After watching Good Morning America’s Replace it or Repair it segment it got me wondering about what you think.
Recently, we decided to replace my 10+ year old fridge. The white was turning yellow and the ice maker was hanging on by only one side of the shelf. While we replaced the water filter regularly (at $35 a pop), my husband had been having stomach sickness for over the period of a year and we wondered if drinking water from the fridge was the cause.
We knew it would be a big cost, but because of sticking to our Cash Only system, we had budgeted enough to cover the cost. We did our research and decided between two fridge models and scouted several stores to see who had the best deal. While out scouting deals, we went browsing at Sears (with no intention to buy). We found a fridge we really liked, but the price even on sale was outside of our budgeted amount. We told the sales associate this and her response was, “Well, let me see if anyone else has it cheaper because Sears will price match their competitors.” We went to her computer, searched the internet and found that Lowes had the same fridge for about $300 less. Not only would they take off $300, they also take off 10% of the difference in the price! Needless to say, we ended up purchasing the fridge through Sears.
The decision to go ahead and purchase before our fridge kicked the bucket was made based on several factors. We upgraded from white to stainless steel, we chose a model that had an in the door ice maker to give us more freezer space, and we wanted a model that was energy effiencient.
By the way, my husband has not had any stomach problems since we replaced the fridge.
What leads you to make the decision to replace an appliance? Do you wait til it breaks, give it a set amount of years, find a great deal on something new or upgrade to a newer model to save on energy costs?
