About Us

Two things have stayed constant here since 1979. The person who tests your appliance is the person who repairs it, and the number quoted at the kitchen table is the number printed on the invoice.

It started at a counter in Downey

The business opened in Downey in the late nineteen seventies as a small appliance store, selling machines to families who lived within a few streets of the door and servicing what they bought. Over the following decade the service side quietly overtook the selling, because customers kept coming back for repairs long after they had stopped needing anything new, and eventually the repairs were all that was left.

Anyone typing johnnies appliances downey into a search box is looking for that original counter. The address has moved down to Atlantic Avenue in Long Beach and the route now runs out through Signal Hill, Lakewood, Belmont Shore, Naples, Seal Beach, Los Alamitos, Rossmoor and Huntington Beach. What has not moved is who picks up the telephone or whose van pulls into your driveway. Both belong to us. No part of a job is passed to a subcontractor you have never spoken to.

What forty-six years on one coast teaches you

Manuals describe how an appliance is supposed to behave. They do not tell you that a condenser coil a mile from Alamitos Bay collects salt as well as dust, and that the two together hold heat against the fins until the compressor never stops. They do not mention that the water in this part of the basin will scale a dishwasher heating element in five years, or that an indoor rated freezer standing in a Los Alamitos garage will look as though it is dying every September and behave perfectly again by November.

Those are the things that shorten the distance between arriving at a house and knowing what is wrong with the appliance in it. They also explain why we have deliberately stayed small: a handful of technicians who each know their platforms properly is worth more here than a fleet who each know a little about everything.

A visit, from the doorstep

Nothing is taken away. There is no workshop queue to join and no loan machine to live with. A technician arrives inside the two hour window you were given, with the parts that fail most often on your model already on board, and puts covers on before stepping onto your floor.

Then the appliance gets read rather than guessed at. Live readings, the error history the machine has been keeping about itself, and a meter on whatever circuit that history points to. When the reading is in, you are told what happened in language that makes sense, and given one price for the part and the labor together. Only after you have said yes does anything come apart.

Four habits we would not trade

Test before quoting, always. The gap between a twenty dollar part and a four hundred dollar one is very often one measurement. Fitting parts until the problem disappears is quick for the technician and expensive for whoever is paying.

Say when it is not worth it. When a repair would cost more than half a comparable new machine and the appliance has already used up two thirds of its years, we recommend replacing it and explain the arithmetic. Losing that job is cheaper for us than the reputation of having sold the part.

Treat built-ins as normal work. Integrated columns, panel ready dishwashers, wine coolers and professional ranges are a routine part of the week in Naples, Belmont Shore and Rossmoor. Getting one out of cabinetry made to measure without leaving a mark takes time, and the appointment is booked with that time in it.

Charge the same on a Sunday. There is no weekend rate and no evening surcharge on a scheduled visit. Appliances do not wait for Monday and we saw no reason to price as though they did.

The people who turn up

Our technicians hold EPA certification for sealed system refrigeration, which is a legal requirement rather than a badge, and each of them works across the platforms they were trained on. Between them they carry factory documentation and test equipment for all twenty-four manufacturers on our list, from Whirlpool, Kenmore and GE at one end to Thermador, Wolf, Miele, Liebherr and La Cornue at the other.

They also carry one standing instruction that outranks everything else in this paragraph: explain what happened, in plain language, before saying what it costs.

Where we work

Long Beach, Naples, Belmont Shore, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Los Alamitos, Lakewood, Rossmoor and Signal Hill, with the same standards, the same warranty and the same flat price in each of them.

What you can hold us to

• A price agreed at the table before any work starts.
• Manufacturer parts wherever the supply chain still carries them, with the number on your invoice.
• Thirty days on the labor, plus whatever warranty the part carries.
• A straight answer about whether the machine deserves the money at all.