How to price appliance repair, from the diagnostic visit to the return trip

Appliance repair is often priced in two halves that are days apart. The first visit finds the problem. When the part isn't on the van, a second visit fixes it after the part arrives. Price the first visit too low and every customer who decides to buy a new appliance instead costs you money. Price the repair as if it takes one trip and a job that looked profitable on the quote loses money on the road. The method below handles both halves: an hourly cost drawn from your own payroll and books, book times for each repair, parts with a margin that covers the work of getting them, and separate rules for sealed-system work, haul-away and warranty-company jobs. Our guide to pricing service jobs explains the general cost method behind all of it.

What units drive an appliance repair price?

• The diagnostic visit. Drive, setup, diagnosis and the explanation to the customer. It gets paid whether or not a repair follows.
• The repair task. A drain pump, a door switch, a bake element, an igniter, a control board, an ice maker. Each gets a book time by appliance type and, where it matters, by brand and model family.
• The part. Your cost plus margin, and whether it rides on the van or has to be ordered.
• The return trip. A second drive and setup when the part wasn't on board.
• Sealed-system work. Refrigerant recovery, brazing, evacuation and recharge on refrigerators, freezers and other refrigerant equipment, with federal rules attached.
• Install and haul-away. Connecting a new unit, removing the old one, and dealing with its refrigerant before it leaves for scrap.

If built-in or high-end units take you longer to pull out, open up and diagnose, give them their own book times instead of averaging them into everything else. A blended number overcharges the simple dryer job and underpays you on the built-in refrigerator.

How do you set book times when jobs take two visits?

Log every visit in pieces: drive, setup and floor protection, diagnosis, the repair, the test, cleanup and payment. Add one piece that is easy to miss: the time to look up, order, receive and match the part to the job. Then group the logs by appliance type and repair, and use the typical time across your techs.

The test deserves its own entry. Confirming a washer repair can mean running a drain and spin cycle. Confirming a refrigerator repair can mean waiting to hear the compressor start and checking that the fans run. A test skipped to save a few minutes can come back as a callback, so count the time you actually spend.

Track first-visit completion by appliance type: the share of repairs finished without a return trip. It tells you two things. Where it's low, your repair prices must carry a second drive. Where one common part keeps causing return trips, stocking it on the van raises profit without touching the price. Asking every caller for the brand, model and serial number (a photo of the tag works) lets the tech check likely failures and load the right parts before leaving.

How should the diagnostic fee work?

Some customers, once they hear what the repair costs, will buy a new appliance. Others will order the part online and fix it themselves. Your diagnostic fee has to cover the average visit for that kind of appliance with no help from a repair. Price it from your logged drive and diagnosis times at your cost per hour, plus margin.

Consider separate fees by category. If diagnosing a sealed-system or built-in refrigerator problem takes longer than a dryer that won't heat, one fee for both either overcharges the dryer customer or shortchanges you on the refrigerator.

Decide whether the fee is credited toward an approved repair, and say so on the phone and in the booking text. Crediting shifts what the visit cost you onto the repair price, and the cost itself stays the same. Set a policy for customer-supplied parts here too: if you install a part the customer bought, price your labor so it stands alone, and state in writing whether your labor warranty applies when that part fails.

Parts margin: what it has to pay for

Customers can often look up a part's price online, so your parts line has to be defensible. It covers more than the invoice: finding the right part number for that model and serial, ordering, receiving, the van stock you paid for in advance, and the parts that come back.

Returns are a cost you can measure, and supplier terms vary, so read yours. The LG parts store's return policy is one example. It says shipping and handling costs are not refundable, that new parts must come back in resalable condition within a set window, and that a returned part that isn't resalable is scrapped with no credit issued. For a defective part, it bills the replacement up front and issues credit once the defective one arrives back. A wrong or failed part can cost you the shipping both ways, the credit on anything scrapped, and cash tied up in the replacement before you've spent any labor on it.

Apply one parts policy across the whole book, as a margin or as a markup, and know the difference: a markup on cost brings in less money than the same percentage taken as a margin on price. The worked example shows both, and the job price calculator prints the equivalent markup next to any target margin. Collect a deposit before ordering expensive or special-order parts. A special-order part you can't return, for a customer who changes their mind, is a pure loss.

Worked example: a two-visit washer repair

Treat every number in this table as a placeholder. The labor rate, overhead, times, part cost, reserve and margin are hypothetical, there only to illustrate the math, and they say nothing about what repairs cost in any market. The formula is the one built into the job price calculator: (hours × labor rate) + parts + (hours × overhead rate), with that cost then divided by one minus the target margin. Use your own payroll, books, logs and supplier invoices.

Compare the two repair prices. The only difference is the return drive and the ordering time, and together they move the price by $100, about a third of the ordered-part price. That is the case for stocking common parts, and for a book that prices ordered-part repairs differently from van-stock ones. The last two rows show the markup and margin gap on a single part: the same percentage, different money.

Sealed-system repairs and haul-away

Under EPA rules, a "small appliance" is any appliance fully manufactured, charged and hermetically sealed in a factory with five pounds of refrigerant or less, and the definition names refrigerators and freezers, room air conditioners, dehumidifiers and under-the-counter ice makers among them (40 CFR 82.152). Before opening one, or when disposing of one, 40 CFR 82.156(b) requires recovering the refrigerant with certified recovery equipment: 90 percent of it when the compressor works and the recovery equipment was made on or after November 15, 1993, 80 percent in the other cases, or evacuating the appliance to four inches of mercury vacuum. EPA requires Section 608 certification for any technician whose work on this equipment could release refrigerant, and Type I is the certification it lists for servicing small appliances.

All of that is time and equipment on every sealed-system job: the recovery machine, cylinders, vacuum pump, brazing, leak testing, evacuation and recharge, plus the refrigerant itself and the records. Give sealed-system repairs their own book entries and their own diagnostic rules. Folding them into ordinary refrigerator repairs underprices some of the most involved work you do.

Haul-away has a refrigerant step as well. Under 40 CFR 82.155, the final processor of a small appliance, such as a scrap recycler or a landfill operator, must either recover any remaining refrigerant or verify with a signed statement or contract that it was recovered, and a signed statement must include the name and address of whoever recovered it and the date. If you take old units away, price the recovery time and the paperwork into the haul-away line, along with the drive and any fee at the drop-off site.

Recurring accounts and third-party payers

Household repair is mostly one-time work, so recurring revenue comes from accounts and from records:

• Property managers and landlords. Agree a service call and a response time per account, price repairs from your book, and bill monthly. Checking each unit's appliances at turnover can carry a set price per unit.
• Short-term rentals and multi-unit owners who need repairs done between guests or tenants. Price priority response as its own line instead of squeezing it in for free.
• Repeat households. Every appliance record (brand, model, serial, past repairs) makes the next call faster to diagnose and easier to price.

Home warranty companies and manufacturer warranty programs set what they pay. Compare their rate with your cost per completed job, including second trips and claim paperwork, not with your cost per visit. Tag jobs by payer in your CRM and look at profit per payer each quarter. For billing account customers on a schedule, see the recurring service billing guide.

Travel and route density

Two-visit jobs double the driving per repair, so travel weighs more here than in trades that finish in one trip. Set a core zone and an outer zone with a higher diagnostic fee, drawn from your dispatch data. Schedule return visits by area as parts arrive, instead of first come, first served, and offer a flexible window at the standard price when the customer can wait a day.

For a quick check on your vehicle cost per mile, compare it with the standard mileage rate for business use that the IRS publishes: 76 cents a mile from July 1 to December 31, 2026, up from 72.5 cents in the first half of the year. A stocked van may cost you more than that rate. If your trip pricing doesn't even clear it, the driving is coming out of your margin.

Quoting by phone, photo or after diagnosis

Many appliance repairs can't be priced honestly before diagnosis. On the phone, give the diagnostic fee, your credit policy, and a range for the repairs that commonly cause that symptom on that kind of appliance, taken from your own book. Ask for photos of the model tag, any error code on the display, and the leak or damage. They narrow both the range and the parts you bring.

After diagnosis, write the repair quote before ordering the part, and get it approved on a phone or tablet. Include the part, the labor, the return visit if one is needed, and your labor warranty. When the repair approaches the cost of replacing the appliance, say so and let the customer decide. Keep the diagnosis and the quote on that customer's appliance record either way, so the next call from that house starts with the brand, model and history already in front of you.

Callbacks and warranty costs

Appliance callbacks come from intermittent faults that didn't show during the test, a second failed part hiding behind the first, a new part that fails early, and leaks after a repair. Each one costs a trip and more diagnosis time with nothing billed. A manufacturer's parts warranty may cover a defective part; your labor to install the replacement is yours unless your terms say otherwise. Check when that warranty starts. The LG parts store, for example, lists a 90-day limited warranty on LG parts counted from delivery to the customer, which for a shop means from the day the part reaches you, so the weeks a part rides in van stock come off its warranty before it is ever installed.

Track callbacks by appliance type and repair for a year. Divide their total cost by the repairs of that type, and add the result to those book entries as a reserve, the way the worked example does. Put your labor warranty in writing so customers know what's covered; the warranty policy guide helps with the wording.

Appliance repair pricing mistakes

• Charging the first visit as if it were only a drive. Diagnosis is the skilled part of the visit.
• Repair prices that assume one visit when the part has to be ordered.
• Ignoring parts handling. Lookup, ordering, returns and lost shipping are real costs.
• One price for sealed-system and ordinary refrigerator repairs.
• Free haul-away, with refrigerant recovery and drop-off fees nobody counted.
• Taking warranty-company work without checking the rate against your cost per completed job.
• Ordering special parts without a deposit.

Getting started? How to start an appliance repair business covers training, certification and tools. Our appliance repair industry page shows the website and call handling we build for repair shops, and the HVAC pricing guide walks through a flat-rate book in a neighboring trade. Your floor price for every line starts with the hourly rate calculator.

Frequently asked questions