I see that several people have had the same issue that I have. My Kenmore Elite dishwasher is 3-4 years old and suddenly the Smart wash light keeps flashing and the rest of the control panel will not work. I had a Sears repair tech come run diagnostics on it and he was at my house for almost 2 hours and could not find what was wrong with it. He knew it was something with the controls as everything else checked out find. He could override the control panel and the dishwasher would cycle through just fine. He told me that it would be over $500, possibly as much as $600, to replace the 3 items that he would have to replace and then we would only have a 90 day warranty. We refused the repair service, paid the $64 for his visit and now are trying to decide what to do. I asked him if we bought a new dishwasher would they refurbish our old and pass it on or just throw it away. He said it would just be thrown away. I have a very hard time with this. The dishwasher looks brand new and runs great except for some switch problem and it is going to wind up in a landfill because Sears doesn't have an affordable repair for it. We were told there was no recall on our model but from what others are saying, it looks like there needs to be, and Sears needs to be able to fix them at a reasonable cost. Any ideas?

It sounds like sears tech has no clue what to replace so he is covering his butt by replacing too many items, I would speak with a manager and let them know your concern about the ability of the tech. and demand each recommended part be install and tested, if it doesn't fix it you should not have to pay. Also you should not have to pay for a tech to learn how to fix what he specializes in...

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Originally Posted by triciatea

I see that several people have had the same issue that I have. My Kenmore Elite dishwasher is 3-4 years old and suddenly the Smart wash light keeps flashing and the rest of the control panel will not work. I had a Sears repair tech come run diagnostics on it and he was at my house for almost 2 hours and could not find what was wrong with it. He knew it was something with the controls as everything else checked out find. He could override the control panel and the dishwasher would cycle through just fine. He told me that it would be over $500, possibly as much as $600, to replace the 3 items that he would have to replace and then we would only have a 90 day warranty. We refused the repair service, paid the $64 for his visit and now are trying to decide what to do. I asked him if we bought a new dishwasher would they refurbish our old and pass it on or just throw it away. He said it would just be thrown away. I have a very hard time with this. The dishwasher looks brand new and runs great except for some switch problem and it is going to wind up in a landfill because Sears doesn't have an affordable repair for it. We were told there was no recall on our model but from what others are saying, it looks like there needs to be, and Sears needs to be able to fix them at a reasonable cost. Any ideas?

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