Prices for a 33V 1A psu as used by stairlifts to charge the battery.

Typical Amazon price: £18
Farnell: £26
Medical grade item: £76
Quoted by a stairlift supplier when a replacement was needed: £181. Item
is tiny and in a plastic case, and appears to be poor quality.

Price for a carbon brush, ditto: £25.

Bill

I agree completely. For larger equipment of a specialist nature one can
understand the economics of the cost of manufacture being higher, but when
it comes to off the shelf items it does seem a bit like they are just making
money at the expense of disabled people.
For example, when I could still see enough to use a CCTV for reading, the
unit, a black and white rostrum camera looking at a mirror with an x/y table
and a 21 inch monitor cost over 1000 quid, but since access to work paid for
it, then the government footed the bill.
When the two fluorescent lights failed, an engineer looked inside and found
the electronic ballast which drove them had died. It was a normal item,
branded at the time Philips. Asking Tiemen, who made the unit for a
replacement was according to them going to cost 120 quid. Go down to the
local electrical wholesalers, and the exact same item costs 14 quid. Now its
not going to cost all that extra to get it from the Netherlands to here,
which is where Tiemen were located is it?

This sort of thing happens an awful lot.. Indeed inside that unit in order
to stop people just buying the rostrum camera unit they had not reversed the
line scan on the camera electronics, instead had reversed the connections to
the scan coils on the monitor, meaning that the monitor could not be used as
a monitor elsewhere and the camera unit would not work with a tv's video
input, as either would result in mirror image pictures.
Brian

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"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...
Prices for a 33V 1A psu as used by stairlifts to charge the battery.

Typical Amazon price: £18
Farnell: £26
Medical grade item: £76
Quoted by a stairlift supplier when a replacement was needed: £181. Item
is tiny and in a plastic case, and appears to be poor quality.

Price for a carbon brush, ditto: £25.

Bill

On 25/11/2019 03:37, Bill Wright wrote:
Prices for a 33V 1A psu as used by stairlifts to charge the battery.

Typical Amazon price: £18
Farnell: £26
Medical grade item: £76
Quoted by a stairlift supplier when a replacement was needed: £181. Item
is tiny and in a plastic case, and appears to be poor quality.

Price for a carbon brush, ditto: £25.

Bill

You have to count your fingers before and after every encounter with
disability equipment suppliers. They sell some useful stuff not
available anywhere else and a lot of overpriced tat to the unwary who
don't know where else to buy it. Replacement wheelchair/stairlift
batteries and chargers being some of the most spectacular ripoffs.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 25/11/2019 03:37, Bill Wright wrote:
Prices for a 33V 1A psu as used by stairlifts to charge the battery.

Typical Amazon price: £18
Farnell: £26
Medical grade item: £76
Quoted by a stairlift supplier when a replacement was needed: £181. Item
is tiny and in a plastic case, and appears to be poor quality.

Price for a carbon brush, ditto: £25.

Bill

The same happens with batteries for burglar alarms. Mine needs
"replacing" periodically. At service, they offer one for £x. Looking
online, I find an identical one for £y. Guess the differential and in
whose favour :-)

On Mon, 25 Nov 2019 03:37:03 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:

Prices for a 33V 1A psu as used by stairlifts to charge the battery.

Typical Amazon price: £18
Farnell: £26
Medical grade item: £76
Quoted by a stairlift supplier when a replacement was needed: £181. Item
is tiny and in a plastic case, and appears to be poor quality.


Between £2-£3 on Ali-Baba, minimum order 1pc, computer mains plug type
input, co-ax plug output.

https://www.alibaba.com/product-deta...fb6b2a1c9YPc6X

Mind you, it could burn your house down as soon as you switch it on.
But then again, it might not.

Nick

I do not think the over pricing of spare parts is exclusive most cars and domestic appliances come immediately to mind but I agree the more niche an industry is the greater the rip off.

We like Bosch products generally as a brand, one reason being their website shows exploded views of their appliances and lists all the parts and part numbers down to individual screws. I once did in a moment of boredom an exercise to see how much it would cost to build a washing machine by buying all the parts and assembling it yourself and did not even get part way through it before it was already costing 5 times what we paid never mind the cost of manufacture. I really would like to know from someone in the spares supply industry how some of these prices are justified because at the moment it seem a case of think of a number and triple it!

Richard

On Monday, 25 November 2019 14:18:24 UTC, Tricky Dicky wrote:
I do not think the over pricing of spare parts is exclusive
most cars and domestic appliances come immediately to mind
but I agree the more niche an industry is the greater the rip off.

Most spare parts are low-volume because most things don't get repaired - although this obviously doesn't apply to stairlift and alarm batteries.

"The disabled" and "the elderly" are usually regarded as being clueless and will spend money on anything advertised by a nice man wearing a cardigan [1], and anything non-core-activity that's bought by companies is fair game. Manufacturers who calculate the cost of a product down to 0.001 penny will pay for lightbulbs at £30 a pop to "facilities management".

"Blue roll" is £7 from cleaning supplies companies. It's £2 in the local tat-for-christmas pop-up shop.

Owain

[1] Obviously this does not apply to a satellite dish featured on the front cover of "Television"

In article ,
Jethro_uk wrote:
There's also the fact that a lot of provisioning authorities seem quite
happy to pay whatever is asked.

And I'd suspect there are kickbacks involved.

--
*Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 25/11/2019 15:17, Jethro_uk wrote:
On Mon, 25 Nov 2019 06:58:42 -0800, spuorgelgoog wrote:

"The disabled" and "the elderly" are usually regarded as being clueless
and will spend money on anything advertised by a nice man wearing a
cardigan [1], and anything non-core-activity that's bought by companies
is fair game. Manufacturers who calculate the cost of a product down to
0.001 penny will pay for lightbulbs at £30 a pop to "facilities
management".

There's also the fact that a lot of provisioning authorities seem quite
happy to pay whatever is asked.

When you say "provisioning authorities" presumably you are thinking
about Local Authorities and the NHS? I'd like to think that the NHS are
a bit more on the ball at the sharper end of the business but I suspect
there is sometimes a lack of commercial awareness. One thing that
privatisation achieved in the electricity supply industry is that staff
all the way down to the shop floor did start to be shown the financial
realities.

On 25/11/2019 14:58, wrote:
On Monday, 25 November 2019 14:18:24 UTC, Tricky Dicky wrote:
I do not think the over pricing of spare parts is exclusive
most cars and domestic appliances come immediately to mind
but I agree the more niche an industry is the greater the rip off.

Most spare parts are low-volume because most things don't get repaired - although this obviously doesn't apply to stairlift and alarm batteries.

"The disabled" and "the elderly" are usually regarded as being clueless and will spend money on anything advertised by a nice man wearing a cardigan [1], and anything non-core-activity that's bought by companies is fair game. Manufacturers who calculate the cost of a product down to 0.001 penny will pay for lightbulbs at £30 a pop to "facilities management".

"Blue roll" is £7 from cleaning supplies companies. It's £2 in the local tat-for-christmas pop-up shop.

Owain

[1] Obviously this does not apply to a satellite dish featured on the front cover of "Television"

Oi!

Bill

On Monday, 25 November 2019 18:56:47 UTC, Bill Wright wrote:
"The disabled" and "the elderly" are usually regarded as being clueless
and will spend money on anything advertised by a nice man wearing a
cardigan [1],
[1] Obviously this does not apply to a satellite dish featured on
the front cover of "Television"
Oi!

Rupert Murdoch never wore a cardigan and he sold more satellite dishes than you did :-)

The world could have been very different ... Wright Sports Chicken-racing Championships from the Plough Inn Function Room International Arena.

Owain

Yes I have a few apps for my Iphone. Voice Dream Scanner just six quid, is
an amazing OCR device that converts any printed document to text almost
immediately and does this on the phone without needing to send personal data
to a server somewhere.
Previous to this there was a free one not as good, called Seeing AI from
Microsoft, but it was in fact sending your documents to Microsoft for
processing. This has security implications as well as a delay, and frankly
its nowhere near as accurate, but then if something is free you get what you
pay for.

Brian

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"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...
We attended a "Vision fair" a few years ago. Most stalls were trying to
flog stripped down android handsets with a stand as "readers" for £300-
£400.

Wasn't there a company a while back that was flogging some device to help
communication which was effectively a single purpose iPad for $4,000. I
only know when they sued (or tried to, I think Apple stepped in) a gut
who wrote an app for an iPad (for his kid) that did the same thing for
free ?

However that sort of thing is not just on disability items, is it? Look at
spare parts for cars from the manufacturer, indeed most things tend to have
a huge mark up. Somebody commented that if you had to build a car from the
bits it would cost quarter of a million quid.
Brian

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"Allan" wrote in message
...
On 25/11/2019 03:37, Bill Wright wrote:
Prices for a 33V 1A psu as used by stairlifts to charge the battery.

Typical Amazon price: £18
Farnell: £26
Medical grade item: £76
Quoted by a stairlift supplier when a replacement was needed: £181. Item
is tiny and in a plastic case, and appears to be poor quality.

Price for a carbon brush, ditto: £25.

Bill

The same happens with batteries for burglar alarms. Mine needs
"replacing" periodically. At service, they offer one for £x. Looking
online, I find an identical one for £y. Guess the differential and in
whose favour :-)

One of the big issues I have with very cheap power supplies are that they
leave vital parts out of them to stop radio interference and to protect
things if the device malfunctions.
Several people I know bought a 5v usb psu from a now defunct supplier,
which had all the right markings but the top cover was held on by screws
that were about as good as those in a cassette housing, just two of them.
Some simple cam apart exposing live connections while others due to the poor
internal protection melted in use as there was nothing to stop it if a
component failed. Even worse during such a fault it could trash an expensive
phone in the process.
This is one reason why I'm extremely reluctant to fit mains sockets with
usb chargers in them, who knows what the quality of the modules inside is?
Brian

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"Nick Odell" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 25 Nov 2019 03:37:03 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:

Prices for a 33V 1A psu as used by stairlifts to charge the battery.

Typical Amazon price: £18
Farnell: £26
Medical grade item: £76
Quoted by a stairlift supplier when a replacement was needed: £181. Item
is tiny and in a plastic case, and appears to be poor quality.


Between £2-£3 on Ali-Baba, minimum order 1pc, computer mains plug type
input, co-ax plug output.

https://www.alibaba.com/product-deta...fb6b2a1c9YPc6X

Mind you, it could burn your house down as soon as you switch it on.
But then again, it might not.

Nick

Yes back in the days of the first video machines, the pressure roller cost
over 12 quid, but one could actually use a bit of ingenuity to skim off the
ragged parts outside the tape path which caused the issue and use it for
another year. All it was really was a metal hub and a rubber outer in a kind
of barrel profile. They had to be churned out like sausages!

Then there was the Sony Betamax vcr loading mechanism which always lost a
tooth in a nylon gear, this could be changed by removing one circlip, but
no, you could not buy the gear for a few pence, you had to buy the loading
mechanism for over 5-0 quid and them pay labour to get somebody to fit it.
Bah humbug.
Brian

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"Tricky Dicky" wrote in message
...
I do not think the over pricing of spare parts is exclusive most cars and
domestic appliances come immediately to mind but I agree the more niche an
industry is the greater the rip off.

We like Bosch products generally as a brand, one reason being their website
shows exploded views of their appliances and lists all the parts and part
numbers down to individual screws. I once did in a moment of boredom an
exercise to see how much it would cost to build a washing machine by buying
all the parts and assembling it yourself and did not even get part way
through it before it was already costing 5 times what we paid never mind the
cost of manufacture. I really would like to know from someone in the spares
supply industry how some of these prices are justified because at the moment
it seem a case of think of a number and triple it!

Richard

In article ,
Brian Gaff \(Sofa\) wrote:
However that sort of thing is not just on disability items, is it? Look
at spare parts for cars from the manufacturer, indeed most things tend
to have a huge mark up. Somebody commented that if you had to build a
car from the bits it would cost quarter of a million quid.
Brian

one of the problems with spares is they need to be stored,. Storage costs
money and tehre is an investment involved, too. Dennis, the fire engine
people, went bust because of the money they had tied up in spares.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

Some years ago though, there were some dishes which were apparently warping
in use. I don't recall the make, but it does make you wonder about quality
control even back then.
Brian

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wrote in message
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On Monday, 25 November 2019 14:18:24 UTC, Tricky Dicky wrote:
I do not think the over pricing of spare parts is exclusive
most cars and domestic appliances come immediately to mind
but I agree the more niche an industry is the greater the rip off.

Most spare parts are low-volume because most things don't get repaired -
although this obviously doesn't apply to stairlift and alarm batteries.

"The disabled" and "the elderly" are usually regarded as being clueless and
will spend money on anything advertised by a nice man wearing a cardigan
[1], and anything non-core-activity that's bought by companies is fair game.
Manufacturers who calculate the cost of a product down to 0.001 penny will
pay for lightbulbs at £30 a pop to "facilities management".

"Blue roll" is £7 from cleaning supplies companies. It's £2 in the local
tat-for-christmas pop-up shop.

Owain

[1] Obviously this does not apply to a satellite dish featured on the front
cover of "Television"

Yes an ultrasound device used by one of our local clinics, is very good
according to those who should know, but every one I've seen is plugged into
a windows xp machine. I became curious and was told that the makers would
not support the product any more with drivers for newer versions of windows,
instead wanting the health industry to purchase completely new kit. It
appears, and I only have the folks word for this, that the new kit does no
more than the old one, so why should they have to buy it again?
New lamps for old anyone?
No I cannot recall the name of the product at this time.
Brian

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"Jethro_uk" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 25 Nov 2019 06:58:42 -0800, spuorgelgoog wrote:

"The disabled" and "the elderly" are usually regarded as being clueless
and will spend money on anything advertised by a nice man wearing a
cardigan [1], and anything non-core-activity that's bought by companies
is fair game. Manufacturers who calculate the cost of a product down to
0.001 penny will pay for lightbulbs at £30 a pop to "facilities
management".

There's also the fact that a lot of provisioning authorities seem quite
happy to pay whatever is asked.

Yes, New Peugeot ambulances were bought for patient transport, some months
later several managers were sporting new Peugeot cars.

Nothing wrong with the vehicles of course, but it does make one wonder.
Brian

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"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Jethro_uk wrote:
There's also the fact that a lot of provisioning authorities seem quite
happy to pay whatever is asked.

And I'd suspect there are kickbacks involved.

--
*Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

They are probably all gone.
Brian

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wrote in message
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On Monday, 25 November 2019 20:21:56 UTC, Bob Eager wrote:
"Blue roll" is £7 from cleaning supplies companies. It's £2 in the local
tat-for-christmas pop-up shop.
That much? I pay £5.99 (plus VAT) for a pack of 6, from Nisbets.

My error. I didn't see the "pack of 6" on my comparison pricing search on
Google Ads (which included Nisbets!)

Owain

On Tue, 26 Nov 2019 08:49:43 -0000, Brian Gaff \(Sofa\) wrote:

Yes, New Peugeot ambulances were bought for patient transport, some
months later several managers were sporting new Peugeot cars.

Fishy but could be innocent. Did said managers previously get a car
provided by their employer as part of their renumeration package.
With these new managers Peugeots just being the routine lease
replacement from the current fleet contract holder?

--
Cheers
Dave.

On 26/11/2019 08:43, charles wrote:
In article ,
Brian Gaff \(Sofa\) wrote:
However that sort of thing is not just on disability items, is it? Look
at spare parts for cars from the manufacturer, indeed most things tend
to have a huge mark up. Somebody commented that if you had to build a
car from the bits it would cost quarter of a million quid.
Brian

one of the problems with spares is they need to be stored,. Storage costs
money and tehre is an investment involved, too. Dennis, the fire engine
people, went bust because of the money they had tied up in spares.

But why is a Ford alternator three times the price of one exactly the
same (except for the Ford badge) made by the same manufacturer, on the
same production line?

Why does a simple rubber elbow (intercooler to intake manifold) come
attached (just by a Jubilee clip) to a complex metal pipe, with various
bends, a bracket and a mounting for a temperature sensor?

The worst - why does a position sensing potentiometer for an EGR valve
only come attached (by 3 screws) to the gearbox, motor, valve and entire
intake manifold, at a cost of around £900 ?

SteveW

On Monday, 25 November 2019 14:18:24 UTC, Tricky Dicky wrote:
I do not think the over pricing of spare parts is exclusive most cars and domestic appliances come immediately to mind but I agree the more niche an industry is the greater the rip off.

We like Bosch products generally as a brand, one reason being their website shows exploded views of their appliances and lists all the parts and part numbers down to individual screws. I once did in a moment of boredom an exercise to see how much it would cost to build a washing machine by buying all the parts and assembling it yourself and did not even get part way through it before it was already costing 5 times what we paid never mind the cost of manufacture. I really would like to know from someone in the spares supply industry how some of these prices are justified because at the moment it seem a case of think of a number and triple it!

Richard

£5 per small screw is common enough


NT

On Wednesday, 27 November 2019 00:40:01 UTC, wrote:
£5 per small screw is common enough

Don't even get a smile and a promise for £5 these days ;-)

Owain

In article , Steve Walker
wrote:
On 26/11/2019 08:43, charles wrote:
In article , Brian Gaff \(Sofa\)
wrote:
However that sort of thing is not just on disability items, is it?
Look at spare parts for cars from the manufacturer, indeed most things
tend to have a huge mark up. Somebody commented that if you had to
build a car from the bits it would cost quarter of a million quid.
Brian

one of the problems with spares is they need to be stored,. Storage
costs money and tehre is an investment involved, too. Dennis, the fire
engine people, went bust because of the money they had tied up in
spares.

But why is a Ford alternator three times the price of one exactly the
same (except for the Ford badge) made by the same manufacturer, on the
same production line?

Probaby for the same reason that the starter for the Ford Anglia was
significantly cheaper than the starter for the Mini - they had the same
Lucas part number.



--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

In article ,
charles wrote:
Probaby for the same reason that the starter for the Ford Anglia was
significantly cheaper than the starter for the Mini - they had the same
Lucas part number.

In those days, you could buy direct from a Lucas agent. Did the same apply
there?

--
*Venison for dinner again? Oh deer!*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Tricky Dicky" wrote in message
...
I do not think the over pricing of spare parts is exclusive most cars and
domestic appliances come immediately to mind but I agree the more niche an
industry is the greater the rip off.

We like Bosch products generally as a brand, one reason being their
website shows exploded views of their appliances and lists all the parts
and part numbers down to individual screws. I once did in a moment of
boredom an exercise to see how much it would cost to build a washing
machine by buying all the parts and assembling it yourself and did not
even get part way through it before it was already costing 5 times what we
paid never mind the cost of manufacture. I really would like to know from
someone in the spares supply industry how some of these prices are
justified because at the moment it seem a case of think of a number and
triple it!

it ought to be clear that it's "the costs of running a spares dept"

or would you rather that cost was averaged into the cost of buying the car
in the first place?

tim