PaPaPeng wrote in
:

On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 19:43:49 +0000 (UTC), bz
wrote:

I had a consumer electronics shop in the early 1970's and ran into the
same kinds of problem back then. I finally decided that I couldn't make
a decent living at it honestly and was unwilling to do it any other way
and closed the shop.


"Honestly" is the operative word.

Most of the other shop owners I got to know in the three years I had my
shop were honest and hard working people.

I went to work managing a shop and didn't realize that I was getting a long
sales talk. Never buy a shop for 20k that has 3k in assets, 3k in debt and
17k in 'good-will'.

It took a couple of years to learn about fixed costs and variable costs and
realize that the fixed costs didn't tell the whole story. Just because
'break even is $100/day, doesn't mean that $120 per day gives $20 profit.
It might only give $1.

The VCR problem I had was quite
simply to replace the rubber drive rings and then align the timing.
At $75 an hour the job could have been done in less time but $75 was
acceptable. I didn't care to save the $75 as I didn't want to spend
the time and effort to look up the fixes on this VCR. To the labor
charge the shop tagged on another $50 for cleaning and shop supplies
(standard charge item he said), something I had already done and with
far more care than anyone else. I understand the shop's desperation
to pad charges to make up for dwindling servicing business.

An honest shop will give you an estimate [they may charge for the estimate]
and will not stick on extra charges without first notifying you.

We almost always had to FIX the set in order to be able to estimate what it
would cost. In these days of 'replace the module', estimates should be
easier.

But it
leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I certainly will never go to a shop
to get anything fixed again. If I can't fix it its tossed. The $100
or so bucks saved on not using the shop is a sizeable chunk of money
towards a new appliance.

The 'rule of thumb' that I learned the hard way was:

If repair costs over 1/3 the price of a new unit, the customer will buy a
new unit rather than repairing the old one.

From the number of good electronic items I find sitting by the trash cans,
it looks like an upgrade of the equipment means the old stuff gets thrown
out even if it is working.




--
bz

please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an
infinite set.

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