13
Oct
stored in: General

Google saved me a lot of money this week.

1. The office printer Phaser 8200 wasn’t working. The code on the machine says to call for repair. So I called an authorized repair shop. Can you believe they charge $150 per hour – the hourly charge begins when the repairman leaves the shop to the time he returns to the shop! I decided to see if we can fix it ourselves.

I googled “Phaser 8200 problem”. On the first page of search results, I found a forum with a discussion of the problem we were experiencing. Based on that, we bought the defective parts, googled the instructions to install it, and the printer was fixed. It costed $100, probably the amount it would cost for the authorized repairman to drive to my office.

2. Remember I blogged about problems with my Honda Odysessy? Apparently the stalling problem Mike had was not because I ran out of gas 🙂 The stalling problem continued. At first, it would stall only while Mike was driving it. It never happened to me. Surely it was because my van liked me more. Then a couple of days ago, it stalled on me in the middle of the road! That was scary. My mechanic could not diagnose the problem. He suggested a fuel injection which would cost $120. But he didn’t think that was the problem.

Who can I turn to for an answer? Yes, I googled it – “Honda Odysessy problem”. Again on the first couple of search results there was a forum discussing about the exact same problem. One post said they changed the ignition wire. I googled to find out what that was, and found something that told me Honda recalled the ignition switch.That prompted me to log into my Honda customer account which I had totally forgotten. The record showed there was a recall on the ignition switch in 2002 and I never took it in to have it fixed. The next day, I took it in to Diamond Bar Honda. There was no charge, and they even gave me a courtesy car wash. I came out ahead. (I hope that solved the problem.)
If you have a problem, any problem, you are not alone. Google it.

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