10 Questions to Ask Before You Add an Appliance Repair Vendor

The questions to ask an appliance repair company before you add it to your vendor list cover ten things: insurance, which appliances and brands it fixes, where parts come from, how it quotes, how it invoices, how it handles building access, what goes in the write-up, how callbacks work, after-hours coverage, and who actually answers the phone.

Ask them on a quiet day. The answers tell you how the vendor will behave on a bad one.

Why ask before the first work order

Because the first job is the worst time to find out. Once a tenant's refrigerator is warm, you'll take whoever can come, and you'll learn their habits on your own building's dime. Ten minutes on the phone with a new vendor, plus one email asking for paperwork, saves most of the surprises that show up later as repeat visits, unreadable invoices and a super who keeps getting calls from a technician stuck in the lobby.

You aren't looking for perfect answers. You're looking for specific ones. A vendor who answers in specifics on the phone usually writes in specifics on the invoice.

Paperwork and scope

1. Can you send a certificate of insurance naming our owner and management company?

This comes first because it's a yes or a no, and a no ends the conversation. A good answer is "yes, send me the exact names and we'll have it to you before the first visit." A hesitant answer, or "we're covered, don't worry," is a reason to stop. Workers' compensation belongs in the same request. If you manage co-ops or condos, the board will ask for this anyway.

2. Which appliances and brands do you work on, and which don't you?

Every vendor has gaps. The useful answer names them: "we do refrigeration, ranges, dishwashers, laundry and through-wall units; we don't do built-in wine coolers." Be wary of "we fix everything." Ask specifically about what's in your buildings, such as 24-inch prewar ranges, stacked washer-dryers in closets, coin-op laundry room machines or PTAC units, and whether they've worked on that equipment before.

Parts and money

3. Where do your parts come from, and how do you handle a part that has to be ordered?

You want to hear that common parts ride on the truck, that they order from distributors or the manufacturer when they don't, and that they'll tell you the part number and expected date when something has to be ordered. A vendor who can't explain their parts chain will leave you guessing during the wait.

4. How do you quote, and when?

The quote should come before the work, not with the invoice. Ask what the service call covers, whether diagnosis is included, and how they get approval for the repair itself. A good answer separates the diagnosis visit from the repair price and gives you a written number to approve. If the vendor's answer is "we just fix it and bill you," that is fine for a door gasket and painful for a control board. Our note on flat-rate versus time-and-materials pricing covers the two billing models and where each one bites.

5. How do you invoice: per unit, per building, per owner?

This matters more than it sounds. If you manage forty buildings for eleven owners, an invoice that lumps three addresses together turns into an afternoon of reallocating charges. Ask whether they can bill per building, show the unit number on each line, and carry your work order or PO number. Ask for a sample invoice. You'll learn more from it than from the answer.

Inside the building

6. How do you handle access?

A vendor that works with property managers should ask you how access works, not the other way around. Listen for: confirming with the super or the tenant before they drive over, knowing that doorman buildings want names in advance, reserving the freight elevator, and calling you rather than leaving when nobody answers the door. A vendor who only ever schedules with the tenant directly will cost you failed trips in any building where tenants work days.

7. What will the write-up say, and do you take photos?

After the visit you need to know what was wrong, what was done, what part went in and what's still open. Ask whether the write-up includes the model and serial number, the fault found, the part name and part number, and photos of the rating plate and the failed part. Photos settle a lot of later arguments: whether a disposal was jammed with a bottle cap, or whether a dryer vent was crushed behind the machine.

After the visit

8. If the same problem comes back, who pays for the second trip?

This is the callback question. Ask how long their repair warranty runs, whether it covers parts and labor or parts only, and how they tell a returning fault from a new one. A good vendor answers this without getting defensive, because they've thought about it. Our note on what a repair warranty should cover has the follow-up questions.

9. What happens after hours and on weekends?

Some vendors cover nights and weekends, some don't, and some do at a different rate. Any of those can be fine. What you want is a clear answer you can write into your building's after-hours instructions, so the super at 9pm on a Saturday knows whether to call this vendor or someone else. Ask about the rate difference in writing.

10. Who picks up when I call?

Last, and more revealing than it looks. Is there a dispatcher or office line that answers during business hours, or does every call go to a technician's cell phone while they're under a sink? Neither is automatically wrong for a small vendor. But you'll be calling for updates, and you need to know who can actually tell you where your job stands.

How to read the answers

Most of these questions don't have one right answer. They have specific answers and vague ones. Here is a quick way to score a call.

Two or three worrying answers on a call is a pattern. Try the vendor on a low-stakes job first, such as a dishwasher in a vacant unit during turnover, before you give them a tenant who's been without a stove for two days.

Questions about us

Here's how we answer a few of these. We work for property managers, supers and owners across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, and we repair refrigeration, ranges, dishwashers and disposals, washers and dryers, exhaust fans and heating and cooling equipment. The service call is $145 and up and covers attendance and diagnosis on site. Repairs are quoted for your approval before work starts. Access is arranged with your super, and requests come in one unit at a time with the building and apartment attached, so the record stays tied to the unit.

For the rest of the list, ask us directly through the contact page, or open a work order for a unit that needs a technician now.