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Right to Repair - UK and EU making changes to facilitate repairs :)

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Fraser:
It is interesting to watch Alex from NorthridgeFIX on YouTube. He has a very rigid view in the repairs he takes in. He charges an inspection fee, ‘no-fix’ fee or repair fee and is not scared to declare a ‘no-fix’ when an item will take too long to repair or a rabbit hole presents itself. He explains that he has masses of items awaiting repair and he just cannot run a repair business where repairs take longer than around 20 to 30 minutes. Alex will take on the repair of almost anything electronic but he understands the balance needed between how long a repair will take and how much he can reasonably charge fir such a repair. There is no shortage of demand fir his repair services and many are relatively simple socket replacements, PCB damage or relatively simple faults to track down. These are his bread and butter jobs and he has no need to dive down rabbit holes that will return the same fee as a simpler repair of which he can complete several in the same required time frame. At first this approach seems harsh to those, like me, who will happily spend hours reverse engineering PCB’s, testing voltages, displaying signals etc, but Alex is in business whereas I do such jobs as a hobby. I have. Had some absolute bargain ‘spares or repair’ buys but they were beyond economic repair in the business world. I repaired those items without the pressure of returning a profit on my time. I think to be an electronics repair centre these days you need to be a very shrewd businessman if you are to make acceptable profit to live on. The margins when overheads are considered can be slim. Sadly running such a repair operation can be one somewhat boring to the tech as we tend to like deep diving into a problem now and again and that is just not an economic proposition on anything but specialist or expensive equipment repairs where a decent fee may be charged. The FLIR One G2/G3 thermal camera dongles are an example in my World. They are just not worth the time and effort to repair if hoping to turn a profit by buying faulty and selling repaired.

NorthridgeFIX:

https://youtube.com/c/NorthridgeFix

A recent ‘no-fix’ due to a prior poor repair attempt :

https://youtu.be/ugmIzmvQSPo

Another recent ‘no-fix’ after some repair effort by Alex. As he admits, it can likely be repaired by further, deeper, investigation but he cannot go down that rabbit hole. For me personally, I hate to admit defeat and would find it hard to walk away from such a challenge. That is why I am not in the repair business though  ;D

https://youtu.be/XBAn2Ck8GeE


Fraser

jmelson:

--- Quote from: Syntax Error on April 13, 2021, 02:09:58 pm --- Thus, my neighbour spent £150 having his lawn mower serviced. A new one is £190. But they did polish the roller.

--- End quote ---
I recently went out to visit my son.  I thought he had learned something from me, but I guess not.  He was getting ready to dump his lawn mower and get a new one.  I took a look at it, the air filter had NEVER EVER been changed, and he was at least the 2nd owner.  It was packed with grass dust until it filled the plastic cover over the filter.  A good half inch of dust over the top of the filter!  Seems to work fine, now.

Jon

SilverSolder:

--- Quote from: jmelson on April 14, 2021, 01:56:48 am ---
--- Quote from: Syntax Error on April 13, 2021, 02:09:58 pm --- Thus, my neighbour spent £150 having his lawn mower serviced. A new one is £190. But they did polish the roller.

--- End quote ---
I recently went out to visit my son.  I thought he had learned something from me, but I guess not.  He was getting ready to dump his lawn mower and get a new one.  I took a look at it, the air filter had NEVER EVER been changed, and he was at least the 2nd owner.  It was packed with grass dust until it filled the plastic cover over the filter.  A good half inch of dust over the top of the filter!  Seems to work fine, now.

Jon

--- End quote ---

Not everyone has mechanical aptitude...  they get to pay for that, so hopefully they make up for it in other areas!  :D

Zero999:

--- Quote from: Syntax Error on April 13, 2021, 02:09:58 pm --- Thus, my neighbour spent £150 having his lawn mower serviced. A new one is £190. But they did polish the roller.

--- End quote ---
He's still saving £40, so it's not a waste of money. Especially, if it's an old, very reliable model, with widely available spare. he might be better off keeping it and having it serviced every year, rather than buying a new one, which might not even last a year.

Alti:

--- Quote from: jmelson on April 14, 2021, 01:56:48 am ---He was getting ready to dump his lawn mower
--- End quote ---
This shows the "new is better" attitude. At least part of the problem. Why to design and sell a servicable appliance when statistically insignificant goup of users considers servicability useful? A typical user earns more than the value of the extended life of a serviced appliance. Servicing appliance or investing more in servicable appliance, or even putting effort into analysis of which appliance is cheaper in long term serviced run, is a wasteful decision then. That is a function of the value of ones time. There are those that won't bother servicing their Bentley and those who service their comb.

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