So for those of you avidly following the escapades of my washing machine (previous episode [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/1bkyf0n/comment/kw631cc/)), with almost perfect timing, RIGHT after I made that post my washing machine broke down, lol. As per that post, my wife came to stay at my place before swanning off to okinawa with my daughter, leaving me with an apparently irredeemably broken-down washing machine. Every time I tried to put a wash on I was getting an error saying the machine couldn’t drain the water.
As per the advice on the Hitachi home page, and as per previous similar wife-induced washing machine breakdowns, I cleared the dryer filter; cleared the hose, put pipe cleaner down the pipes, and NOTHING worked. I spent about a week trying to sort it out with hangers, pipe cleaners, trying different wash programs etc. Until finally I figured I would have to contact Hitachi support.
So I booked a repair man via their site, and got a warning that the machine is no longer supported so they may not be able to fix it but it would still cost me the callout fee (of about 6k yen). And also the earliest available slot for the guy to come out was about a week away.
Then, yesterday, finally, after a week of inflicting my stinky gym gear on my local coin laundry, the guy came out to look at my machine and he was GREAT. He came with a spare part just in case, a toolbox, some electrical equipment, and a ton of blankets and towels. I told him what the problem was, what I’d tried to do to sort it out, and gave him a glass of tea, and then he got to work with forensic precision. He ran every sort of diagnostic, took out the entire drum and cleaned it, and sorted the whole thing. It turns out that the issue was that there is a filter in my pipe – so nothing to do with the washing machine, but when it gets backed up it causes blockages in the machine itself. And because the filter was SO full of shite the pipe cleaner didn’t fix it. So with that established he cleaned my whole washing machine, checked for any other problems, and now my machine is absolutely as good as new.
It DID cost me 15,000 yen, but he was so fucking thorough.
tl;dr, Hitachi repairmen are great; now I can wash my clothes. Thanks for reading.
by Youareafunt