Appliance Service of Houston

I had them come out and look at my broken dishwasher. The repairman seemed courteous to my wife and knowledgeable about what my problem was to me. The problem is the service fee. We were billed $ 160 for just diagnosing the problem! Yes, I’m aware that no one will come out to your house and figure out what is wrong without charging a diagnostic fee. I’m also aware that these fees can be a lot of money. But we were not told in any way shape or form that we would be looking at being charged nearly half the price of the dishwasher just to tell me what is wrong with it. That is extremely exorbitant and there’s no way I can recommend these people to fix anything in your house if that’s what they’d charge without so much as giving me any idea what even determining the problem would cost. I talked to the repairman and he said that’s basically what a national level service company like Sears would charge. Really? Well then why would I use you then and just call them instead? At least they’d give me an idea beforehand what a diagnosis would cost.

Late in October, I had a problem where the freezer section of my refrigerator would ice over. Going through the Angie’s list reviews, I saw that Appliance Service of Houston had some excellent feedback, so it seemed reasonable to give them a call and see what they could do for my ailing appliance.
Scheduling an appointment was relatively straightforward, and the gentleman who came to do the work was certainly punctual and professional. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he was fairly likable– but unfortunately, his work was not. After identifying the problem as a faulty defroster, it wasn’t hard to convince me to go ahead and replace associated components like the timer and wiring. The argument that was made by the repair person was that when one goes, the others are likely to follow, so the most efficient thing to do is replace the whole system at once in order to prevent repeat visits. I agreed, since a little upfront money was worth avoiding the hassle of a failed refrigerator/​freezer.
That hassle wasn’t to be avoided it seems. A few months later, the newly installed defroster has failed*, taking a fridge full of food with it. I contacted Appliance Service of Houston to try and get them to work on it again, but they informed me that their parts and labor are under warranty for 90 days. I, of course, contacted them on day 94. While I could understand guaranteeing the labor for 90 days, I’m seriously disappointed that they have so little faith in their parts that they only provide three months worth of warranty on them. For a major appliance, I’d expect parts to have at least a year-​long warranty, and the level of customer service I’ve received from Appliance Service of Houston leads me to describe their operations as amateurish. I wouldn’t recommend this company to anyone else unless you had the simplest of repairs on your appliances, and even then, only if you couldn’t get anyone else, because you’ll likely be seeing them (or another repair company) again soon.
* The diagnosis was confirmed by Andy’s Appliances, another highly rated appliance repair company on Angie’s list.