I think I shall start with this - Since big business bought our government, it seems like it is open season on the American consumer. I mean that 100% and invite anyone to refute it.
These people are not stupid either. Take the example of the Protron 30 or 32" LCD. You can't get a power supply for it. The name Protron appears nowhere on the power supply. It's made by yHI and has a completely an independent model number.
Now, if I were in charge of yHI I would make a bunch of extras and just stow them away. Unless the contract specifically prohibits me from doing so I would do it. Then just wait several months. Those power supplies that they jewed you down to $40 each on, people are willing to pay $150 now because they got this $800 TV that doesn't work. (no offense intended to Jews, that is a figure of speech)
Why wouldn't yHI make some spares and just sell them later ? I can think of only one reason. They agreed not to.
Does this cross the line into conspiracy ?
How long will it be before nobody can repair anything ?
Your'e right! It's getting to be a bad business to be in! I dropped Prima, & all it's brands, & LG...mostly because, they just won't answer the phone! E-Mail, fax, or leave a message, they might be a month getting back to you...that is, if they ever do! Support is almost non-existant! Phillips wants you to buy boards for $ 1,100, for plazma TV's, just on a guess! If I get ten Phillips Plazma TV's in from a Hotel, that need this board, I need $
11,000, in parts...all on a guess, to fix these units! One I had in lasted one time, then it wouldn't come on again....talk about reliability! I dropped them also! If you have this kind of money to spend on TV parts....your'e in the wrong business! Norcent LCD, parts are in Los Angeles...I'm in esstern Newfoundland! You can't get any further away! Acer LCD's have no support here, call eastern Canada, they will sell you boards for way too much, but will not help a fellow Tech in a different Province! So, I can get them to fix it for me, for say $ 400 - $ 600, & put $ 100 on it...not including freight, & tax, then give it to the customer for almost the price of the piece of junk new!! Landfill, will be one mile high in a few years! This "junk" should not be allowed to be sold in our Province, unless it has some sort of service support! The people who you get on the phone at some of these electronics manufacturers can hardly speak english, & only know customer tech support, like "unplug it, & plug it back in"!! Unreal! Glad I do other things, because I'd never eat in this business! It's sad that the average consumer would rather buy a "junk" name, & hope it lasts, then throw their hard earned money away, rather than get their "good quality" unit fixed! People throw away $ 600 - $ 4,000 on these units, & when they break, it may never get fixed! That's sad! Dani.
I don't think it crosses the line into conspiracy - I think it is just the way it is now. Our government in the UK struggles to know even what industry is any more, let alone control it - except by keeping it cowed under heavy tax and legislation. As far as spares go, such is the way it has been for years now here, so if it's only just starting to filter into your nation, you have indeed had it lucky. There was the time - here at least - when spares had to be kept for all products for a certain number of years. I've no idea if this is still the case, and if it is, how the manufacturers / importers get around it. Oh for the days when you could phone a manufacturer, and get someone in service, who knew the product, and better yet, sounded older than 18, and understood as much about electronics and service, as you did yourself, or a stores person who knew what they were talking about, and understood about spares.
But what really hacks me off in all of this, is the way that spares, when available, are prohibitively priced. We keep getting told all manner of hysterical eco-nonsense about pollution and global warming and whatever new fad that they can come up with this week, and are also told that we've got to become much less of a 'throw-away' society, and become a lot more aware of recycling, and the damage done by dumping stuff in landfill.
Fair enough on some of that, but if it's the government-sponsored case that we need to do this, why are they not addressing the problem of spares availability, and pricing ? Quite 'reasonable' home cinema systems can, for example, be had from the local supermarket, for a very sensible price. And I'm not talking 'no-names' here. Often well known brand names, although what you are getting is not, of course, actually manufactured by them. Now what happens when its laser fails just out of warranty ? Well, first off, it's probably not even available as a spare part. If it is, the cost of it is nearly as much, if not more, than the player cost in the first place. Result ? An otherwise perfectly good player goes at worst to landfill, and at best, to be recycled, which uses yet more energy.
It seems to me that if these items can be built cheap enough to sell at that price in the first place, then the component cost of the laser must only be a few pence / cents. So, if governments really want to make a difference, then this kit should be forced to have a 5 year lifetime, by making manufacturers supply spare parts for that period of time, and by making them sell them out at cost plus handling, plus a sensible storage cost. Profit on spares should be secondary, only if the final cost allows for it.
I agree with what Arfa says. We urgently need a system of spares and suppport to keep usable stuff from the landfill. I would even go further and propose that with the annual multi-million pound budget for implanting extensive recycling schemes, including the cost of sorting, transporting, storing waste electronic materials and the energy use all that entails, we could subsidise every repair shop in the country and SAVE money and do far more for the environment!
And don't get me started on new TVs and their power consumption - you'd have to go back to the early 70s colour sets to find one with such a ridiculous power consumption. So you have a double whammy - people chucking out working CRT sets which used less than 90w, into the landfill AND replacing them with more-contaminating plasma and LCDs using many hundreds more watts. And here's everyone going on about F$%&ing light bulbs??!! The only explanation I can find for this farcical situation is a) public ignorance and b) the businesses in whose interests it is to keep things that way.
It's a sad part of living in a world where big business and deregulated multinationals can do what they want, and are seemingly untouchable, whilst the ordinary citizen is forced to pay for the costs of this environmental folly and suffer endless recyling campaigns, not to mention having often little choice but to throw equipment away. It's a perverse form of socialism for the rich IMO. Still, as long as people are stupid enough to keep BUYING instead of thinking about the consequences, or just for a second questioning this state of affairs, there'll be more of the same.
Not so sure "cheap off-brand shit" applies in this case as the amalgamation of the industry in general has the same supplier making assemblies for all the brands whether 'off' or otherwise.
Custom parts are made-to-order, and paid upon acceptance (which is distinct from 'delivery' - a very important issue). Which means that the supplier will be loath to make any extras, nor even as many as may have been ordered initially as there is no guarantee that they will be paid until that unit actually goes into a production item - that is "accepted". Extras are either sent back to the supplier (at the supplier's cost) or dumped, as no-one wants to either pay for or store them... which requires tracking, storing and handling.
Put simply: Most "small electronics" (about anything made for the consumer at any level from flash memory cards through computers through plasma TVs) are commodities these days. That is, purchased based on price and feature only. A pork-belly is a pork-belly is a pork-belly. And if one looks at the Big Box retailers and the warranty statements that come with the sale, it will say "IN CASE OF DEFECT, DO NOT RETURN TO THE POINT OF SALE".... and then give elaborate instruction for returning the item to the Manufacturer (or distributor). And there, it will be replaced with no attempt at repair other than the most basic stuff... often not even then.
At this level, there is no need for support, schematics, spares or any other infrastucture of that nature. If that Plasma TV that one purchase at say.... US$2500 cost US$600 to make and transport, I would be shocked. So, consider the cost of a warehouse, techs and support staff to do warranty work. Assume one (1) tech cost US$50,000 to keep employed, the space for him/her costs $10,000/year to lease, $10,000 year to maintain (heat, light, phone, taxes, insurance), and then maybe a receptionist, accounts receivable & payable, shipping & receiving, equipment.... so even a single modest warranty service station (that actually does service) will cost something on the order of $350,000 - $500,000 per year to maintain. That comes to 1000 defective very high-end television sets in cost + shipping and receiving them. And that is before it has repaired its first warranty call.
So, why not put it all on the distributor where the shipping & handling infrastructure already exists, chalk it up to the cost of business and move on. Oh, and perhaps spend a little on the front-end in QC to reduce the call-backs anyway.
And then, if a Tech is worth $25 (~$50,000/year) an hour (not what the time is charged at, but what the tech gets paid), repairing that $39 DVD player becomes a futile gesture, so those items will get trashed fixable or not.
It is the way of the world. Now that robots can crank out this crap faster than the rest of the world can buy it, the race for the bottom is in full swing. Consumer Goods repair shops are dinosaurs, servicing those few functioning dinosaurs that have sentimental value to their owners, not much else.
Please advise us as to which brands you believe are NOT off-brands with unavailable parts. I can't really think of any which are affordable by the average consumer, only government offices.
Whilst all of what you say is true, it does not address the out-of-warranty situation, nor the utter waste of scrapping this stuff into landfill or recycling it, with all of the energy budget implications of those actions, plus building and shipping replacement units for the consumers to buy. The point to this whole discussion is that it is no good governments bleating about landfill and recycling, if all they are going to do is attack the symptoms, not the cause. The DVD player should actually not be $39 in the first place. It should be $69, which would still a perfectly acceptable price, but would do away with all of this cut-throat competition between manufacturers, that leads to the nonsense situation of a perfectly otherwise functional piece of equipment, being written off for the sake of a 5c component that isn't available. From my experience of consumer service, I think that most people would be quite happy to spend out $30 getting something repaired that they paid $70 for originally, rather than having to go out and spend another $70 just to get back to what they had when it was working.
If the situation is to improve, this entire scenario of pricing and spares provision needs to be seriously looked at by governments and manufacturers together, and if necessary, legislated for. After all, the governments don't seem to have any problem placing bans on stuff like leaded solder, despite the dubious science that caused them to arrive at solder being a 'hazardous' material, so why should legislating to prevent premature scrapping of otherwise servicable equipment, be a problem for them ?
-------------------- Irreparable damageBy Bryce Baschuk THE WASHINGTON TIMES January 9, 2007 Bill Jones, after 42 years, is finally closing the Procter Appliance Service shop in Silver Spring. "You can't make a good salary to survive on the way you could years ago," said the 61-year-old owner of the oven, refrigerator and washer-dryer repair shop. "Everything has changed in the appliance business." Mr. Jones recently sold his home in Laurel and is in the process of moving to Bluffton, S.C., with his wife, Jeannette. Mr. Jones is one of the many Washington-area repairmen who have struggled to stay afloat as residents replace, not repair, old appliances. "It's a dying trade," said Scott Brown, Webmaster of
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and self-proclaimed "Samurai Appliance Repairman." ....
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