"James Sweet" wrote in message
news:6nSXc.139$Cj5.118@trnddc04...

The bottom line is if it works for a few days after it was repaired, then
it
will probably keep working until something else fails that would have
failed
regardless of the drop.

If there is a hairline crack in the board that was not visible at
the time the damaged camcorder was repaired, the camera
could work satisfactorily for a lot longer than just a few days
before the crack grows bigger and then leads to other faults
occurring as a result of the crack. I have been advised that
such a crack might start to cause problems several months
later, not just a few days later. If you spend a lot of money
to repair a camcorder, and the repair fails, then this is money
wasted that would have been better put towards a new
camcorder in the first place. I guess that it would sometimes
be difficult to tell whether failures after a damaged camcorder
has been repaired are due to the shock of being dropped or
would have happened regardless of the drop. But much
depends on how much it costs to repair the damaged camera
in relation to the cost of a new replacement camera. If the
repair costs are a very small proportion of the cost of a
similar new replacement camcorder, then it might then make
sense to give the repair option a try. But if the repair costs
are as high as say 60% of the cost of a new camcorder, then
it wouldn't make economic sense to go ahead with the repairs,
in my humble opinion!