I count myself as fortunate.
I can do some electrical, plumbing, and carpentry work myself. For larger jobs, I have three plumbers, a painter, a couple carpenters, and an electrician that do good work, and don't rob me. Ditto a good mechanic, though I do oil changes myself.
For appliances, we have Mr. King; we call him our appliance "faith healer". He is very good at diagnosing problems and fixing them, but on several occasions, appliances he has come to look at spontaneously start working! He charges a basic (fair) service call fee for such faith healing visits
. Other neighbors have similar experiences with him.