Rental Maintenance: Appliance Troubleshooting

Hopefully you’ve read our previous blog posts about maintenance and issue prevention on sinks and toilets, and the bonus on snow. If you haven’t, go ahead and check those out. We’ll wait here for ya! 😉

This week we’re covering appliances in the rental.

Every rental property has a variety of different appliances, if you’re lucky enough to have all new or mostly recent appliances, this blog post likely won’t apply to you. But for those of you out there with a refrigerator that seems like it could keep you safe during a nuclear attack, go ahead and give this a read.

Not every issue requires a vendor to come out and look at the appliance. If it can be fixed, there’s likely an easy solution.

Here are some tips to troubleshoot a malfunctioning appliance:

Un-plug & plug it back in. Sometimes it just needs to be reset! If this isn’t an option, try to find a power button or a reset button.

Find and read the manual. Most manuals are online now. Use the stickers on the inside of the appliance to find the Make/Model#/Serial Number. These will help you find the right manual on google.

Call Someone. Though most vendors need to see the appliance to diagnose what’s wrong, sometimes they can help you troubleshoot on the phone. This might take a couple of tries before you find someone willing to help you on the phone, but let’s be real, aren’t those the vendors you’d return to anyways?

Your landlord is also a good phone call to make, they might know about a recurring issue, with that model or that piece of equipment specifically and how to fix it. They will also know a good vendor to call.

This is just a list to get your started on your troubleshooting with a misbehaving appliance.

Should any problem continue, your landlord is a good resource for information. Not to mention that they should be kept well appraised of all the issues you run into should it escalate.

Do you have any other tips for tenants or owners? Leave us a note in the comments!