With an iron in one hand and a vacuum cleaner dragging on the sidewalk behind her in the other, Lla Perteet of Chicago made an unusual picture recently.
Opening the door of Serviceall Appliance Parts, an appliance repair shop in Oak Lawn, Perteet stood out not only because of the appliances she maneuvered but also because of her goal.
She was looking to have these household gadgets fixed.
“It may be crazy,” Perteet said. “But I like this iron. The steam capability was really great and it heated up real quick.”
She was greeted by Jim McMeekin, 36, the owner of Serviceall. With his relative youth and friendly smile, McMeekin is hardly the southwest suburban counterpart of the lonely Maytag repairman. Yet economic forces nationwide and in the southwest suburbs have left McMeekin feeling a bit more alone than he used to be.
“Our numbers are dwindling,” said McMeekin, referring to the gradual disappearance of the sort of mom-and-pop small repair shops that used to be common in many communities. And he is not the only one to take notice.
“There used to be five or six repair shops in Chicago Heights. Now I’d say we’re the only one within 20 miles,” said George Bova, a repairman for S.A.R.S., which stands for Small Appliance Repair Service, in that south suburban community.
“It’s sad. I’ll be the first to say it,” added Larry Anich, a repairman for Bill’s Service Center in Alsip. “Everything nowadays is throwaway. It used to be practical to fix (small appliances). Things were made better.”
The smallest appliance that Bill’s Service Center generally tackles is microwave ovens. About 15 years ago, the shop started moving away from repairing small household appliances and now focuses on larger ones such as stoves, computers, and televisions and video recorders. When someone enters the store carrying a toaster, blender, iron, coffee pot or shaver, Anich usually refers them elsewhere.
“I send them all to the same place — to Serviceall in Oak Lawn,” Anich said.
McMeekin’s shop recalls a time when economic conditions and consumer trends seemed to favor a proliferation of intrepid Mr. Fixits who operated on the innards of toaster ovens, replaced the frayed cords of irons, made fan blades whir again or disengaged socks inadvertently sucked into vacuums.
Recent surveys show, however, that the trend is to pitch the small household appliances that used to be fixed. Irons, toasters, hair dryers, curling irons, blenders, shavers, coffee pots, fans, small TVs and some VCRs can be purchased today for little more — or even less — than what it would cost to fix them.
“If you can buy a new iron for $19.99, why go to the bother of fixing it?” asked Elly Valas, executive director of the Lombard-based North American Retail Dealers Association, a trade group for people who sell and repair large appliances.
“I’m sure a lot of it is the convenience,” she added. “It’s so much easier to go to a store at night or on the weekend than to go Monday through Friday to have something repaired.”
A survey published in May by Consumer Reports magazine showed that about 40 percent of consumers choose not to repair a major appliance, electronic item or lawnmower/tractor, particularly if the item is more than five years old.
As a rule of thumb, McMeekin said people tend to start balking at having an appliance repaired if it cost them less than $100. Those who want to have older small appliances repaired may encounter the problem of finding parts.
“Because of the age (of an appliance) sometimes they don’t make the part anymore,” McMeekin. “But I really hate to tell a customer that it can’t be done.”
So repairing older appliances can be a test of McMeekin’s skill and ingenuity. He might adapt parts from one brand of appliance to fix another.
“It’s fun,” he said. “Every (repair project) is different.”
In the spare parts department, McMeekin counts himself lucky. When he purchased the store in 1991, he found that the previous owner had amassed a vast array tucked away in drawers that line several rows of metal shelves in his store.
“I’ve seen competitors come and go,” he said, “because of the overhead. You have to have a large stock of parts. And if the manufacturer goes out of business, you could get stuck with $5,000 in parts.”
McMeekin was in high school when he started working part time at Serviceall in 1974. He planned to become a police officer or emergency medical technician and even took some post-high school training for those occupations. But fixing fans, coffee pots, shavers and irons seemed to focus his mind and talents and he never seriously pursued either of those fields.
“You won’t get rich doing this,” he said with a grin. “I guess I have a knack for it. I enjoy it. You don’t have to do the same mundane thing all the time.”
McMeekin said he spends most of his day at a work area in the rear of the store. Because his wife, Jeanne, handles the books, McMeekin said he can concentrate on fixing things.
“If I have a mind set to do 20 (electric) shavers, I sit down and do that,” he said. “That way, I have all the parts out and I can do them like a production line.”
Customer Donna Lawlor of Burbank said McMeekin’s skilled surgery has saved a number of her household appliances from the dumpster.
“I think he’s fixed everything in my house,” she said with a laugh. “My toaster oven, my lamps, my vacuum cleaner, a baby monitor. If he can’t fix it, you can just throw it away.”
Lawlor’s toaster oven, for example, was a gift at her wedding shower 37 years ago. Despite its age, Lawlor was fond of the oven.
“It’s a Hollywood Broiler,” she said. “You can’t find them anymore. It cooks steaks beautifully.”
Although it may seem a bleak economic outlook for Mr. Fixits, McMeekin, a father of three girls, ages 4 1/2 months, 4 and 5, said he finds reasons to be hopeful about the future.
He represents 40 top-name manufacturers who refer their customers to him when they need appliances fixed. He said Internet sites maintained by these manufacturers also are starting to bring him business.
Perteet found Serviceall when she contacted the manufacturer about the iron she had purchased 10 years ago for about $100, she said. Just before Perteet carted her items in to be repaired, another customer, Josephine Olson of Hickory Hills, took home a vacuum that McMeekin had humming again. McMeekin showed Olson a large clump of gray fuzz that he had extracted from the vacuum and had deposited in a plastic bag.
“This is what I pulled out of it,” he explained, much as a surgeon might show a bad appendix. “There was such a clog in it. You might be operating it on too low (a setting).”
McMeekin said his business is boosted by his ability to pay attention to customers and offer them helpful advice. Customers will return if they receive excellent service, and it might also keep their appliances in working order for longer stretches of time.
“I can show somebody how to operate an appliance properly,” he said. “I take apart a shaver (for instance) and show them how to clean it.”
McMeekin hopes another widespread societal trend, recycling, will have a positive impact on his business. “Everybody wants to recycle,” he said. “Why fill the landfills with two-year-old coffee pots? Why not get them fixed?”
McMeekin and others making a go of small appliance repair businesses said their greatest thrill comes in fixing items of sentimental value.
“That’s personal satisfaction,” McMeekin said. “I’ve fixed things that people got as wedding gifts and they’ll sit down and cry when they get it back.”
Standing in his store filled with a row of repaired vacuums and near a wall where silver beaters for mixers and other gadgets hang, behind a counter on which several fans await pickup, McMeekin said he does not regret his decision to stay with Serviceall, where he even gets to use some of that emergency medical training.
“I use a little of that,” McMeekin said with a grin. “If I cut or zap myself when I’m working on something.”
