The recent trend among consumer electronics manufacturers to not supply
parts and service support for even large expensive products is of great
concern to me. As a servicer, it makes it very difficult to provide
service. As a consumer, it angers me that manufacturers will not support
products beyond the warranty period. As a conservationist, the tendency to
dispose of products rather than repair them seems foolish and shortsighted.
From an economic perspective, it makes no sense to allow an entire service
industry to dissapear. My comments are with respect to my experience in the
USA, but I am sure are applicable in other markets.

I will begin collecting information regarding service support policies from
various manufacturers and vendors in the USA. I will post here and in other
forums so that servicers and consumers can become more aware of the
policies.

Vendors should either have local service available through authorized
service centers or be willing to provide service literature and parts to
individuals or at least to qualified servicers. It is reasonable to expect
service literature and training materials to be available for a fee, but the
fee should be affordable and should not make repairs prohibitive.

Parts should be available to anyone who wants to buy them through a
reasonable life expectancy for the product. Components should be available
for circuit boards that are reasonable to field repair.

Manufacturers who provide good support should be acknowledged and supported.
The best CE company in this regard is, IMO, Hitachi. Their support and
documentation is free to any service shop that signs up with them. They
sell parts through manyu distributors and parts are reasonable and readily
available in most cases.

Organizations such as NESDA should be lobbying on behalf of te service
industry to change policies that are damaging to servicers and consumers.
We all need to be very vocal and get the press involved. A few national
news stories can go a long way to pressuring some vendors. Legislation is a
last resort, but perhaps the threat of such will cause the industry to move
in the right direction.

Some examples of companies that I have querried about service policies are
below. I will add more as I accumulate them. I others would do the same we
could get a good picture of what various companies are doing.


NEC - queried by email regarding service available for a new large PDP. The
response was that there are no service centers in our area and that NEC will
only sell parts and manuals to authorized service centers.

JVC - querried by phone for support on a television. No tech support is
available at all for non-authorized service centers even though the nearest
ASC is 90 miles away. Parts and manuals are available through distributors
at mostly reasonable prices.

Sceptre - querried by email regarding support for a 42" monitor. No service
support is available other than to send the unit to them. No parts nor
service literature is availble at all.

BenQ - querried by phone and email for tech support on a 40" PDP. No parts
nor service literature is available. No service available other than to
send the unit to them.



Leonard