Find the paperwork before you book anyone. LG has run unusually long cover on the parts that cost the most, and a proportion of the calls we get should never have come to us.
Check the receipt before you book — either way, we're an authorised repairer and can come and find out what it's actually doing.
It is still worth ten minutes with the receipt drawer before you book anyone.
LG has, at various points and on various models, backed the motor in its washing machines and the compressor in its fridges with cover running considerably longer than the rest of the appliance. Terms change by model and by year, so we cannot tell you what yours has, but it is worth checking before you assume you are out of cover.
We're an authorised LG repairer and carry parts for the brand, so motor and compressor repairs are covered whether the cover's still running or not. Have your proof of purchase ready if it's within date when you book.
LG's washers connect the motor straight to the drum instead of running a belt to it. Fewer moving parts, less noise, and one genuine consequence: the parts that used to fail are gone, so the parts that fail now are different ones.
In practice the motors themselves are rarely the problem. What we attend are the things around them — the large bolt securing the rotor working loose, and the sensor that tells the control board where the drum is sitting. Both produce symptoms that look, to anyone standing in front of the machine, exactly like a motor that has died.
That is the practical reason to have it diagnosed rather than acted on. A motor is an expensive assumption to be wrong about.
Fill and drain complaints dominate the LG calls we take, and a decent share of them clear without a part.
A drain complaint means water did not leave in the time the machine allowed for it. Start at the pump filter — small hinged flap, bottom front — and put a towel down before you open it, because the drum is still holding whatever did not go out. Coins, hair clips and the occasional underwire live there.
A fill complaint means water has not arrived. Check the tap is fully open, then the small filter screen in the inlet where the hose meets the machine — around the lake that screen picks up sediment and scale steadily.
If both of those are clear and it still complains, then it is worth a visit. Half the time it doesn't get that far.
The inverter and linear-compressor fridges are the exception to everything above, and they need saying carefully.
When one of these runs but never gets properly cold, the possible causes span an enormous price range — from a fan or sensor at one end to a sealed-system fault at the other. There is no way to tell from the symptom, and there is no way to tell from the front panel.
This is the fault where a proper diagnosis earns its keep. Guessing at the cheap end wastes a callout; assuming the expensive end writes off a fridge that had a twenty-dollar problem. Our page on fridges that run and run covers the checks that are worth doing yourself first, and the coil cleaning that fixes a surprising number of them near the water.
The $125 assessment covers the visit and the diagnosis. It is payable whether or not you go ahead, because it pays for the technician's time either way. If you do go ahead, the repair price comes first and the work is warranted.