FAQ

As you can imagine, the answer to this varies according to the student’s background and experience, and what their current situation is. Perhaps the most important consideration is how much effort the student puts into his studies. But here are some guidelines to help you get a feel for what you might expect.The ideal situation, if someone is trying to get up-to-speed as quickly as possible, is to be taking Core Appliance Repair Training (and then the other courses) at the same time you are running service calls part-time with an experienced tech. In other words, an apprenticeship situation. Because the Core Appliance Repair Training course presents usable information so quickly, the apprentice will be able to start applying what he is learning very soon and will be an asset to the experienced tech. Within a matter of months, the novice should be able to start taking on some jobs independently.

Many students do not have this situation and find other ways to get hands-on experience so they can put into practice what they are learning. For example, some of our students are transitioning from handyman or maintenance jobs, and are finding opportunities to work on appliances for the customers that they formerly did other types of work for. Other people offer free or low-cost repairs (customers pay for the cost of the part) to people in their area so they can start to practice, then they transition to fully paid jobs over time. (Note: if you are doing this as your own business, then there are insurance and other considerations to address, as discussed in the Business Course.)

Click here for more information about how our students get hands-on training.

We do have required and recommended prerequisites for anyone entering MST:

Required:

• A computer with Internet access, preferably broadband.
• Our site supports recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari browsers. (See our Student Resource Page if you have further questions.)
• Proficiency in doing basic, simple operations with your web browser (copy and paste, clearing your browser cache, copying a URL from the address bar, making a screen shot, downloading files and knowing where to find them on your hard drive). There is plenty of free help online to get these skills quickly up to speed, such as basic computer skills tutorials on YouTube.
• The ability to read, write, and understand spoken English. If English is not your first language, we encourage you to try a free sample course to see how well you can follow along. Each quiz allows for multiple attempts, so if you are slower because English is not your primary language, you will have the opportunity to retake them as needed. Many multilingual students do well at the MST Academy, and we are confident that you will, too!
• A hard copy (not Kindle) of the book, Troubleshooting and Repairing Major Appliances, 3rd Edition, by Eric Kleinert. This can be purchased via Amazon. It is possible other editions may not exactly correspond with the page numbers cited within the course materials. This reference book is needed for Core Appliance Repair Training and Advanced Refrigerator Repair.

Recommended:

• Smart phone

Very positive, according to our experience and the information we’re seeing. According to Zippia, there are projected to be about 17,700 new jobs for skilled appliance repair techs over the next decade. See this Blog Post for more info!

Learn about the high value of MST Certification here.

Wise question! Yes, there is obviously a lot of free information out there. However, there are a number of valuable reasons why completing courses through the Academy is better for you in the long run.

• You are given a structured and logical learning environment to give you the best foundation to succeed in the trade.
• You gain access to original material in textbooks, videos, and audio clips not available anywhere else online.
• Our courses encourage accountability by having you pass quizzes before advancing to the next stage.
• You gain credibility with your certification after graduating from our academy.
• You have access to student-only forums for individual help from the Master Samurai when needed.
• You gain from over 25 years of experience in both running an appliance repair business and helping people learn appliance repair online. This unique combination gives us the ability to present information to you that you may not even realize you need to learn. We’ve done all of the footwork involved in finding the best ways to communicate this information to you.

Simple. We are here to help with ANY question you have. Submit your thoughts to the Ask the Teacher Forum in the module you’re working on and Team Samurai will answer your question. We will give you the coaching and mentoring you need to become a master yourself. Every course enrollment also comes with a free 6-month membership to Appliantology.org, the biggest and best online resource for working appliance repair techs. There you can find (1) tech-only forums where thousands of dedicated techs exchange tips, tricks, and know-how every month, (2) access to all the schematics and service manuals you need (and in the rare case you can’t find it, just request it!), and (3) continuing education workshops with the Master Samurai himself, covering both fundamental and advanced topics, plus a huge library of additional training content to support your Master Samurai Tech education.

Yes! The Master Samurai Tech team also runs Appliantology.org, a world-class tech support site where working appliance repairmen give and get help on specific repair problems. Every course enrollment comes with a free 6-month membership to Appliantology, and all our graduates earn either a lifetime free membership (if they earn their Certification in the Core Appliance Repair Training course) or a lifetime discounted membership to Appliantology so that they can continue to receive support on-the-job.

If you’re confronted with an appliance issue you can’t figure out, post the details in the Appliantology forums and other technicians will come to your rescue. It’s the biggest community of appliance repair experts online, many of whom love spending time on the forums helping other techs out, so if you post a problem, you will get a speedy reply. And you can rest assured that you will receive good advice from them, because all posts in the forums are moderated by the Master Samurai Tech team to ensure the help you get is accurate and useful.

Appliantology also offers unlimited downloads of service manuals, schematics, tech sheets and other documents from our impressive (and constantly growing) database. And we continue to post new educational content to Appliantology, so our alums can continue to learn and grow as Master Samurai Technicians. You can learn more about the benefits of Appliantology and how the student memberships work here.

Finally, it goes without saying, we run job boards on both Master Samurai Tech and Appliantology so you can look for employment once you become a fully-trained appliance repair master.

Many of our students are already working as appliance techs, yet nearly all of them start their training with the Core Appliance Repair Training course. Most techs have never received any training around electricity, electronics and motors, troubleshooting using schematics, etc. and have made do with just their instincts and their natural handiness. Neither are very helpful in diagnosing and fixing modern, computer-controlled appliances (hint: if you know what you’re doing, you very rarely have to replace the appliance control board). Here are a few reviews we’ve received on the Core course:”Excellent class. I thought that I had a basic understanding of electronics before I took this class. There were huge gaps in my understanding, things that I was not even aware of not knowing. Trying to troubleshoot before taking this class was frustrating. Now I understand the process involved. Way to go Master Samurai! It was an honor to enter your dojo.”

“I have been an Appliance service tech for over 20 years. This course is excellent has so much useful information very in-depth.”

“I can now truly say like many have already said. This course is indeed the game changer.In my opinion, It does not matter how much experience you may have as an Appliance repair technician, this course will most definitely make you better! Keep up the great work team Samurai!”

“I found the course to be very enlightening. I have been a tech for 5 years but felt I needed more training. The course filled in a lot of gaps for me and I’m sure I will refer back to it as my old brain needs refreshing. Thank you Samurai Tech.”

Look through the course outline for Core Appliance Repair Training to see the topics covered. If you want to be an ace technician and also be able to increase your First Call Complete percentage (thus increasing profitability), these are the areas that you need to have strong skills in. And if you’re still not sure whether you need to start with the Core course, take our You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know quiz.

Learn about the high value of MST Certification here.

Wise question! Yes, there is obviously a lot of free information out there. However, there are a number of valuable reasons why completing courses through the Academy is better for you in the long run.

• You are given a structured and logical learning environment to give you the best foundation to succeed in the trade.
• You gain access to original material in textbooks, videos, and audio clips not available anywhere else online.
• Our courses encourage accountability by having you pass quizzes before advancing to the next stage.
• You gain credibility with your certification after graduating from our academy.
• You have access to student-only forums for individual help from the Master Samurai when needed.
• You gain from over 20 years of experience in both running an appliance repair business and helping people learn appliance repair online. This unique combination gives us the ability to present information to you that you may not even realize you need to learn. We’ve done all of the footwork involved in finding the best ways to communicate this information to you.

We strive to cover everything you and your team need to know to be the most successful appliance repair business you can be. Technicians will develop a comprehensive understanding of troubleshooting processes and the technology behind all major modern appliances, allowing them to successfully identify the root cause of any issue and fix it. This training will prepare them for everything, from computer-board troubleshooting to sealed system repairs, leading to less guesswork, more first-call completes, and happier customers. Soft skills like pre-call preparation, customer service, and more are also covered in the free courses included with our course bundles. We have even developed a course for your office staff to help them better support customers and technicians.

Yes, each employee must have their own enrollment per our Terms and Conditions, which ensures every employee enjoys the many benefits of our school:

• Included in the cost of each enrollment is one-to-one support from our training staff, which is essential if the training is to be successful. We will remove your course access if we identify employees sharing enrollments.
• Quizzes and exams are a critical part of evaluating the progress of trainees. Many students reach out for support after taking tests when they realize they are struggling with a concept. If only one employee can take the quizzes and exams, this is a disservice to your other employees.
• If you hope to supervise your trainees and know when they’re logging in, where they are in the courses, and whether they’re mastering the appliance repair concepts we teach, you need separate accounts to generate separate student activity logs.
• Only one Master Samurai Tech Certification is awarded per enrollment.
• Employees also deserve a measure of privacy during their training. While it is one thing to have a supervisor review their progress and grades, it is another thing for a coworker to see your grades and support requests. We do not want to foster any workplace bullying or harassment.

Use our enrollment form for employers to give your technicians and customer service reps access to our courses.

Yes, companies with more than one tech enrolled are eligible for 10-15% off all enrollments. We will provide your company with a discount code. If you do not have a code when you enroll your employees, don’t sweat it! We will apply the discount you qualify for to your invoice, then email you the invoice with a link to pay online.

The best outcomes happen when employees are routinely supervised throughout their training. If you use our enrollment form for employers, we will automatically set up a Supervisor Dashboard for you, which allows you to see where your employees are in their coursework, when they’re logging in to train, and what they have scored on quizzes and exams. You can also request a Supervisor Dashboard if you used our enrollment form for individuals. We also encourage you to visit our page on Supervising Your Employees, which offers resources, tips, and easy-to-use tools for managing the training experience.

Service companies all over North America are using our online courses combined with hands-on practice to take a new hire with aptitude and good attitude and “build” an independent tech in a matter of months.

Click here for details on how to implement that in your company.

Instead of big pricey bundles of courses, materials, and other features that you may or may not need, we like to offer our various courses and support functions in smaller chunks so you can buy what you want, when you want.For ongoing technical support to our students and graduates who are out working in the field, we have a powerful yet very affordable tech support resource called Appliantology.org. Students receive a free 6-month membership when they enroll, and techs that receive their certification receive a free one-year membership that they can renew indefinitely as long as they remain active in the Appliantology community.

As for a device loaded with tech docs, we offer something even better – the knowledge and power to do it yourself! See this Blog post for more info.

Master Samurai Tech Academy offers a series of self-paced, online, interactive training courses. Aside from a reference book that you will order from Amazon, all of the course material is accessed online. When you are ready to study, all you need is an internet connection and a computer or device, and you can get started.Each course consists of a series of modules. And each module consists of units of instruction. Think of them as lessons, each with a quiz you must conquer to advance to the next unit (or module).

Click here for more on How the Courses Work.

In order to be a skilled, profitable tech, you need brains-on training along with hands-on practice. Click here to read how our students get that hands-on practice.

If you want to receive a certification from Master Samurai Tech, then you must achieve an 80% or higher on all of your unit quizzes, plus at least a 90% on the module, midterm, and final exams (where applicable). On unit quizzes and module exams you have 2 attempts to get the score that you are happy with. The Orientation for each course describes the quiz and exam structure in detail.

Simple. We are here to help with ANY question you have. Submit your thoughts to the Ask the Teacher Forum in the module you’re working on and Team Samurai will answer your question. We will give you the coaching and mentoring you need to become a master yourself.

Since all of the coursework is self-paced, the length of time to complete the courses varies with each student. But we can give you a general idea. If you work at a steady pace, doing at least 4-6 lessons per week, you can complete Core Appliance Repair Training in about 2 months, and the other technical courses in about a month each. On the other hand, if you are taking Core full-time, it can be completed in a matter of a couple of weeks.

Here are approximate time ranges for the courses. Techs who have a stronger background in electricity and are more comfortable in a learning environment (studying, taking tests) will be on the shorter end. Techs who are complete novices or need more interactive help from us to master the material will take longer.

The times also assume a student is carefully watching each video, taking notes, and reviewing the harder material. In other words, really trying to master the material. Techs who go significantly faster than the times below may be taking short cuts, which will result in lower retention.

Core Appliance Repair Training: 40-80 hours
Advanced Refrigerator Repair: 30-50 hours
Advanced Oven & Range Repair: 25-35 hours
Advanced Washer, Dryer, and Dishwasher Repair: 25-30 hours
Advanced Troubleshooting: 25-30 hours

That’s a range of 145-225 hours for all 5 courses, with an average of about 180 hours.

Course Access: When you enroll in a course or bundle, you have an initial time period with access to your coursework: one year for an individual course, or two years if you enroll in a bundle. Once that time is up, an optional ongoing monthly fee is charged for those who wish to continue to have access to all of the material and benefits of being a student ($5 for a single course, or $10 for a bundle). This monthly access can be canceled at any time. You can view your recurring payments at the bottom of the My Courses page.

All of the work is done online, so any computer or mobile device that can access the internet should be fine. However, some browsers are not fully supported by the courseware and may cause various difficulties, including interfering with video playback.Read all about our recommended browsers and the use of mobile devices at the Student Resource Page.

If you have any technical difficulties, please let us know right away using the Contact page.

The short answer is that our training will help you work on any brand and model out there, old-school and modern alike.It’s impossible to specifically cover all of the brands and models out there (and let’s face it, there’s a lot!) but here’s the good news: you don’t have to! Our training is done from the “inside out” meaning we start with the electrons and work out to the controls. Why? Because when you understand how the circuits, components, and controls function in an appliance– how they work and what they do– you see how similar all appliances really are. Once you do this, you can troubleshoot the problems using the schematic and specifications. For disassembly info– which is unique to each model family, use the service manual or YouTube.

Troubleshooting is the high dollar skill because it takes work to acquire. But we’ll step you through it at the Master Samurai Tech Academy and you’ll be on your way to becoming an ace troubleshooter. You will be the one that other techs contact when they are stumped—you will have become a master yourself. You’ll make it look easy (and that’s because, it is, once you have the knowledge from the Core Appliance Repair Training course).

In order to be a skilled, profitable tech, you need brains-on training along with hands-on practice. Click here to read how our students get that hands-on practice.

There is much in common between residential and commercial appliance repair! The differences between commercial and residential appliances are mostly related to configuration, and not some kind of core technology difference. Gas, electric circuits, electric motors, microprocessors and digital communications all work the same exact way regardless of the specific application.Although the Master Samurai Tech training is primarily aimed at residential appliance repair technicians, our focus is on teaching foundational topics and techniques rather than training on specific products, which means our courses are very applicable to commercial applications.

Bottom line: A technician who is well-trained in the core fundamentals, has good troubleshooting skills, and is armed with the service manual, can tackle any appliance, residential or commercial.

In the early stages of the development of the MST Academy we called it the “Appliance Tech Boot Camp.” We recorded a number of presentations for the courses before we decided to change the name to the Academy, so you will sometimes still see the “Boot Camp” name mentioned in the courses. Eventually we will re-record those presentations, but our first priority is getting new courses out there for our information-hungry students!

If you would like to improve your professionalism as a technician, including your customer service skills and approach to each service call, be sure to enroll in either our Technician or Business Bundle. These bundles include content not found in the main courses that will help you become a better appliance repair professional. And if you are looking to improve the skills of your office staff to better support your customers and technicians, be sure to check out our 5-Star Customer Support course.

The tuition for each course is listed on our Courses page. Click the “Learn More” button for more details on each course.

Yes, we offer financing through Affirm. When enrolling in a course, select “Or Get Financing with Affirm” under Billing Method to choose financing as your method of payment. When you hit Pay with Affirm, you will be redirected to Affirm’s website to complete your transaction. Just enter your phone number to trigger a quick review of your credit. If you pass the credit eligibility check, you will be offered three installment plans. If you don’t want to pay interest, select the 3-month, 0% APR plan. If you want to lower your monthly payments, select either of the 6 or 12-month plans. Your rate will fall between 10–36% APR and is based on your credit. You can read about how Affirm works here.

Yes, companies with more than one tech enrolled are eligible for 10-15% off all enrollments. We will provide your company with a discount code. If you do not have a code when you enroll your employees, don’t sweat it! We will apply the discount you qualify for to your invoice, then email you the invoice with a link to pay online.

When you enroll in a course or bundle, you have an initial time period with access to your coursework: one year for an individual course, or two years if you enroll in a bundle. Once that time is up, an optional ongoing monthly fee is charged for those who wish to continue to have access to all of the material and benefits of being a student ($5 for a single course, or $10 for a bundle). This monthly access can be canceled at any time. You can view your recurring payments at the bottom of the My Courses page. Learn more about your ongoing course access subscription here.

You can update your payment method or cancel your subscription at any time on the My Courses page. Learn more about managing or canceling your subscription here.

If it looks like you will be charged the full price again for your course or bundle, rest assured, that is *not* the case. Click here for an explanation on payment and billing info and what to expect.

Yes! These are the courses we wish we had when we were starting out in the business. Our graduates are enthusiastic about them. We are confident that you will find that they are worth more than you paid for them.

But to give you peace of mind about making this investment in your future, we offer a 3-day money-back guarantee. You have 3 days to try out the course(s), and if you decide it is not right for you then we will refund 100% of your tuition. We only require that you have not downloaded or in any way copied the course materials, including documents from Appliantology using your free student membership.
We will issue one refund (one course, or one bundle) per student.

Unfortunately, the type of accreditation the Federal government requires for financial aid is not attainable by an online training school like MST. However, some states have paid for MST courses through various programs, so be sure to look into what your state might offer.

Simple. We are here to help with ANY question you have. Submit your thoughts to the Ask the Teacher Forums in the module you’re working on and Team Samurai will answer your question. We will give you the coaching and mentoring you need to become a master yourself.

Instead of big pricey bundles of courses, materials, and other features that you may or may not need, we like to offer our various courses and support functions in smaller chunks so you can buy what you want, when you want.

For ongoing technical support to our students and graduates who are out working in the field, we have a powerful yet very affordable tech support resource called Appliantology.org. Students receive a free 6-month membership when they enroll, and techs that receive their certification in the Core Appliance Repair Training course receive a free one-year membership that they can renew indefinitely as long as they remain active in the Appliantology community.

As for a device loaded with tech docs, we offer something even better – the knowledge and power to do it yourself! See this Blog post for more info.

Yes! The Master Samurai Tech team also runs Appliantology.org, a world-class tech support site where working appliance repairmen give and get help on specific repair problems. Every course enrollment comes with a free 6-month membership to Appliantology, and all our graduates earn either a lifetime free membership (if they earn their Certification in the Core Appliance Repair Training course) or a lifetime discounted membership to Appliantology so that they can continue to receive support on-the-job.

If you’re confronted with an appliance issue you can’t figure out, post the details in the Appliantology forums and other technicians will come to your rescue. It’s the biggest community of appliance repair experts online, many of whom love spending time on the forums helping other techs out, so if you post a problem, you will get a speedy reply. And you can rest assured that you will receive good advice from them, because all posts in the forums are moderated by the Master Samurai Tech team to ensure the help you get is accurate and useful.

Appliantology also offers unlimited downloads of service manuals, schematics, tech sheets and other documents from our impressive (and constantly growing) database. And we continue to post new educational content to Appliantology, so our alums can continue to learn and grow as Master Samurai Technicians. You can learn more about the benefits of Appliantology and how the student memberships work here.

Finally, it goes without saying, we run job boards on both Master Samurai Tech and Appliantology so you can look for employment once you become a fully-trained appliance repair master.