demands, and it is not the comparison you are invited to make. The invitation is $250 against $900, which is a question about your bank balance this afternoon rather than a question about the machine. Do the division and the second thing you notice is that the answer hangs almost entirely on one figure: how many more years the repaired machine has in it. That figure is not published by anyone, it is a guess, and it is YOUR guess, which is why it is a box on this page rather than a constant inside it. Change it and watch the answer flip. If it flips easily, the honest verdict is that the decision was never financial and you should decide it on the grounds you actually care about. And then there is the diagnostic fee, which is charged whether or not you go ahead and is frequently credited against the repair if you do. Those two facts together tell you what it is for, and they hand you two questions worth asking on the phone before you book anybody.
What each option costs you a year
$83
The repair, spread over the years you think it buys$83
A new one, spread over the years you think IT buys$75
Stop comparing the repair bill with the price of a new one. They buy different amounts of
time. A $250 repair on a machine with 3 years left in it costs $83.33 a year. A $900 machine with 12 years
in it costs $75.00 a year. The bigger number is the cheaper decision, and the invoice will never tell you that,
because the invoice is not doing this division. Only you can, and only if you know the one number nobody publishes,
which is how long the machine has left.More
The two cells to read together are the two in the middle. One says how many years the repair
MUST buy to match the new machine. The other says how many years you think it actually has. If the first is bigger
than the second, the repair is the dearer choice per year of service, however much smaller the bill looks today. At
the defaults the repair needs to buy 3.3 years and you think it has 3, which is how a $250 decision loses to a $900
one.
And then be honest about the precision. At those defaults, replacing wins by $8.33 a year. That is a
real answer and it is a narrow one, and it rests on a lifespan that we have guessed and that you have guessed.
Move the expected life by a year or two and the verdict can flip. When it flips that easily, the truthful conclusion
is not "replace" or "repair" but "this was never a financial decision", and you are free to settle it on the things
you actually care about: the disruption, the waste, the guarantee, whether you liked the old one.
The diagnostic fee, and why it is not a swindle. It is charged whether or not you go ahead, and it
is frequently credited against the repair if you do. Both of those are reasonable. Somebody drove to your house and
worked out what was wrong, which is the skilled part of the job, and on every visit that ends in "it is not worth
fixing" the fee is what the firm gets paid. But once you have paid it, it is SUNK. It is gone whichever way you
decide. The pull you feel toward going ahead so that the fee is not "wasted" is the sunk-cost fallacy, and the credit
is engineered to produce it. The credit is still real money and it belongs in the sum. It makes the repair cheaper by
exactly its own size, and by nothing more than that.
So make two phone calls before you book anybody. What is the diagnostic fee, and does it come off
the repair if I go ahead? Both are ordinary questions. A firm that will not answer them on the phone has told you
something useful for free.
§ 02 The comparison nothing on the invoice invites you to make
The repair, per remaining year$83.33
A new one, per year of its life$75.00
Years the repair MUST buy to match the new machine3.30
Years you think the repair actually buys3.00
The difference, a year$8.33
The wage is BLS's and it is exact, and it drives no calculation on this page. The expected life of a new machine is OURS, it is a guess, it is declared on the input, and it is the number the entire answer turns on. There IS one published national price in this comparison and an earlier version of this page denied it: the American Housing Survey puts the contractor-done median for adding or replacing a dishwasher or garbage disposal at $761, which belongs on the replacement side and which you should use if your machine is a dishwasher. It fuses dishwashers with garbage disposals, it is an outlay rather than a quote, and of AHS's 34 job types exactly one names an appliance of this kind, so it does not price a washing machine or a fridge. The repair side is genuinely unpriced and we are not going to invent a figure for it: what IS published there is the industry's HOURS (BLS CES, series CEU8081140002, NAICS 8114, monthly since 2006). A rate could be built from those hours over Economic Census receipts. We have not built it, and that is a gap in this page rather than in the data.
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The two options cost within about fifteen percent of each other per year of service, and that is narrower than the uncertainty in the lifespan both of them rest on. The truthful verdict is that this is not a financial decision, so stop trying to make it one. Decide it on the things you can actually see: the disruption, the guarantee, whether the new one is better than the old one was, whether you want the old one out of the house, and how much you mind the waste.
A repair bill and a replacement price are not comparable numbers. They buy different amounts of time.More
This is the whole finding and it is embarrassingly simple. $250 against $900 is a question about your bank balance. $83.33 a year against $75.00 a year is a question about the machine. Only the second one can be answered, and the arithmetic is a single division that nothing on the invoice invites you to do: take each price and divide it by the years of service it buys.
A repair does not reset the clock.More
The new part is new. Every other part in the machine is exactly as old as it was the day before it broke. That is why the age of the machine belongs in this calculation and why the repair on a nine-year-old machine is buying three years rather than twelve. It is also why the second fault, when it arrives, tends to arrive sooner than the first one did.
One side of this comparison does have a published price, and it is the side people assume is the guess.More
The American Housing Survey asks households what they actually paid for a completed job. Job type 30 is 'Added or replaced dishwasher or garbage disposal', and where a contractor did the work the median outlay is $761, with a middle half between $435 and $1,087. That is the replacement side, priced, by the federal government. Three limits, and they are why it is not the default in the box: the code fuses dishwashers with garbage disposals; it is an outlay a household reported rather than a quote, and carries no scope; and of the 34 AHS job types exactly one names an appliance of this kind, so it will not tell you what a washing machine or a fridge costs. Use it if yours is a dishwasher. Notice what it does when you do: the verdict at the defaults stops being 'too close to call' and becomes 'replace'.
A home appliance repairer earns a median of $24.51 an hour, which is precisely the median for every occupation in America.More
Not approximately. The same number, to the cent: BLS puts Home Appliance Repairers (SOC 49-9031) at $24.51 an hour and All Occupations at $24.51 an hour. It is a coincidence, we are building no argument on it, and we are telling you because it is a pleasing one and because you should check it rather than take our word for anything. The tell that it is a real coincidence and not a copying error is the ANNUAL medians, which BLS computes separately and which land $10 apart: $50,990 for the repairer against $50,980 for everybody.
The wage is not the bill, and the difference is not a margin.More
$24.51 is what the repairer is paid. It is not what the firm charges, and it was never going to be. Out of the difference come the van, the parts at trade prices you never see, the insurance, the office that took your call, the unpaid drive, the diagnostic time, and every visit that ended with 'it is not worth fixing' and produced no repair to bill for. Calling the remainder profit is the easiest mistake on this page and it happens to be false. This page therefore uses the wage for nothing at all: it drives no calculation here.
SOC 49-9031 is wider than the person in your kitchen, and it leaves out a great many of them.More
The bucket counts anyone repairing home appliances, which includes the in-warranty technician at a manufacturer's depot and the service arm of a retailer, not just the independent who drove to your house. And BLS OES excludes the self-employed. Its own FAQ: 'Does OEWS have occupational employment estimates that include the self-employed? No.' Independent appliance repairers are, very often, exactly that. So the 32,150 it counts are the ones on somebody's payroll, and this page divides nothing by that number.
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The wage runs from $17.17 an hour to $34.02 across the 49 states that publish one.More
West Virginia at the bottom, Massachusetts at the top, a spread of 1.98 times. It is a wage and not a price, so it will not tell you what your repair should cost. It will tell you that a trade with a national median can still be two different jobs at two ends of a country.
The diagnostic fee is charged whether or not you proceed, and is frequently credited against the repair if you do.More
Put those two facts side by side and the fee explains itself. It is what the firm earns on every visit that ends in a recommendation to replace, which is a visit they still had to drive to and diagnose. And the credit is a discount that turns a diagnosis into a sale. Neither half is dishonest. What you have to watch is what the fee does to your own head once you have paid it.
Once you have paid the diagnostic fee it is SUNK, and it must not push you toward the repair.More
It is gone whichever way you decide. The feeling that going ahead will 'use it up', and that replacing instead means the fee was wasted, is the sunk-cost fallacy, and the credit-against-the-repair structure is well designed to produce it. This page puts the fee into neither forward-looking cost, because it belongs in neither. The CREDIT is different: it is real money you get only if you repair, so it lowers the repair's cost by exactly its own size. Not by more, and not by the good feeling.
The number the answer turns on is the number with the least evidence behind it.More
How many years the repaired machine has left. There is no federal survival curve for appliances, we looked, and manufacturers know without saying. That is why the expected life is a box on this page and not a constant inside it: we are not asking you to believe us, we are asking you to overwrite us. Move it by two years in each direction. If the verdict flips, the decision was never financial, and that is a genuinely useful thing to find out.
Sourced: two things. The wage, from BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics,
SOC 49-9031, Home Appliance Repairers: a median of $24.51 an hour, $50,990 a year, 32,150 employed, and it drives no
calculation here. And, on the replacement side only, what households actually paid: the American Housing Survey puts
the contractor-done median for adding or replacing a dishwasher or garbage disposal at $761.
Ours, and declared on the boxes themselves: the 12-year life of a new machine, and the $900 the
replacement box starts at. Both are guesses. Yours: the repair quote, the replacement price, the
age, the expected life, the diagnostic fee and whether it is credited.More
One number in this comparison IS published, and the first version of this page told you it was not.
We said there was no national price to have. That was false, and the source was already sitting in our own data
directory: the American Housing Survey asks households what they PAID for a completed job, and job type 30 is "Added
or replaced dishwasher or garbage disposal". Median outlay $652 across all households, $761 where a contractor did
the work, with a middle half of $435 to $1,087 and a contractor spread from $219 at the 10th percentile to $1,631 at
the 90th. The reason we missed it is worth more than the number: we searched our data files for the word "appliance",
and the Census calls it a dishwasher. An absence you prove with a keyword list is an absence proved against your own
vocabulary, not against the world.
Why it is quoted here and not loaded into the box. Three limits, and they are the difference between
citing a figure and misusing it. The AHS code FUSES dishwashers with garbage disposals, which are not the same
purchase. It records one cost per completed job with no scope attached, so it is a household's outlay and not a
contractor's quote. And it is the single appliance AHS prices: we read all 34 of its job types, and exactly one names
an appliance of the kind this page is about. Job type 28 is "Added or replaced other major equipment", a residual
bucket with no named contents. A washing machine may well sit inside it. We do not know what is in that bucket, and
that is exactly why we refuse to read a figure out of it. AHS will not tell you what a washer, a fridge or an oven
costs, which is what most people reading this have. The box therefore starts at our $900, which is a guess, and if
your machine is a dishwasher you should overwrite it with theirs. That single change moves the verdict at the defaults from
"too close to call" to "replace", which tells you how much of this page's answer was resting on a number we made up.
The repair side really is unpriced, and that part survived the re-search. We read all 34 AHS job
types one at a time: three are disaster repairs and the rest are additions and replacements. There is no appliance
repair in there, and no diagnostic visit. The wage drives no calculation on this page at all, and that is deliberate.
The temptation with a wage in hand is to hold it against a bill and imply the difference is a margin, and we are not
doing that, because it is not true.
What the gap between the wage and the bill actually is. The van and what is in it. The parts, at
trade prices you do not see. The insurance. The office that answered the phone. The drive, which nobody pays for
directly. The diagnostic time. And the visits that ended in "it is not worth fixing", where the fee was the whole of
the revenue. Call any of that profit and you have told the easiest lie available on this page. We are not calling it
profit. It is the cost of a firm existing so that somebody can come out on Tuesday.
The lifespan is a guess and we would rather say so than launder it. There is no federal survival
curve for washing machines. We searched our own data and we searched BLS: what is published is a repairer's wage, an
industry's hours, and what a household paid to replace a dishwasher, and not one of the three is a lifespan.
Manufacturers know and do not publish. So the 12 years is ours, it is on the input where you cannot miss it, and the
sensitivity test is the honest use of this page: move it two years each way and see if the answer survives.
And the absence we DID check, because this site has a bad habit here. We were about to write that
there are no hours for this trade and therefore no rate could ever be built. It would have been false. BLS's Current
Employment Statistics publishes average weekly hours for NAICS 8114, series CEU8081140002, monthly from March 2006 to
May 2026. THE HOURS EXIST. Two things are nonetheless true: that class is "personal and household goods repair and
maintenance", which is wider than appliance repair and also contains shoe repair and furniture reupholstery, and CES
does not go down to 811412 at all. And hours are a denominator, not a rate: you would need receipts over them, the
receipts sit in the 2022 Economic Census for sector 81, and WE HAVE NOT PULLED THEM. That is a gap in this page and
not a gap in the world, and when it is built it will be a CLASS figure that bounds nobody's quote.
Where every number above comes from
Wage data
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, national. Home Appliance Repairers (SOC 49-9031): 32,150 employed, median $24.51/hr, $50,990/yr, 10th percentile $17.40/hr, 90th percentile $38.78/hr. All Occupations (SOC 00-0000): median $24.51/hr, $50,980/yr. The hourly medians are identical to the cent, which is a coincidence and nothing more
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, by state. Home Appliance Repairers: a median published for 49 states, from $17.17/hr in West Virginia to $34.02/hr in Massachusetts, a spread of 1.98 times
BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics FAQ: 'Does OEWS have occupational employment estimates that include the self-employed? No.' Independent appliance repairers are frequently self-employed, so the employment count above is the ones on a payroll, and nothing on this page is divided by it
BLS, Current Employment Statistics, series CEU8081140002: average weekly hours of all employees, NAICS 8114 (personal and household goods repair and maintenance), monthly from March 2006 to May 2026. THE HOURS EXIST, and this page says so rather than claiming they do not. Two caveats: the class is wider than appliance repair (it also holds shoe repair and furniture reupholstery), and CES does not publish NAICS 811412 at all
US Census Bureau and HUD, American Housing Survey 2023 National PUF, job type 30, 'Added or replaced dishwasher or garbage disposal': median outlay $652 across all households and $761 where a contractor did the work (n=1,532), contractor p25 $435, p75 $1,087, p10 $219, p90 $1,631. THE ONE NATIONAL PRICE IN THIS COMPARISON, and an earlier version of this page wrongly said it did not exist. It is what a household PAID for a completed job, not a quote, and no scope is recorded against it. The code FUSES dishwashers with garbage disposals, and of the 34 AHS job types exactly one names an appliance of this kind, so it does not bound a washing machine, a fridge or an oven (job type 28, 'other major equipment', is a residual bucket with no named contents and cannot be read as one). It prices a REPLACEMENT and not a repair
Every one of these is a place the number could be off. They are here because you should be able to check our working, not because we are hedging.
The expected life of a new machine is OURS, it is a guess, and the answer turns on it more than on anything else.
Twelve years is a placeholder we chose. There is no federal source for appliance lifespans, we searched for one, and what we found instead was a repairer's wage and an industry's hours. It is an INPUT rather than a constant precisely because we do not want to be believed about it. Overwrite it, then move it two years each way and see whether the verdict survives. If it does not, the decision was never a financial one.
The repaired machine is assumed to have the expected life MINUS its current age, and no more. A repair does not reset the clock.
The new part is new; every other part is as old as it was yesterday. This may be optimistic, because a machine that has broken once has a fleet of same-aged parts queuing up behind the one that went. It may be pessimistic, because a major component replaced well can carry a machine past its ordinary span. We do not know which, no survival curve is published, and this single modelling choice moves the answer more than any other. It is the honest weak point of the page and we would rather point at it than bury it.
A machine at or past the expected life is credited with one year of remaining life, not zero.
A floor, so that the division is defined, and because a working-again machine is not worth literally nothing. It is a modelling choice and it is ours. If you think your repaired fifteen-year-old machine has three good years in it, put fifteen or eighteen in the expected-life box and the arithmetic will follow you.
The diagnostic fee is treated as SUNK and appears in neither forward-looking cost. The credit is treated as real and appears only in the repair's.
This is the correct treatment and it is not the intuitive one. At the moment you are deciding, the fee is already gone: it cannot be recovered by choosing the repair, and it is not wasted by choosing to replace. Only the credit is still live, and it is worth exactly what it says on it. Any pull you feel beyond that is the fee doing its other job.
The wage is a WAGE. It is not a price, it does not bound anybody's quote, and this page computes nothing from it.
$24.51 an hour is what BLS says a home appliance repairer earns. The firm that employs them charges more, and must, or it would not exist by Friday. The difference is the van, the parts, the insurance, the office, the drive and the diagnoses that never became repairs. We have deliberately kept the wage out of compute() so that it cannot quietly become an argument.
Frequently asked questions
Is it worth repairing, or should I replace it?
Work out the cost per remaining year for each, which is the comparison nothing on the invoice invites you to make. Take the repair quote and divide it by the years you think the repair buys. Take the price of a new one, delivered and fitted, and divide it by the years a new one lasts. Then compare those two. A $250 repair on a machine with 3 years left costs $83.33 a year; a $900 machine with 12 years in it costs $75.00 a year. The bigger bill is the cheaper decision, and you would never have seen it by comparing $250 with $900.
What is the diagnostic fee, and why am I paying it if they did not fix anything?
Because somebody drove to your house and worked out what was wrong, and that is the skilled part of the job rather than the bit you can see. The fee is charged whether or not you go ahead, and it is frequently credited against the repair if you do. Those two facts together explain what it is for: it is what the firm earns on every visit that ends in 'it is not worth fixing', and the credit is a discount that turns a diagnosis into a sale. Both are legitimate. Ask two questions on the phone before you book: what is the fee, and does it come off the repair if I go ahead? A firm that will not answer those has told you something.
I have already paid the diagnostic fee. Does that mean I should go ahead with the repair?
No, and this is the trap. Once paid, the fee is SUNK: it is gone whether you repair or replace, so it cannot be 'used up' by going ahead and it is not 'wasted' by walking away. The feeling that it can be is the sunk-cost fallacy, and the credit-against-the-repair structure is very good at producing it. What IS still live is the credit itself, which is real money and which lowers the cost of the repair by exactly its own size. This page treats it that way: the fee appears in neither forward-looking cost, and the credit appears only in the repair's.
How long does an appliance actually last?
We do not know, and we are not going to make a number up, which is why it is a box on this page rather than a constant inside it. There is no federal survival curve for appliances: we searched our own data and we searched BLS, and what is published is a repairer's wage and an industry's hours, neither of which is a lifespan. Manufacturers know and do not say. So put in what you actually believe, and then do the sensitivity test, which is the honest use of this page: move the expected life by two years in each direction. If the verdict flips, the decision was never financial and you should make it on the grounds you genuinely care about.
What does an appliance repair cost?
There is no published price, and this page will not invent one. BLS surveys the OCCUPATION and gives a wage: $24.51 an hour, median, for Home Appliance Repairers. A wage is a cost and never a price. What IS published, and what we nearly told you was not, is the industry's HOURS: BLS's Current Employment Statistics has average weekly hours for NAICS 8114, series CEU8081140002, monthly since March 2006. Two caveats. That class also contains shoe repair and furniture reupholstery, so it is wider than your dishwasher, and BLS does not publish 811412 at all. And hours are a denominator, not a rate. A class revenue per employee-hour could be built from those hours over Economic Census receipts; we have not built it, and that is a gap in this page rather than in the data. Your quote is your quote, and this page does arithmetic on it rather than pretending to price it.
What does an appliance repairer earn?
A median of $24.51 an hour, or $50,990 a year, which happens to be exactly the hourly median for every occupation in America ($24.51, and $50,980 a year). That is BLS, SOC 49-9031, and the coincidence is a coincidence: we build nothing on it. Two warnings that matter more than the tidiness of the number. The bucket is wider than the person in your kitchen, because it counts manufacturers' depot technicians and retailers' service arms too. And BLS excludes the self-employed, so the 32,150 it counts are the ones on a payroll, and a lot of independent repairers are not.
Am I being overcharged for this repair?
We do not know and we will not imply it, because there is no published price to hold yours against and a comparison with nothing is worth nothing. What this page can do is tell you whether the repair is good VALUE, which is a different and better question: divide it by the years it buys and hold that against a new machine divided by the years IT buys. And if you are tempted to hold the quote against the $24.51 wage and call the difference a margin, do not. Out of that difference come the van, the parts, the insurance, the office, the unpaid drive, the diagnostic time, and every visit that ended in 'it is not worth fixing' with nothing to bill for.
