Several months ago, our dryer began to make an awful noise. I’m no dryer mechanic, so we lived with it for a while. We sort of hated the dryer anyway, so eventually we decided to get a different dryer.
We purchased a used dryer from an appliance store here in town and sold the noisy one the very next day for $30. I remarked to the man who bought the dryer, “Sure, it’s noisy, but it comes with a $30 cord, so it’s basically a free dryer.”
The new-to-us dryer was fine. Or at least that was what I told myself. My wife, Leanne, felt it wasn’t drying well, but I was determined to believe it was fine because I desperately didn’t want to load it back up and return it to the used appliance store.
Until it stopped drying altogether, that is. Now it was just a tumbler, and it takes quite a while to tumble-dry a load of towels. Thankfully, we were within our 30-day warranty window, so I was able to return the dryer and get our money back.
A friend had posted on Facebook that he was selling a dryer, so I made arrangements to buy that one. I picked up my friend’s dryer around 6 p.m. and brought it home. Unfortunately, it had a power cord attached that was incompatible with our socket. No big deal, I just needed to buy a different cord.
Wanting to save money, though, I looked for a used cord online, rather than shelling out $30 to buy a new one. I reached out to a few people, made a connection and left to go meet this guy 20 minutes across town in the Costco parking lot on 192nd Avenue, to buy his power cord for $10.
I realized on the way that I didn’t have a $10 bill, and the seller indicated that he didn’t have change, so I stopped by a gas station to break a $20. I picked up a bag of chips, brought it to the counter and paid for it — with my credit card. Because of course I did. Now I had to buy an additional item to break my $20.
Down the road to Costco I went. I made the parking lot “cord deal” and hurried home. I attached the cord to the dryer, reached to plug it in and, to my dismay, realized I had purchased another incompatible power cord.
I was still hopeful to save a few bucks after spending $10 on the wrong cord, plus $7 or so at the gas station. Now that it was after 8 p.m. and dark outside, I knew it was a long shot that anybody would let me come to their house and sell me a power cord. I reached out online again, waited 20 minutes and heard from no one.
I resigned myself to paying full price at a Home Depot store in Portland near the airport. As I was quite literally standing in Aisle 3 with a compatible power cord in my hand, I got a message from a seller saying I could come pick up a used cord. Shoot, now what do I do? Well, money doesn’t grow on trees. I put the new cord back on the shelf and messaged this second seller back to say, yes, I’d buy her power cord.
I drove back across the river and out to a house near Evergreen High School. The seller left the power cord on her porch and just asked me to put $10 under the doormat. Under the cover of darkness, on this stranger’s porch, I made the awkward exchange.
I went home. It was now 10:15 p.m. and my evening had been fully spent running after the proper cord. I plugged the new dryer in and it was a fit! No small relief, at this point.
When I gave the dryer a test run, it worked. But I also immediately heard a clunking sound. Oh no, now what? I opened the door, and what did I discover? There inside the dryer was an additional power cord. The exact power cord that I’d spent the whole evening running around to find.
I do not know the moral of this story. But if you need a dryer cord, I have several — $10, OBO.
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