Question about the young guy at the parts counter who called board-level repair a waste of time

Jesse Wells · 2026-11-12T23:10:05.158453+00:00

I was picking up a water inlet valve at a supply house in Toledo last Tuesday and the kid behind the counter (maybe 22) said nobody fixes control boards anymore, you just swap them. I bit my tongue in the store but it bugged me all day. Half my calls are on machines where a $2 relay or a bad solder joint on the board is the whole problem, and when I fix that instead of dropping $180 on a new board the customer remembers it and calls me back for years. Swapping parts is fast money but it is not repair, it is guessing with a credit card. I have watched too many techs throw three boards at a dryer because they never put a meter on the thermistor. Sure, some boards are potted and not worth the bench time, I get that. But writing off the whole skill as dead is how you end up as an installer who calls himself a tech. Am I way off here, or is this just how the trade is going now?

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Question about the young guy at the parts counter who called board-level repair a waste of time | Appliance Repairers - Rigidtalk