Pamela wrote:
Some repair work is much less skilled than it used to be. The cost of labour
compared to the cost of components has seen to that.

Back in the old days, a man would repair your telly or washing machine by
laboriously tracking down the fault and replacing the exact component which
failed.

Nowadays, repairmen (if they take on the job at all) replace whole chunks
without the same level of understanding into what's gone wrong within the
unit they replace.

That's true, although sometimes it can still be worth it. For instance if
you spill coffee on your Macbook it'll often be quoted by Apple as many
hundreds of pounds to replace the motherboard - and no different for a
third-party authorised repairer. However someone who knows what to do can
spot it's often a power or control chip that's affected and they can be
replaced for a fiver plus an hour's labour.

That's entirely because there's no economic source of replacement parts - if
the motherboard was $50 it wouldn't be worthwhile doing a component
level fix.

Theo