Add to that there are some low priced stuff that can be profitable with
volume.
If for example a particular brand uses a similar chassis design across lots
of models (Thomson for one), and they sell tons of them on the market,
common failures are bound to show up when they start failing in mass around
3 to 5 years of age. Those are the easy money quick repair jobs that fill
in during the slow times of the big ticket repairs for the smaller shops.

How many shops were able to stay in business from the Thomson TOB ground
issue and still see them come in.
Provided no one has botched up the repair and just the tuner grounds need
reworked and a quick check of the eeprom to verify no corrupted data, easy
pocket change. A long time ago we started flat rate repairing these units
at $65 (pre-approved), minor parts included, with a $25 deposit left at time
of drop off. If the person was not serious about having it fixed, no
problem, they took the tv home. Major repairs or repairs that did not fall
into the known fix or 5 minute troubleshooting time, got a high ball flat
estimate (with the crt and flyback already ruled out) of $100 to cover the
expected 1 hour total troubleshooting and repair time. It is no longer
profitable to do any estimates before work repairs due to the extra time
required to try and try to get a hold of people, on low cost items.

With lots of experienced, a good technician can in a few minutes know if the
repair is going to be a straight forward repair or a time consuming one in
probably 95% of the repair cases.

David

Bill Jr wrote in message
om...
It's all a matter of supply and demand.
If the demand is for the cheap product then the supply will follow suit.

It works the same way in the repair business.
If there is no demand to have the cheap stuff fixed, then don't follow it.
Migrate to repairing the more costly equipment and leave the rest for the
returns department at Wal-Mart.

Just a thought,
Bill Jr





"Shawn Lin" wrote in message
om...
"Ray L. Volts" wrote in message
news:beu4r9
Yep, the "toss it" mentality prevails today, and I suspect that will
continue to be the case, probably becoming an even more widespread
mindset.
Oh, there will be that small percentage who will keep their old sets
going,
but only if the repair cost is less than 60% of the cost of a brand
new
gizmo with all the latest features. And even then, they're only
likely
to
have it serviced once during its useful lifetime.
Factor into the equation the enhanced reliability of the next
generation
technologies and it doesn't seem to bode well for the repair biz in
general.

Not to mention that as the technology matures, many companies based in
China will crank out ridiculously cheap, disposable TV's by the
thousands. Those sets will be cheap enough that if they die in 3-5
years, they will get replaced instead of repaired.

I just recently picked up a Tevion 27" pure flat tube TV for $199 at
Aldi's.
I can't imagine someone with a similar TV really wanting to pay to get
it repaired in 5-years.

Look at DVD players. Will anyone really pay to get a $39.99 Apex DVD
player repaired? I highly doubt it.

I would imagine factory authorized service centers will still have
lots of business though, as they are who people call when electronics
needs servicing under warranty. Even though the technology is more
reliable, there are still plenty of brand new TV's needing warranty
service. Even newer technologies like LCD will still need lots of
service as some people may return theirs for dead pixels and such.
I've bought 2 19" LCD flat panel monitors, and I had to return them 3
times to get ones without dead pixels.

Shawn