A small rant

When we bought the house nearly six years ago it came with a tiny outdoor's fridge, for those cool beers on a hot day. It must have been owned by the previous owners for a number of years and we happily took it on. The beers come out icy cold, the white wines perfect in their crispness. We were expecting it not to last long and yet it seems they were once built to last. Not so anymore. 

All the other appliances we bought new and a few have been going wrong recently. I find the service companies and ask them to come out and on two occasions in the last couple of weeks, the young men arrive, take a five minute look at the appliance and declare it dead. The call out fees for the last two were $130 and $185 for today's visit. Today's visit was exactly 7 minutes long. I wonder if these companies would not consider that this is a real turn off for its customers and in cases where there is really nothing more to be done a reduced call out fee is applied. I can't help feeling that at the end of the day when they have ten appointments to fulfil calling it dead as a dodo is easier than getting into the complexities of fixing an appliance. Two more for the landfill or the appliance heaven they end up in which makes it doubly worse.