Re: what kills Look cleats?

In article
<s9CDf.48444$PL5.40072@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Mike Jacoubowsky" <mikej1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > Much of Europe seems driven by a different imperative than the US;
> > here, thrift and craftsmanship are denigrated in favor of profit. The
> > fact that a tube is repairable is irrelevant; the shop doesn't do
> > anything that doesn't make money for the owner *today*, and then they
> > wonder why they're all sitting around waiting for work to come in next
> > week. OTOH, in many locales, it's hard to strike a balance between
> > charging enough to keep the doors open but not so much that the
> > customers feel as though their intelligence has been insulted.
>
> That's a generalization that sounds good but is usually not even close to
> the truth. The reason we (and most other shops as well) don't patch tubes is
> because A:) The customer rarely sees the value in it, since the price would
> be so close to a new one, and, more importantly, B:) The shop gets blamed
> when they run over something else, because the customer invariably claims
> that the problem is with the patch job, or that we didn't catch the second
> hole.
>
> I, for one, would much rather repair things than replace them, when
> practical. But it's not always the business owner who determines whether
> something is practical or not; more often, it's the customer. And it's not
> the bike shop where the customer learns that product is disposable... repair
> pricing for just about any consumer electronics item is so high relative to
> the cost of buying a new one that rarely does it make sense to repair. Nor
> is it the bike shop where customers learn that it's OK to toss a CO2
> cartridge by the side of the road after using it.

With regard to consumer electronics, I go to a shop with
an old school artisan.

In the last two years I had three repairs. Repaired a 15
year old television. Power supply, feedback loop, two
components failed; one transistor that reads the power and
modulates the oscillator. The first just went wide open
and fried the second. Artisan tracked down the real
problem. This TV is a beauty.

The owner told me that that manufacturer is not making
televisions anything like as good as mine. That one
customer bought a new television, then two months later
replaced it with the one in the basement it originally
replaced. Same manufacturer as mine. One point he made is
that automatic color control has been sacrificed.

I had repaired twice a fifteen year old VCR that I like.
Once for the tape transport, once for the power supply.

All money well spent.

Shameless plug: Eid's in Berkeley, California.

--
Michael Press
.

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