Common questions
The 16 questions we are asked on the phone, answered the way we answer them there.
- What does a visit cost?
- $80 flat. Credited toward the repair if you go ahead with the work. Written estimate before any repair begins. No work starts without your approval. There is no separate call-out charge, no hourly rate on top of the diagnostic, and no price that changes because of where in the county you are.
- Do you charge by the hour?
- No, and there is no hourly rate running behind the flat fee either. $80 covers the visit and all 6 stages however long they take, and the repair is quoted afterwards as one figure in writing. A cabinet that needs an hour of logging costs the same to diagnose as one that gives its answer in ten minutes.
- Which part is the expensive one?
- The sealed system. Compressor and refrigerant-circuit work runs $910–$2,270; a door gasket runs $250–$590. That gap is the whole reason the sequence measures the sealed system last — a door adjustment quoted as refrigeration is the most expensive mistake available on a first visit.
- Is it cheaper to replace the cabinet than to repair it?
- Almost never on a full-size built-in. A comparable replacement starts at $11,600 before panels and cabinetry, and the dearest repair in our book is $2,270. On a wine cabinet or an undercounter drawer the comparison is genuinely closer, and the arithmetic is set out in full on the worth-repairing page.
- Are you part of the manufacturer’s service network?
- No. We are an independent repair company and we hold no appointment from Sub-Zero or its parent company. Manufacturer names are used on this site only to identify the appliances we service. The affiliation statement is printed in full in the footer of every page.
- Which brands do you work on?
- Sub-Zero refrigeration only — built-in refrigerators, integrated column refrigerators and freezers, undercounter refrigeration, wine storage units, ice makers. That is a deliberate limit rather than a gap. One line of equipment means the parts on the van match the appliance in the kitchen, it means the service positions are already known, and it means we recognise the order in which this equipment fails. We turn down work on other brands rather than send a technician who is guessing.
- Do you work on heating or air conditioning?
- No — and the two trades are easy to confuse from the outside, so plainly: We do not install or repair heating, air conditioning, heat pumps, air handlers or ductwork, and we are not a plumbing or electrical contractor. If the call is about the temperature of a room rather than the temperature of a cabinet, we are the wrong company and will say so on the phone.
- What actually happens on the first visit?
- The same 6 stages, in the same order, every time: 1 power and controls, 2 air and clearance, 3 door and seal, 4 temperature and defrost, 5 fill and dispense, 6 sealed system. The order runs from the checks that need a meter to the one that needs a recovery machine, because the cheap stages explain most symptoms and because a sealed-system reading taken behind a blocked condenser cannot be interpreted. You are told what each stage ruled out, not just what the last one found.
- How soon can someone come out?
- We work Mon–Fri 8am–6pm, Sat 9am–4pm, Sun closed. We do not advertise emergency, overnight or 24-hour service, because a two-technician operation cannot honestly promise it. Calls that land outside those hours are answered the next working morning.
- What is covered after the repair?
- 90 days on labor and 365 days on parts. Genuine OEM parts. The warranty covers the repair we carried out and the part we fitted; it is not a service contract on the rest of the appliance.
- Do you open sealed refrigeration systems?
- Yes. EPA Section 608 certified technicians — required to open, recover from and recharge a sealed refrigeration system. A sealed-system diagnosis starts the same way as any other: the same $80, measurements first, and a written estimate that states plainly whether the cabinet is worth the repair. It is the last stage of the sequence because it is the only one that cannot be undone cheaply.
- Do you have a shop I can bring an appliance to?
- No. This is a mobile operation serving Nocatee, FL 32081 and about 40 miles around it. Built-in refrigeration is not something you carry anywhere — it is fixed into a cabinet opening, often on rails, often behind a custom panel, and the work happens at the appliance, in its opening.
- My unit was fine after the storm. Can an outage still be the cause?
- It can, and it is worth saying out loud. Around 68 thunderstorm days a year cross this part of north-east Florida, and the multi-day outages that came with Matthew in 2016, Irma in 2017 and Helene in 2024 left a pattern behind: control boards and inverter electronics that survived the event and failed weeks later. If a cabinet has gone strange since an outage, say so when you call — it changes which stage we expect to find the answer at, and which parts travel with the technician.
- Is there a repair you would tell me not to do?
- Regularly. Built-in refrigeration is worth repairing far longer than a freestanding appliance, because the cabinet is fitted to a specific opening and replacing it is joinery as well as appliance work — but that is not the same as repairing anything at any price. Where a part is discontinued, where the lead time is longer than you can live with, or where the repair figure is a large fraction of a replacement, the estimate says so in writing. There are also faults that belong with the manufacturer rather than with us, and we will tell you when yours is one of them.
- Where do the reviews on this site come from?
- From customers, after the visit, in their own words. They are published with a first name and a last initial, which is as much as anyone agreed to put on a public page, and each one names the equipment and the village the call came from. The average printed above a block is the plain arithmetic mean of the whole pool — nothing is held back for being unflattering, and the four-star and three-star notes sit in that pool with the rest.
- What should I have ready when I call?
- The model and serial number from the rating plate inside the cabinet, and what the appliance is doing rather than what you think has failed. The serial number is what decides which version of a part fits, so it is the difference between one visit and two. “Cubes got smaller over the summer” tells us more than “the ice maker is broken”.
What it costs
What does the repair itself cost, once the diagnostic is done?
$80 flat to diagnose, credited toward the repair once you approve it. Completed work on this page has landed between $240 and $650, parts and labor together. The firm figure is written down after the diagnosis, not before it.
| Repair | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Diagnostic visit, credited toward the repair | $80 |
| Door gasket or seal replacement | $250–$590 |
| Evaporator or condenser fan motor | $260–$570 |
| Defrost heater, thermostat or sensor | $250–$590 |
| Ice maker, water valve or supply line | $240–$650 |
Ranges are what this work has cost, not a quote. A range moves with the part version the serial number calls for and with what the cabinet turns out to need. The whole table is on the pricing page.
If the question you have is not here, it is faster to ask it than to read around it.