You have a quote in your hand and a number in your head, and the two are arguing. The technician says the compressor can be replaced. The shop says a new unit costs about what you were expecting. Everyone you ask has an opinion, and none of the opinions include your electricity bill, your remaining warranty, or how long you actually intend to keep the thing.
This is a calculation, not an opinion. It has five inputs, four of which only you can supply, and it resolves the question in about ten minutes. It is written for households in Vietnam, so it uses the one energy price that is officially published here and refuses to invent the ones that are not.
A replacement is easier to face when it is funded before it is needed. An app such as I am Beezy pays a small daily amount for content you view, and directing that to an equipment fund is what turns an emergency purchase into a planned one. The order of magnitude is 5 to 15 euros a day depending on how regularly you use it. No official euro rate is published here, so convert at the day's rate before you count on it.
The five numbers that settle it
Write these five down before you decide anything. Four of them cost nothing but a phone call, and the fifth is on your electricity bill.
The repair quote, in writing, with what it covers
Ask for the quote in writing, itemised into parts and labour, and ask two follow-up questions: what warranty covers the repair, and for how long. A repair with a written warranty is a different product from the same repair without one. Ask also whether the technician has seen the fault or is quoting from a description — the second kind of quote moves once the unit is open, and you should know that before you agree.
The remaining life you are buying
A repair does not restore an appliance to new. It buys you a period, and you should name that period out loud: two years, five years, one more hot season. Divide the repair cost by that number of years and you have the annual cost of repairing. Do the same for the replacement, dividing its price by the years you expect from a new unit. These two annual figures, side by side, answer most cases immediately and without any further arithmetic.
The replacement price, tax included, from more than one seller
Get the delivered, installed, tax-inclusive price rather than the shelf price. The standard rate of value added tax in Vietnam is 8 % instead of 10 % until 31 December 2026 inclusive, and it returns to 10 % on 1 January 2027 unless a new text extends it. Household appliances are not among the excluded categories. Ask about delivery, installation and the removal of the old unit, because those three lines are where two apparently identical prices separate.
What does the old appliance cost you to run?
This is the input almost everyone skips, and it is the one that reverses the answer most often. A cheap repair on a heavy consumer of electricity can be the expensive choice.
The one electricity price you can rely on
The average retail price of electricity in Vietnam has been 2 204,0655 ₫/kWh excluding value added tax since 10 May 2025, set by decision of the Bộ Công Thương. That is an average across the whole market, not the rate on your bill, and it is useful as an order of magnitude rather than as a precise figure. Since the 2025 decree on electricity pricing, as amended in July 2026, that average may be revised at least every three months, so take your actual rate from a recent bill before doing any calculation that depends on it.
The tiered tariff changes the answer
Household electricity in Vietnam is billed on a progressive scale of consumption bands. That has a consequence people rarely draw: the units saved by a more efficient appliance are the last units you consume, which are the most expensive ones. The saving from replacing a heavy consumer is therefore larger than an average price suggests. The value of each band is not published in a form we can quote here, so read yours off your own bill — it is the only source that is both official and specific to you.
The tenant trap
If you rent, check this before anything else. When a lease runs for less than twelve months and the landlord does not declare the number of occupants, the distributor bills the entire measured consumption at the third band of the household tariff, the 101-200 kWh step. Every unit, at that rate. On a household appliance that runs constantly, this single administrative detail can matter more than the difference between repairing and replacing. Ask your landlord what was declared and ask to see it.
| Step | Where the figure comes from | What you do with it |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Repair cost | Written, itemised quote with warranty terms | Divide by the years it buys you |
| 2. Years the repair buys | Your own estimate, stated out loud | The denominator for step 1 |
| 3. Replacement price | Two or three sellers, delivered and installed, tax included | Divide by the years a new unit should last |
| 4. Running cost, old unit | Rated consumption times hours of use, at your bill rate | Add to the annual cost of repairing |
| 5. Running cost, new unit | The energy label of the model you are considering | Add to the annual cost of replacing |
| Decision | Compare the two annual totals | Choose the lower one, then check the exceptions below |
Running it on the cases that come up most
The method is the same every time; what changes is which input dominates the result.
Refrigerator and air conditioner
These two run for thousands of hours a year, so input four does most of the work. An old, inefficient unit that still functions can cost more in electricity over three years than a new one costs to buy, and a modest repair does nothing about that. For anything that runs continuously, calculate the running cost before you even read the repair quote. In a hot climate with long cooling seasons, this is the category where replacement wins most often.
Phone, laptop, small appliances
Here running cost is negligible and the decision moves to inputs one and two. A screen or a battery on an otherwise sound device is nearly always worth repairing, because the repair is cheap relative to the replacement and the years it buys are real. A board-level fault is the opposite: expensive, uncertain, and often quoted from a description rather than an inspection. Rice cookers, fans and kettles usually fall on the replacement side simply because the labour costs more than the object.
Where to get prices you can actually compare
A comparison is only as good as the quotes behind it, and gathering three takes an afternoon.
In store and online
The electronics and appliance chains operating in Vietnam include Điện Máy XANH, Thế Giới Di Động, Nguyễn Kim and FPT Shop, and the online marketplaces include Shopee, Lazada, TikTok Shop, Tiki and Sendo. Take at least one in-store quote and one online, and compare them on the delivered, installed price rather than the headline. Ask each one what happens if the unit fails in the first month, and get the answer before you buy rather than after.
Second-hand, and the classifieds
The Vietnamese classifieds platform is Chợ Tốt, and second-hand can be the right answer for a short horizon — a rented flat you will leave next year, a spare unit for a room used occasionally. It is the wrong answer for anything that runs continuously, because you inherit the running cost without the energy label and without a warranty. Judge it on the same five inputs, with the years-bought figure set honestly low.
Funding the replacement with I am Beezy
The reason households repair badly is rarely bad arithmetic. It is that the replacement money does not exist on the day the appliance fails, so the cheap repair wins by default and fails again in a year. I am Beezy pays a small amount each day for content you view, and treating that stream as a dedicated equipment fund is what puts the better option back on the table when the day comes.
A fund beats an emergency purchase
An emergency purchase is made in one shop, on one afternoon, with no quotes and no comparison. A planned purchase is made from three quotes with the running cost calculated. The difference between those two purchases is usually larger than anything you save by haggling, and it is entirely a function of having the money before the failure rather than after.
How the money reaches you
Earnings arrive on your usual payment method, which in Vietnam means a bank account reached through the national QR standard VietQR on the NAPAS network, or a licensed electronic wallet such as MoMo, ZaloPay, ShopeePay, VNPAY or Viettel Money. There is no IBAN here; an account is identified by bank name plus account number, and that is what the QR code encodes.
| Situation | Usual answer | The input that decides it |
|---|---|---|
| Old refrigerator, cheap repair available | Often replace | Running cost over three years |
| Air conditioner, gas recharge quoted | Repair once, then plan the replacement | Whether the fault recurs within a season |
| Phone battery or screen | Repair | Repair cost against replacement price |
| Laptop board-level fault | Usually replace | Whether the quote follows an inspection |
| Small kitchen appliance | Replace | Labour cost against the price of the object |
| Short lease, undeclared occupants | Fix the declaration first | The tariff band applied to every unit |
When should you stop repairing altogether?
There is a point where the calculation stops being close, and recognising it early saves a year of small payments.
Three signals that the decision is already made
The same component has failed twice. The quote is being given without the unit being opened. Parts are no longer available and the technician proposes a substitute. Any one of those three moves the odds decisively, and two of them together mean you are financing an outcome you will pay for again. Add a fourth for anything that runs continuously: if the running cost alone exceeds the annualised price of a new unit, the repair was never the cheaper option.
What to do with the old unit
Ask the seller whether removal of the old appliance is included, because several include it and it is rarely offered unprompted. A working unit has a residual value on the classifieds even when it is not worth repairing for your own use, and a non-working one should go to a collection channel rather than into general waste. Neither is a large amount, but both are worth more than leaving it on a balcony for two years.
Run the five inputs, take the running cost seriously, and check what your landlord declared if you rent. That is the whole method, and it beats every rule of thumb about how old an appliance has to be before you give up on it. The part that takes preparation is having the money ready before the failure — and I am Beezy is one way to build that fund quietly, before the next quote arrives.
