I was cutting the grass yesterday
when my neighbor motioned me to her deck.
I stopped the mower and went to see what she wanted. First she told me it was too hot to be outside
pushing a lawn mower. But then she said
her freezer wasn’t working. I probed for
more details, and it turned out that it was really just the icemaker; it was
producing few, if any, cubes.
That was a problem I knew something
about, or at least one with which I had some experience. A couple of years ago our new refrigerator
had the exact same problem, so I told her what I thought she should do.
“Get the owner’s manual and call
the manufacturer help line. You just got
the appliance; it will be under warranty.
When I had the same problem the manufacturer sent a local repairman. He had to make two trips and order a new
part, but we didn’t pay a penny.”
I saw her face drop, and I knew
it had happened again: she had thrown away all her paperwork, including the
owner’s manual. She is elderly and tends
to do that with everything. She doesn’t
want papers lying around.
I relate this story because it
illustrates how a little organization can simplify life and save you money. In her case, if she had kept the papers she
could quickly have arranged a repairman to come diagnose and fix the
problem. Now she will have to search for
the right number to call. (It’s only
been 24 hours since our conversation, and I’m still expecting her to call me
for help with that.) But manuals can
also be a great aid in diagnosing problems and doing your own repairs when the
fix is easy.
More than owner’s manuals,
though, retaining receipts is a good idea, too.
It facilitates product returns in the short-term and can be proof of
warranty coverage in the longer term. And
don’t forget that if you charged the purchase on a credit card, you might qualify
for an extended warranty. Some credit
card companies will double the manufacturer’s warranty period up to one or two
years.
I’ve had that conversation with
my neighbor, too. I told her that she
could get rebates from the electric company for having installed more energy
efficient appliances. For the multiple kitchen
appliances she bought she could get back around $200. I told
her what she needed to do and even offered to help, but she didn’t want to
pursue it. She said she’d already gotten
a good buy with the store’s sale/rebate program. She’s not really rich and could use the
rebate from the utility, but I knew the real problem: she didn’t keep the receipts
and other information she would have needed to apply for the rebates.
I hope you are better at keeping your
paperwork. It can seem like a small
matter—until you need it. You don’t have
to have papers “lying around”. My wife bought
an expandable folder to file all the appliance manuals, and I have a separate
folder with all the home improvement receipts (which can come in handy if and
when I sell the house). I looked in the
manuals folder the other day and we still had one for a ceiling fan I installed
at our previous house. So it makes sense
to go through your folder occasionally to weed it out.
While we’re on the topic of
record-keeping, I hope you also have a “grab and go” folder/box for all your
other important papers. Flash floods,
wild fires, house fires, tornados, and even domestic violence scenarios…they
are all good reasons to have a single place to go to pick up all your important
papers and run, in a hurry if needed.
This might include passports, inventory of household goods, credit cards,
licenses, etc. Nowadays, a cell phone
can be a great place to store information electronically or have a video record
of the contents of your house for insurance replacement purposes. You could even send all that electronically
to a trusted relative that doesn’t live in the same area of the country as a
sort of safe deposit box. The important
thing is to get yourself organized. It
can save (or make you) money and certainly make life easier, whether in a
crisis or not.
Until next time,
Roger
“That night the king could not sleep, and he had a
servant read him the records of what had happened since he had been king.”
Esther 6:1 CEV
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