Do-It-Yourself Story

Our washing machine is an old but very good Maytag. We took the front off the washer to inspect the machinery and found that a mouse had carried in hundreds of dog food kibbles, so after cleaning them all out and tightening the belts, the machine still did not work. We called a repairman who told us that the timer was faulty and was no longer available so we would need a new machine. Not wanting to replace the machine and buy a new dryer to match, we looked at your failure checklist which indicated a failed lid switch. As a last effort we ordered the block containing the switch and the fuse. Opening the electronics console on top of the machine we discovered that the mouse had made a nest in the wires using lint and chewed-up bits of the wiring diagram! She had also chewed the insulation off six wires. We cleaned up the mess and rewrapped the wires with electrical tape before replacing the switch block. We installed the new switch block that came within a few days and crossed our fingers as we tested the machine. It works great now!! Thanks so much for your great how-to videos and fast parts shipping. We were able to make the repair and get the machine going before our family visited for Thanksgiving. It would have been much more difficult if we would have had to visit the washeteria instead of spending the holiday with our family. P.S. We called the repairman who charged us $140 for a useless visit and told him we were going to give him a bad rating because we were able to fix it ourselves after he told us the machine was toast. He opted to return the cost of the service call.