Delivery Day: What to Check Before You Sign

People spend three weeks choosing an appliance and about four minutes thinking about the day it arrives. That is the wrong ratio. A meaningful share of the problems that get reported in the first month of ownership are not manufacturing defects at all — they are transit damage nobody looked for, a machine that did not fit, or a connection made in a hurry by whoever was standing there.

The useful window is short. Once the paperwork is signed clean and the truck has gone, a dent becomes your dent and a leak becomes a service call.

Delivery is not installation

These are two different services and the words are used loosely. Before the day, get a straight answer on what you have actually bought.

A basic delivery typically means the machine is brought into the room and set down. That is all. “Installation” or “connection” usually means the crew will also level it and hook up standard connections — a plug, a pair of washer hoses, a dryer duct — using parts you provide or buy from them. Haul-away of the old appliance is almost always a separate line item, and it frequently requires the old machine to be already disconnected and accessible.

Three things are commonly excluded and it is worth knowing before rather than after:

• Gas connections. Many delivery crews are not permitted to connect gas at all, and the ones that are should be licensed for it. Book that separately if you need it — a gas range or gas dryer arriving on a day when nobody can legally connect it is a common and avoidable annoyance.
• Electrical work. A 240V dryer or range cord is not a plug adapter. Three-prong and four-prong outlets both exist in American homes, and moving between them means the correct cord and, on some appliances, a bonding strap change inside the terminal block. Crews will often fit a cord you supply; they will not rewire an outlet.
• Anything requiring plumbing. If there is no water line for the ice maker, or the shutoff under the sink is seized, the crew will not fix it. They will set the machine down and leave.

A related warning about ice maker lines: saddle valves — the little clamp-on fittings that pierce a pipe — are widely disliked because they clog and weep, and some local codes do not permit them. If somebody proposes to tap your water line with one, ask whether a proper tee and a quarter-turn stop is an option instead.

Measure before it arrives

Measure three things, and measure them yourself.

The opening. Height, width and depth, and for a refrigerator, depth with the door open at 90 degrees plus the clearance the handles need. A counter-depth unit that clears the counter but whose door cannot swing past an adjacent wall is still a returned appliance.

The path. Front door, hallway, any turn, and the tightest doorway on the route. The classic failure is a machine that clears every doorway individually and cannot make the turn between two of them. Measure the diagonal at any corner. If a door has to come off its hinges, take it off the night before rather than while three people wait.

The connections. Where the outlet is, which way it faces, where the water and drain are, and how much room is left behind the machine once the hoses are on. Depth specifications rarely include the four inches a fill hose needs.

And confirm the hinge side and the swing direction on a refrigerator before it comes off the truck. Many are reversible; not all are, and doing it on delivery day is not a five-minute job.

Prepare the site

An hour of preparation the evening before removes most of the friction.

1. Empty and disconnect the old machine if you are having it hauled away. A refrigerator full of food or a washer full of water will usually be left where it stands.
2. Test the shutoff valves. Turn each one fully off and back on. A valve that will not close is the single most common reason a delivery gets abandoned halfway. If one is seized, get a plumber before the delivery date, not after.
3. Clear the path and protect the floor. Cardboard or hardboard over anything you care about. Appliance dollies concentrate a lot of weight on a small wheel.
4. Have the parts on hand. New braided stainless fill hoses, a rigid or semi-rigid metal dryer duct, the correct cord, a drain hose clamp. Crews carry some of this and charge for it; buying your own beforehand is cheaper and you get to choose quality.
5. Know where you will stand. Pets shut away, children out of the room, parking sorted.

The inspection at the door

This is the part that matters, and it is the part that gets skipped because everyone is standing around waiting.

Insist on uncrating before you sign. A box can look perfect around a machine with a crushed corner. If the crew is unwilling to unwrap it, that is a reason to refuse, not a reason to hurry.

Then look at, in this order:

• The face you will see every day — door fronts, handles, control panel. Stand back and look along the surface at a shallow angle rather than straight on; that is how you see a dent in stainless.
• Door alignment. On a refrigerator, the doors should line up with each other and close without being pushed. Misalignment is often adjustable and this is the moment to have it adjusted.
• The top edges and corners, which take the impact when something is set down hard.
• Glass and shelving — oven door glass, refrigerator shelves, dishwasher racks. Check the inner panes of an oven door for cracks.
• The back panel and the rear of the cabinet. A crushed back can mean the shipping damage went further than the sheet metal.
• Everything the machine came with. Manuals, shelves, crisper drawers, racks, trim, the anti-tip bracket for a freestanding range. That bracket is a safety component and it is meant to be installed — if the crew is not fitting it, find out who is.

Photograph anything you find, and write it on the delivery paperwork before you sign. That sentence is the whole article. Signing a clean receipt is the moment your leverage moves from the retailer to you, and a dent reported three days later is a much harder conversation than the same dent noted at the door.

If it arrives damaged

You generally have two options and they are not equally good in every case.

Refuse the delivery. Right for structural damage, a machine that will not fit, or anything you would resent looking at. The cost is time: you go back into the queue and the replacement may be weeks out, particularly on a less common model.

Accept with the damage noted. Right for minor cosmetic damage on a surface nobody sees, or when you need a working appliance today. Note it in writing, photograph it, and call the retailer the same day to agree what happens — a partial credit, a replacement part such as a door, or a scheduled swap. Get whatever is agreed in writing too.

The one thing not to do is accept it, sign clean, and plan to sort it out later. That converts a delivery problem into an argument.

The first week

New appliances fail early or they fail late; the middle is quiet. The early failures are usually installation-related, and a week of attention catches nearly all of them.

1. Run every machine empty once and stay in the room for the whole cycle. Listen, and look underneath afterwards.
2. Check for leaks at 24 hours and again at a week. Under the dishwasher, behind the washer, at the refrigerator line. A fitting that is one turn short weeps rather than gushes, and it takes a few days to show.
3. Level it properly with a spirit level, front to back and side to side, once it is in its final position. Almost every vibration complaint starts here.
4. Photograph the data plate — model and serial — and keep it with the receipt. You will need both for warranty work, and the plate becomes inaccessible the moment the machine is pushed into place.
5. Register the warranty and put the expiry date in your calendar. Knowing whether you are in warranty determines who you are allowed to call when something goes wrong.
6. Read the section of the manual about the first cycle. Some machines need a calibration run; some ship with transit hardware; and if it is a washer, the shipping bolts must be out before the first load.

If something is genuinely wrong in the first weeks, that is a warranty claim through the manufacturer or retailer, not a repair you pay for. Do not call an independent shop for an in-warranty fault — it can complicate coverage, and the three routes to a repair are genuinely different products.

And if you are still deciding what to buy rather than waiting for it to arrive, the decisions that actually matter in year eight are set out in replacing a refrigerator and buying a washer and dryer — and the pitch you will get at the register is examined in extended warranties, honestly assessed.