Time to Bail Out?

There never was any loyalty in the general market place. People have been bombarded to near death with 'new is better' and so they must keep up with the latest goodies their neighbors have. Governments just love those ideas - for every new purchase is another tax grab.

Obviously, it will take many studies and multiple university degrees to finally conclude that for every dollar spend only about 25 cents is good for our own economy. The other 75 cents feed the needy and greedy in China, etc.. and will never return. In this manner we are slowly bleeding our own economy to death. This while our Earth atmosphere is being seriously abused in China, etc.. with huge amounts of pollution... which can cause all sorts of illnesses, in China, etc.. as well as anywhere else.

Maybe it is time that the true dreamers for a just society wake up and correct the course we seem to be so hell bent set on.

What you posted is pretty much the story of my life. I'm retired now. Not much money to spend but no debts either.

Lifelines: There is still a demand for service technicians in photocopiers and machines that have a electro-mechanical component. My other idea is to restore-repair very old machines (prior 1970s) and "heirlooms" that have some nostalgia value. Old clocks, hand crank record players, mechanical clocks. The caveat will be that they don't require replacement parts, just clean-ups, alignments, small-shop repairs with a bit of soldering or brazing and perhaps non precision parts I can fabricate with a saw and file. Restore non mechanical parts such as broken corners on a bezel, touch up colors and scratches. The customers base will be to put up my notice in the community notice boards at the supermarket, library and community papers. I have yet to get around this.

Hi bz...

This may be helpful...

Ken

"Honestly" is the operative word. The VCR problem I had was quite simply to replace the rubber drive rings and then align the timing. At $75 an hour the job could have been done in less time but $75 was acceptable. I didn't care to save the $75 as I didn't want to spend the time and effort to look up the fixes on this VCR. To the labor charge the shop tagged on another $50 for cleaning and shop supplies (standard charge item he said), something I had already done and with far more care than anyone else. I understand the shop's desperation to pad charges to make up for dwindling servicing business. But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I certainly will never go to a shop to get anything fixed again. If I can't fix it its tossed. The $100 or so bucks saved on not using the shop is a sizeable chunk of money towards a new appliance.

Actually it is now and will continue to be used to buy up US corporations and property.

PaPaPeng wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Most of the other shop owners I got to know in the three years I had my shop were honest and hard working people.

I went to work managing a shop and didn't realize that I was getting a long sales talk. Never buy a shop for 20k that has 3k in assets, 3k in debt and

It took a couple of years to learn about fixed costs and variable costs and realize that the fixed costs didn't tell the whole story. Just because 'break even is $100/day, doesn't mean that $120 per day gives $20 profit. It might only give $1.

An honest shop will give you an estimate [they may charge for the estimate] and will not stick on extra charges without first notifying you.

We almost always had to FIX the set in order to be able to estimate what it would cost. In these days of 'replace the module', estimates should be easier.

The 'rule of thumb' that I learned the hard way was:

If repair costs over 1/3 the price of a new unit, the customer will buy a new unit rather than repairing the old one.

From the number of good electronic items I find sitting by the trash cans, it looks like an upgrade of the equipment means the old stuff gets thrown out even if it is working.

I grew up in the 50's working in my father's TV repair shop so have a bit longer view on the market trend than you. That said I(and many others) saw this trend start long ago. While many here will probably hiss and boo the repair industry itself is much to blame for the consumer's desire for lower cost electronic appliances. If our industry hadn't filled up with so many unscrupulous, greedy crooks most consumers would probably still be of the mindset to have it fixed instead of buying new. Whilst many shops always liked to charge a premium price, often one just below the cost of replacing a broken appliance with a new one, My dad's market strategy was to keep all repairs charges to a minumim. This was accomplished by either hiring well trained repair techs or making sure that all the young hirees were extensively trained on job. Also standardizing all repair jobs for efficient and fast work flow.(no more than 30 minutes on any tV set etc...) Being nearly all ex-military staffed in his shop we used much the same system as the service did, using PM style cards that detailed most of the common ailments for each particular model of set. By this streamlining of his operations and keeping repair rates low he was able to keep his repair shop open long after most of the others in town had closed and made a decent living out of it to boot.

Still in today's economic market place the situation is probably broke beyond repair. One one side you have a much dwarfed repair industry that refuses to change with the times.( Things like charging absurd amounts just to LOOK at an broken appliance as well as taking hours to fix it and charging more that the local garage for labor etc...) On the other consumers who've been burned one time to many by repair shops and many being unable to afford yesterday's price's for an appliance if they wanted to.(after all everone in today's society wants to charge top dollar for their labor/services yet insists on devaluing everyone else's to minimum wage or worse.) All this fueled by a corporate structure who's driven by the bottom line, all at any cost or tactic, who're all to happy to cater to the least cost mentality of the consumer.

Like so many I have several walls racks full of test gear collecting dust, except when I fire it up to fix something of mine or a friends. (Like you I managed to collect broken toss offs and fix them for low cost resale. But that dried up four or five years ago for me as well. I now only pick up appliances off the street only when I need a replacement. I have several 27 inch stereo TV's, all good name brands, sitting around as backup's/spares as well as around 20 or so top quality stereo vcr's. All in perfect working order.

I've adjusted my economic's to where I NEVER spend my hard earned money in stores buying new electronics, rather piick them up off the street and fix 'em for my own use. Then take the money saved to compensate for the lost income from selling second hand electronics.

I've moved back into small engine repair for my extra income. Repairing lawnmowers and other lawn care equipment. People seem more inclined to spend money on lawnmower repairs than they do electronics.(In part I suppose because the cost of new mowers seem to be going up and up rather than down.) I do a brisk trade in selling old repaired mowers as well, and I get fair money for it.(Yes, it's a bit harder and dirtier work but it beats going broke sitting around waiting for someone to bring in their tv set to be fixed.)

Ken Weitzel wrote in news:98zCe.1975716$6l.624389@pd7tw2no:

Thanks, Ken,

It very well may be. The registration process seems to take a while.

It seems to me that it is time for you to find a niche market, either for repairs or gear

David

ryan wiehle wrote:

next

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I was to a church rummage sale a few weeks ago, it was the second week and when I got there they were giving the stuff away for free, just to get rid of it. And they still couldn't get rid of the stuff, including some nice manual-tuned color TV's. Like I said, people have become so spoiled and ungrateful that it's appalling. Someday we're going to be sorry!

I used to love going through Goodwill for bargains, for interesting articles not available in the stores, though very rarely for electronics stuff. But even Goodwill has gone downhill. This is because they raised their prices until much of their stuff cost as much if not more than the new items. The rationale for the price raise was because their HQ executive voted themselves million dollar salaries "because they are executives running a multi million dollar business." And I thought Goodwill is a non-profit organization. The other problem is that their workers have first pick at the good stuff that they go on to resell on eBay! Goodwill will deteriorate into a used clothing store or go out of busineess too.

Yeah, we had a Goodwill open up in our locale back about 5 years ago or so and it went downhill in no time as well. You'd see the store staff loading up all the good stuff in the trunks of their cars in the side parking lot at all hours, then fending all the broken crap electronics off on the customers at high prices. It got so bad that the regional office had to send in a "watchdog" to run the store. Someone from management level to oversee the deliveries and price all the donations and ensure they get out on the sales floor. Since then it's not been to bad a place to pick up a bargain.(I just picked up a Dell PIII 500mghz tower for 9.99 and a brand new set of Koss TD/60 reference headphones for 1.99.)

One clue that they're not a real non-profit organization is that they're required to collect sales tax. Something most religious non-profit organizations aren't required to do.