Beware of costly water heater repairs.

I woke up Sunday morning to discover I didn’t have any hot water. When I turned on the taps, the water was lukewarm. My hot water heater is rented, so I called the water heater company to have it serviced. I figured this would be a routine service call covered under my warrantee since I’m shelling out almost $20 per month.

The company was more than happy to send someone to my home to take a look, but there was a slight catch: I would be charged a $90 service charge if the problem was at my end. I found this outrageous, but nevertheless scheduled an appointment.

When the service technician arrived, I walked him inside my home to my water heater. He unscrewed a panel on my water heater and took a look inside. Everything seemed fine, so he took a look at the switch and found the problem: my water heater had blown a fuse. This was totally foreign to me – I didn’t even know water heaters had fuses!

This seemed like good news because it’s a quick fix until he told me the bad news: the switch was my responsibility. Not only would I have to purchase and install the fuse myself, I would be charged a $90 service charge. That’s right, for less than 10 minutes of work, the service technician earned himself $90 without even fixing the problem. Boy, what a great business to be in!

To say I was fuming would be an understatement. $90 is a lot of money, especially for barely doing anything. I called the company and refused to pay the service charge because I found it unfair. After a few tense moments, the customer service representative agreed not to charge me for the service call this time. He warned me next time he wouldn’t be willing to waive the service charge.

This taught me a valuable lesson: you should take the time to get to know the appliances and machinery in your household. If I had just taken the time to review the instruction manual, I could have avoided the stress of paying a $90 service charge. You don’t have to be a trained technician for DIY hot water heater repairs. YouTube and Google are great resources for common problems.

If I can be charged for service calls, I’m not even sure what the point of signing a contract for a hot water heater is. For some strange reason everyone in Ontario likes to rent their hot water heater, while Albertans prefer to buy theirs.

If I could turn back the hands of time, I would have never agreed to take over the hot water heater contract from the previous homeowner. I made the mistake of assuming the contact would only be for a couple years, when in fact the contract is for 10 years. That’s right, folks, 10 years!

I don’t understand why consumers were up in arms about three year cellphone contracts, when water heater companies are getting away with decade-long contracts. When they can raise your rental rates and charge you for service calls, I fail to the value in signing a contract. In fact, I wish the government would crack down on these one-sided contacts.

Have you ever been charged for a service call you felt was unfair?

Sean Cooper is the bestselling author of the book, Burn Your Mortgage: The Simple, Powerful Path to Financial Freedom for Canadians, available now on Amazon and at Chapters, Indigo and major bookstores, and as an Audiobook on Amazon, Audible and iTunes.