The reasons you state are the reasons I stopped doing repairs for money. The
consumer equipment service/repair industry wasn't a thriving opportunity
when I got away from it years ago.
Retail costs come down, and production quality, resulting in cheap (to buy
new) equipment/toys/trash with more problems than before.
**** that noise.
Way back when, decades ago.. consumer home entertainment equipment
manufacturers had levels of dealers, who performed service and repairs,
stocked parts and sent their techs to training courses.
Manufacturers supported their products with spare parts, service and
training literature and in-home repairs were just normal business to keep
customers satisfied with those brands.
Today, the Chinese are designing and producing modern home entertainment
equipment (and much more), which essentially has no brand name.
Companies with brand names can contract to buy 100k units with their name on
them, and I seriously doubt that they want to buy Chinglish service
literature, so that is an optional decision. They may outsource/hire a
company to provide them with a limited number of service manuals for a
couple of warranty work centers, or they may hire a repair depot to just
"wing it" for warranty repairs without any literature (but high tech
universal, programmable, automated GenRad? test rigs and some sharp
personnel using hot air or infrared rework equipment).
Warranty repairs don't have to be actual repairs, just a replacement with a
refurbished unit from the repair depot. At this point in the life of the
product (almost obsolete already) a little shipping cost is just to try to
keep the customer happy with that brand, but probably more importantly -
meeting the legal requirements of the warranty.
So, the shipping company becomes a major player in the brand name's support
chain. The consumer returns a failed product to a store or sends it to a
repair depot, and the shipper delivers a refurbished unit to the consumer..
done.
If a brand name "manufacturer" chooses to contract the units from a Chinese
source with a very good track record for quality control/reliability, they
may just scrap or bulk sell/broker the failures within the warranty period,
and renegotiate the terms of the contract to reflect their losses.
They're sure as hell not going to return them to China.
So the brand name "manufacturer" saves huge bucks by not supporting the rest
of the support chain that was normal decades ago.. and those are likely some
massive profits compared to back then, but those same product support levels
would be extremely expensive to support nowadays.
They may offer some 800-HEY-RTFM phone support for dummies, also outsourced.
I firmly believe that it's unlikely that consumers will effect changes in
the new economic business models.. the gubbmint in the U.S. aggressively
supports corporate profits and global "trading", and generally insures that
the consumers are "managed".
There are companies that produce schematics from equipment circuit boards,
but if the process was highly profitable, there would be an abundant supply
of literature.
If there were more independent service shops, the process might be
profitable, but it's a little too late.
Until someone develops an economical bed-of-nails test jig and software to
translate signals into schematics, many future repairs are going to be
poke-n-hope.
BTW, the test jig will also need to decipher the firmware that the
"manufacturer" likely owns as intellectual property.
The independent service/repair shop isn't needed for these new economic
business models. The consumers aren't interested in supporting independent
shops anymore, they'd rather have a new shiney toy than a repaired obsolete
item.
The brand name saves huge bucks, and the independent repair shops stop
accepting consumer goods.
Repair shops can adjust by specializing in better quality equipment that has
real value (not just a sparkley attraction).. commercial, industrial,
high-end audio/video, or vintage gear, for example.
Many other businesses are also affected.. HW Sams(?) Photofact and other
publishers, test equipment manufacturers, and other third party suppliers.
I don't mind repairing equipment that's worth repairing, but only for myself
or a few close friends (and not their relatives or neighbors).
They all know better than to suggest me "just looking" at a $9 portable CD
player or $40 VCR.. I just won't.
Have you ever seen one of those posters/signs on a wall, with a big dot and
the message "Hit Head Here"?
You might want to look at repairing consumer goods from a different
perspective.
--
Cheers,
WB
..............
"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:34:59 -0500, "Wild_Bill"
wrote:
Nearly anything man-made can be repaired.
Yes, but it might not be worth fixing, especially if a replacement is
low cost. I constantly run into problems spending inordinate amounts
of time fixing some trivial device. Sure, it can be fixed, but I
can't build a business on such repairs. Expensive and exotic hardware
is about all I can make a profit on. For example, it takes me about 4
billable hours to clean up and upgrade a virus infected computer. At
$75/hr, it's almost more economical to purchase a newer and faster
machine, than to fix the old one. So, in order to keep from losing
the customer, I have to heavily discount my time and do it for less
than posted rate. Otherwise, they run to their favorite discounter
and just start over with a new machine. Same with some low end
entertainment electronics. It's even worse with hardware. I can
easily fix a typical PC power supply for a few dollars in parts and
about 1.2 billable hours. However, who's going to pay me $100 to fix
a $25 power supply?
What's needed is some assistance from the manufacturer. Schematics,
test points, easily available parts, troubeshooting info, easy access,
diagnostics, etc will all reduce the amount of time I burn fixing
something, which translates to a lower cost repair.
--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558