The Era Of Appliance Surgeons

By: Anessa Cohen

We live a carefree life in today’s world! Surrounded by hordes of choices in household appliances and electronics, if I were to sit down and list all the items I have in my house, I would have to literally sit down and think really hard before I could answer that question.

And I think most people would find themselves in a similar position! Think about it. In the kitchen alone, there are stoves, ovens, refrigerators, clocks, microwaves, warming drawers, dishwashers, instant hot water dispensers, coffee makers, blenders, food processors, crockpots, mixers, hot water urns, steamers, etc. And I’ve barely scratched the surface of appliances and electronics that we use daily without any thought as to how we could live without them—until they stop working!

When a trusted appliance suddenly stops working, panic sets in. You think: “Oy, my goodness, what am I going to do now? How will I manage? Someone, please help me, quick! I think I’ll go on Facebook and tell everyone what happened so someone can help me!”—and so on and so forth.

Makes you wonder a little about what people did before all these appliances and electronics became available, and how anyone made a decision before the internet and Facebook were invented!

Today, decisions on how to solve problems are not made alone anymore. The minute something happens, our first thought is to log on to Facebook and see what everybody thinks the answer should be. If someone wants to be really bold, they will skip asking for advice on Facebook and go directly to Google and ask some AI wizard what should be done. (And it’s scary how accurate the AI wizards are!)

Now with all this, let me share with you a saga of my double oven woes.

It all started on a Wednesday. I was so proud of myself for preparing several things in advance for Rosh Hashanah that I was going to put into the oven and bake. I prepped the oven at 350 degrees and put in all my beautifully done dishes and shut the door thinking I wouldn’t return for an hour or so.

Suddenly, I heard a weird beeping noise and returned to the kitchen to see an “F 9” beeping on the display instead of 350 degrees with an additional “lock” sign. My first thought was “Not now!” Then I figured I would open the door and remove the dishes and put them to bake in the other oven if this one was not working.

But, that “lock” sign really meant business and the door would not open. To add insult to injury, not only was the oven not working properly, it locked the door and wouldn’t let me remove anything!

I ran to the circuit box and cut off the oven circuit breaker, figuring that this would break the “lock” on the display by shutting it down. It worked, but took another 10 minutes to happen. (Which probably meant the oven cooled down and turning off the circuit breaker had nothing to do with it.)

Off I went to call my appliance guy to get over and fix whatever temperamental mood issues my double oven was experiencing since it was computerized and obviously had a deviant personality to put me in this position.

My appliance guy said that the PC board and touchpad (which I never knew my oven even had) needed replacement since they were sending the wrong signals to each other. But the only thing that was going through my mind was how I was going to bake all the food I’d prepared and everything else I needed for yom tov now that my oven was AWOL.

“Call GE,” he suggested. I looked at him as if he’d lost his marbles. “Why would I call GE when I already called you?” He told me that GE has specialized equipment that can diagnose the electronic problems on their appliances more distinctly and that I should get one of their techs to come down and see if anything further could be done.

Go figure. Now even calling an appliance repair guy is not necessarily the answer when the computerized components on an appliance go haywire: now you need a specially-trained computer GE tech guy, like surgeons with specialties.

So, in comes the tech with his stethoscope and machinery and finds what caused the PC Board and touchpad to go haywire: a cooling fan and sensor got clogged. Seriously? I’m now ready to go back to the old-fashioned ovens without the digital pads and computerized boards, where cooking consisted simply of turning on the gas and feeling the oven heat up as it prepared to cook your food. How simple life was back then!

But I managed to bake my food in between all this tumult. Since the problem came from the computerized component on the convection feature, I was able to bypass this on the touchpad by simply pressing “bake” and inputting the temperature, which I will do as I wait several weeks for the GE surgeons and their replacement parts to visit and rehabilitate my oven.

I guess this is the way forward from now on—specialty appliance surgeons! 

Anessa Cohen lives in Cedarhurst and is a Licensed Real Estate Broker (Anessa V Cohen Realty with over 20 years of experience offering residential, commercial and management real estate services. You are invited to visit AVCRealty.com. She can be reached at 516-569-5007. Readers are encouraged to send any questions or comments to [email protected].