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Is it just me or has there been a raft of lazy and idiotic questions being posed recently?
I’ve been angered the past couple of days with people that bill themselves as being engineers calling or emailing with issues that are, in all likelihood, non-problems other than use. One today went as far as to be wanting a motor, control PCB and a heater for an ISE 10, a £400+ repair and yet, when he tested and actually meggered the machine it was fine! I mean, WTF is that all about I wondered…
The attending engineer says, don’t know much about them and the customer insists there’s a problem so I just thought I’d change all the major stuff!!!
Now he wants a drain pump!!!!!
I mean FFS.
To be fair, that’s the worst one so far this week but sh1t like this is really starting to grate on my nerves. The main reason for it being, I shouldn’t be having to spend my time (or waste it) explaining to supposed professional people how they do their job to the Nth degree.
Jut look in the trade tech, which I do try to avoid a lot of the time or I’d just lose the plot or, the will to live, reading some of the crap they come up with. Which often seems to end in randomly swapping parts until they luck on the correct answer.
The laugh is, the sole traders are actually, in general, better at actually diagnosing the problems as they’ll spend the time figuring it out. Employed engineers, not a hope in hell.
So, never mind a revised fault code guide, the first order of business should be a “How To Diagnose Appliance Faults” for the muppets that are out there. At least if they actually applied some common sense to fault tracing they might actually save themselves a lot of time, heartache and looking like a fool as well as their customers a sh1tload of cash.
Rant over. For now.
K.
Re: Teaching Grandma
I know what you mean, there are a few individuals whose posts I don’t answer anymore.
One particular instance last week,
‘ Its tripping the rcd, could it be the heater, what do you thing chaps’ without any mention of doing any electrical tests, as you rightly say, FFS. 😈
PS. I promise that I will make certain that the ISE5-2 console PCB I have ordered is required, if I go back next week and she says it has been fine since my last visit then I will retain the PCB for a couple of weeks before returning it. 8)Re: Teaching Grandma
I’m not particularly on about that Jim. There’s often reason to suspect some electronic gremlins but, IME, they are so rare as to be almost beyond possibility.
We flew man to the moon on less computing power than you find in a calculator. We have more computational power in a washer these days that you’d find in an old Sinclair ZX81, perhaps even a Spectrum or Amiga… is it not possible that it’s not the machines that are a problem?
My experience is that it’s often customer bull followed by engineer waffle followed by sheer guesswork.
The biggest problem is that the first couple generations of electronics in this industry were a bit ropey and that has been embedded into repairer’s heads and they just refuse to let it go.
If it does something odd or that they can’t figure out, well, it has to be the electronics… doesn’t it?
K.
Re: Teaching Grandma
I do wonder about our fellow repairers. It is actually easier advising the public sometimes. They start with minimal knowledge, but have open minds and will absorb what they are told.
Chris.
Exactly!
I guess much of my point, beyond the sheer stupidity and laziness which is obviously inexcusable, is that many of them seem not to have moved on from the 1980’s, at best, with product knowledge.
They don’t know WTF they are looking at, WTF it does or HTF it does it. Often they don’t even know WTF it’s actually supposed to produce as a result in the most basic of terms.
How on Earth do you repair a product you don’t have a clue about?
I know the answer to that, you chuck parts at it until you get a result and, if that doesn’t work you ask that it be exchanged!
I’m sorry, but a lot of them need to up their game if they want to survive.
K.
Re: Teaching Grandma
There was a time when you could look at an electronic machine and say to yourself “What doesn’t it do?”. Full of water? Maybe it’s blocked. Washed for a long time and then faulted? Heater?
Those days are partly gone with the machines faulting on start up with the diagnostic routines. I suspect that this is what scares people. The same principles apply, however. You can still physically check the function of almost all components, eliminating them all one by one until the only one left is the pcb. I still, even with the Book, tend to work that way.
It seems that others don’t. NTCs are a case in point. I have fitted three in 17 years – they do seem to be totally reliable, but people are obsessed with the d@mned things – adv’s current WD12 threads are a case in point. I suspect that he simply doesn’t understand its function.
Chris.
I do likewise, work through the problem systematically and logically. It is the only way IMO but, in order to do that you have to understand what you’re looking at which is where a fair few seem to fall down massively.
K.
Re: Teaching Grandma
kwatt wrote: There’s often reason to suspect some electronic gremlins but, IME, they are so rare as to be almost beyond possibility.
That is of course if you exclude Indesit electronics. :rolls:
Cheap though, Servis are the same as well as a couple of others all making to a price. The REMCO modules for instance are hand soldered together by Italian housewives, what chance have you got?
The problem is that what happens is that they apply that assumption to every machine they encounter and don’t consider that they may perhaps be missing much more basic and fundamental issues.
Our job is to diagnose the problem, not just blindly take stabs at what might be wrong.
K.
Re: Teaching Grandma
Ah, but Indesit modules are not that cheap when you factor in the cost of a smart card at £12 and £95 for a card reader.
Truth be told, most other manfacturers PCB’s are grossly overpriced. 😥
Jim.
Re: Teaching Grandma
Whilst I agree with most that is spoken above you also have to factor in the fact that in many cases the manufacturers complain constantly about the amount of spares used per job. However, they do not go anywhere near far enough to ensure that those working on their appliances have trained on the product. Whilst at this time Samsung with their problems in build quality are probably not at good example, they quite clearly state that if you have not attended their training you dont get to work on the appliance. The current young engineer is being blinded by what the laptop tells them not what us oldies were taught years ago. The driving force these days seems to be knocking on the customers door within yea number of hours rather than fixing the appliance on a first visit.
Re: Teaching Grandma
I think I get you Ian but….
As ISE we provide slews of info and yet engineers consistently do not read the information that they are sent or take the time to watch training videos. So, even if you do it you still get the Muppet Show a fair bit.
K.
Re: Teaching Grandma
Agree with that but as you will concede most of us dont have the time to go through the vast amount of technical info thrown at us. However, with the ISE machine at least you have someone on the end of the phone to call and ask about a problem. Not many manufacturers in my experience have a technical guy available on the end of the line that is anywhere near competent and up to date.
Oh totally Ian but then you would think that they’d at least look at the spares blowout. Even if I never had time to read in depth the service info I’d look at that to see what I was going to or, look up some parts on it to see who made it as you can then suss the format all too often.
For example, had one guy today on the phone asking how to get the kickplate off an AW23!
Had one a few weeks ago asking if he could get to the water valve with the lid off.
It doesn’t inspire confidence…
K.
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