Last Saturday, our clothes drier stopped spinning. Not entirely. Just when it had anything in it, the only time that matters.
I tore into it, took the breaking belt to find a replacement. Not happening in Uruguay, in a smallish town, on a Saturday. So Monday I went to the local appliance store. Nope. Have to go to Montevideo. How, I asked, do people in Rivera and Artigas (places several hundred km away) live, if everything has to be done in Montevideo?
The answer: telephone.
By now, I’m comfortable in person in Spanish, but I’m still a little hesitant to phone, because if you get a speed-freak mumbler on the other end (the phone company, a government entity, comes to mind) , you’re going nowhere fast. In this case, I was in luck. I confirmed datos by email, transferred money to their bank account online, and at 9 AM the next day heard a beep-beep of the truck delivering the belt.
Which was not the size I had ordered.
I emailed the company, and long story short, two and a half days later we’re up and running again. They paid the second shipment, and the return of the first.
Kudos to AMT Aspiratutto SRL!
That’s one thing that we are spoiled with in the US. You can get a part for damn near anything, and right quick.
True. I remember learning some years ago that the identical model of washing machine for a big box store (maybe Home Depot) actually was more cheaply manufactured, meaning that if a certain part of the pump broke, you had to replace the whole pump. Had you bought that same model elsewhere, you could have bought just the smaller part.
In this case, the drier is a local brand (James). And the total market in Uruguay — population — is 1/100 that of the US!
Very very impressive. Uruguay will be heaven after South Africa.