same old story.....

Most of us in the repair trade have had this happen!


You get asked to under take some repair works or see if the item(s) are worth sorting out and let the owner know if and when there ready for collection!

So you clear a space on the bench and things get under way...first on the list is a powered mixer amplifier with loud hum at power up!! work carried out on amplifier stage and it's up and working.

A nice quick job, rewiring xlr microphone lead..mmm 5minutes.. So onwards to the next job and half way into the repair,,, the phone ring's.. it's the owner of the items..followed by 'oh before you do to much work, can you tell me how much it's going to cost?? As I don't want to spent to much money!... well, it's my time plus the cost of parts and more so we did agree before work was undertaken needless to say they did pay in the end..
It just goes to show how folks think they can get items repaired on the cheap...I used to say if you can't afford the repair then don't wast my time!

This is why electronics repair is such unrewarding work. Too often it's cheaper for them to buy a new one than to pay you to fix the old one.

Those of us who've spend year's, decade's learning this trade look back and think Electronic repair's aren't the same any more as it is becoming 'let's just buy a new item!

And most of the junk ends up in land fill's or the good parts get recycled..

Tann-44 said:

And most of the junk ends up in land fill's or the good parts get recycled..

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I think that is an excellent point.

As we all face increasing regulations for the sake of the environment, what if someone could craft a law that would require products to be "repairable?"

Let's take as one of zillions of examples a particular lamp fixture that I have. It's a track light with a plastic baffle (probably Bakelite). Obviously, the Bakelite does not have the same environmental impact as the whole lamp, but if the Bakelite breaks, you have to replace the whole lamp fixture. Cooper/Edison will not sell just the Bakelite baffle, even to distributors, even though it is still selling the whole lamp.

How much easily repairable and otherwise perfectly good "stuff" is being sent to the landfill because of such marketing decisions? We talk about mandated efficiency ratings, but totally ignore mandated repairability ratings.

John

What, after the manufacturing run you expect them to keep a complete stock of umpty-zillion parts on hand in perpetuum just on the off chance some guy in Poughkeepsie breaks a lamp shade and decides to fix it himself thirty years later? You may as well pass a law that makes all domestic manufacturing illegal.

@duffy,

The lamps are not manufactured in the US. As for the point of perpetual replacements, this lamp has been made for more that 20 years. I doubt that was one production run. Making it a little more difficult to send jobs to China is not a disadvantage as I see it. Every other country, including China, has significant trade barriers. It would not be that hard to keep replacement parts available.

Any example is subject to nitpicking, but there is little question that many items produced today have planned obsolescence built into them. They have obvious and easily replaceable parts. Yet, those parts cannot be obtained and the entire product must be junked. That is an unnecessary environmental cost to say nothing of the cost to individuals.

The incentive is greed. If replacement parts cannot be planned for in production, how come if you put the shoe on the other foot and lease equipment from its manufacturer, repair parts suddenly become available.

John

Absolute nonsense. I have never ONCE been in an engineering meeting where "planned obsolescence" was raised as an issue, nor has any engineer I've ever asked (and I've asked quite a few). This is nothing but a myth, like chemtrails and Bigfoot, and spread by the same people who believe in those things.

duffy said:

Absolute nonsense. I have never ONCE been in an engineering meeting where "planned obsolescence" was raised as an issue, nor has any engineer I've ever asked (and I've asked quite a few). This is nothing but a myth, like chemtrails and Bigfoot, and spread by the same people who believe in those things.

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BS We live in a disposable society now.
Most of us know its only as good as the warranty period and some not even that long.
Look at PCs most are out dated before they roll off the assembly line.

duffy said:

Absolute nonsense. I have never ONCE been in an engineering meeting where "planned obsolescence" was raised as an issue, nor has any engineer I've ever asked (and I've asked quite a few). This is nothing but a myth, like chemtrails and Bigfoot, and spread by the same people who believe in those things.

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I see both jpanhalt & duffy's sides. However, I don't live in china or korea. A lot of what is happening is just cheapo crap capacitors and such, if that extends into other parts of the product or products well then it's just crap.

As long as it get's past the door and over 90 day's.

Cheap crap, yes. Planned obsolescence, no. I'm sick of being seen as part of some imaginary conspiracy among engineers, and when you call it "planned" that's what you're saying.

I think my use of the term, "planned obsolescence" was unfortunately misunderstood. I was talking only and specifically about the availability of spare parts needed for repair. I very much doubt such decisions about products are made at engineering meetings. In the example with the light fixture, the decision whether to supply parts was made by sales.

I did not mean it in the context of a conspiracy of engineers figuring out how to make 100,000-mile transmissions for cars breakdown at 100,001 miles.

So to emphasize, my comment was made in reference to consumer products that are easily repaired, but access to parts is limited.

John

jpanhalt said:

So to emphasize, my comment was made in reference to consumer products that are easily repaired, but access to parts is limited.

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Unfortunately you're ignoring the reasoning behind lack of spares availability - it's quite simply cost!.

It's VERY, VERY expensive to maintain an efficient supply of spare parts over a period of many years - and doing so would greatly increase the cost of the original units. Cheap manufacture in China also makes it far more difficult, and you would need to order all the spare parts you think you might ever need along with the original order. Cheap makes don't do this at all, and are effectively disposable, but even more expensive makes then come unstuck when the original spares allocation runs out.

Nigel Goodwin said:

Unfortunately you're ignoring the reasoning behind lack of spares availability - it's quite simply cost!.

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It is actually profit, but I will grant that is what you probably meant. Moreover, I am not ignoring that.

It's VERY, VERY expensive to maintain an efficient supply of spare parts over a period of many years - and doing so would greatly increase the cost of the original units.

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The specific example I gave is a product that has been in production for more than 20 years and is still in production. It is "assembled from domestic and imported parts." That is not a situation of having to warehouse parts for obsolete equipment. It is on-going production and the manufacturer has the parts.

The underlying point here is not that some stuff can't be made in China cheaper than in the US or UK, thus increasing profit. It is the unaccounted monetary, environmental, and domestic economy costs of filing up land fills with perfectly salvageable equipment but for availability of a few parts. I suspect that if ALL costs were considered, it would be cheaper in a macro economic sense to
repair many products that are currently being discarded. Simply put, it is cost shifting from large companies to the consumer and governments. The costs for landfills are shared by all of us, as are other environmental costs. The more serious cost is the long-term destruction of our industrial infrastructure and cities.

There are more than ample examples of cost shifting in the past that led to major changes in our society. Look at our early industrial period. Andrew Carnegie, Forbes, Rockefeller, and others made huge fortunes by cost shifting to their employees. Eventually, our society decided those costs were too great and implemented reforms to protect workers and families. (Sure, such policies can go overboard in both directions.) Perhaps we have reached a similar turning point in the new economy of disposable goods.

John

jpanhalt said:

The specific example I gave is a product that has been in production for more than 20 years and is still in production. It is "assembled from domestic and imported parts." That is not a situation of having to warehouse parts for obsolete equipment. It is on-going production and the manufacturer has the parts.

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It still needs warehousing and an expensive spares distribution system, the extra costs of which would go on the retail price of the product, perhaps rendering it non-viable, and the company goes out of business.

The underlying point here is not that some stuff can't be made in China cheaper than in the US or UK, thus increasing profit.

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You seemed obsessed by 'profit' - but don't seem to understand the realities of the situation.

Buying cheap equipment from China doesn't increase profits, the profit margins are probably still just the same - it merely decreases the price, meaning LESS profit in absolute terms, but the same (or similar) margin of profit. If manufacturers don't do that though, then they can't compete with their competitors who do.

IMHO any conscientious engineer will design a product to meet or exceed an operating spec over a decent operating lifetime. It's the bean-counters who decide what the product lifetime should be and so plan the product's obsolescence.

duffy said:

This is why electronics repair is such unrewarding work. Too often it's cheaper for them to buy a new one than to pay you to fix the old one.

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yes it's sometimes better to just say 'replace it,..... Example, what if it's a high end peace of equipment such as EV p3000 amplifier that's cost £2 or 3000 grand to buy plus you give a quote of say £200 to carry out the repair....would you say to the owner mmm just get a new one! AS service persons we must weight up the cost of doing most repairs such as spares..labour etc...

Hi,
I don't think it is planned obsolescence, rather just communication and administration bungling at a time when some country on the other side of the globe produces cheep junk which appeals to many who do not understand economics and only understand they do not have much money to spend. Please, do not confuse Korea and China; Korean made is usually very high quality the other is usually crap.

I work for a small business. We repair a wide range of products, mostly tools and no consumer items. We are the repair depot for several companies, but one of the more profitable is an expensive line of products produced by a large American company. For the largest part it is a good relationship, but there are annoyances.

The most difficult thing we have to deal with is that they take their time paying for warranty claims - up to 90 days. We are maxed on credit, so if we get any more claims which involve expensive ($500 - $1000+) parts we are looped. What do we do here? Send the customer to pick up and pay for the parts, which they will be reimbursed for three months later?
They ship parts in the least intelligent way - sometimes one at a time - for a large company it is nothing for them, but the shipping and duty is a killer.
I like a lot of what their engineers come up with, however it is obvious that company hires young, fresh out of college engineers who have never had to repair anything. (I think this is common.) My current annoyance is a small Color TFT controller board which has the backlight inverter circuit on that board. The switches are surface mount parts with no numbers, and they are prone to failure. The company provides no schematic (and it is a four layer board - hard to RE!) Their solution - order a board for >$500+ and sell it to the customer for a lot more in a few months when you can finally get it shipped. (I guess what they want customers to do is spend a lot more money for their new LCD monitor ($3500)
They do not carry stock on many repair parts for their very expensive products and there is often no date when the back ordered parts will be available.

Our employer well a good person, does not have a deep understanding of trouble shooting; he thinks you just take a look and the problem 'jumps out at you.' We don't get the most important tool - a circuit diagram - for most of what we repair! We have to reverse engineer the PCB for that and it takes LOTS of time. The most common faults are cracks in traces and bad solder joints and when we don't use parts in a repair the boss claims he cannot charge much for the repair. (grumble, grumble!)

A lot of the tools we repair are for automotive shops, others for plumbers. The one thing in common is that the tools are used by people who often abuse them then whine when they fail. (if a tool has wheels and a wire/cord you can be sure it will be pulled around the shop by the wire!) Our estimate for repair is held as a quote, and if we miss anything customers expect that for free. Often you cannot tell how extensive the damage, or the time it will take until you repair the thing and get it working. So in many cases the repair is done in the hope the customer will accept it. When they refuse we have to pull the parts out, unless they decide to leave the tool in lieu of paying our inspection fee. Then we have to sell the tool to cover our costs.

As a service and repair tech I feel caught between customers who think it should be repaired for next to nothing, a boss who is only interested in the bottom line and companies who have no idea what it is like. it is a difficult way to make a living and feel content. Yes, it still feels great to breath life back into something, especially when it has been a tough repair, but the stress is heavy.

Hello beeBop, interesting comments there's... grumbling boss..we've all had them one's and thinking how much not to spend repairing an item, it then look's bad on the repair's engineer when it goes faulty again and the customer complains that if was not fit right in the first place!

I recall working for a sound hire store many years ago, and at the time I was repairing a large powered mixer the sort of thing that's hired out as a package deal...anyway the fault with this unit was blown o/p stage.. Now to finish off the final repair it needed a couple of to-3 type devices to the right hand channel.
Now because it was shop stock item the boss asked me to remove spare parts from the junk pile instead of buying new one's.. he was just thinking how much more cash it could make till it was upgraded to a better one!

Hey Tann, if it needs parts it needs parts.

Sometimes if a part is expensive or would bring the repair bill up to more than half the price of a new one, and I have a used one on hand, I'll mention it and we sell it at a cheap price to the customer. This can make the difference between doing the job and throwing the thing on the scrap pile.

Reusing semiconductors can be iffy though, but meters, cables, transformers etc are things which make good used parts.

Rental stuff often gets the very minimum repair, as one would expect.

actually, we're talking about two different engineers here. first there's the design engineer, who designs the product to function as planned. then there's the production engineer, who is the one who actually builds the item. the production engineer is the one who answers to the bean counters. the production engineer is the one who chooses the cheapest components and manufacturing methods possible. by this time, the design engineer is out of the loop, unless one of the production engineers choices causes a failure,

as for repairing older stuff using scrap parts, it's iffy. it can also be a liability issue. if you make a repair with 20 year old components that came from a junker, and it burns somebody's house down, the owner's insurance company will be looking for somebody to blame. the same goes for using counterfeit or cheap knock-off transistors, which more often than not actually burst into flames when they fail.