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Re: humbled ?
I was in Enfield one morning, parked up near a busy T junction and saw an old lady looking akward trying to cross the road.
I got out the van and asked if I could help her, she let me take her arm and I saw her across the road.
When she got to the other side of the road she said I have a little trouble seeing clearly at my age, nice of you to help me, young man.
I laughed when she said young man and said it was a long time since I was called young man. She said I bet your less than half my age, I said I’m 50 years old, she said as I though less than half my age I’m 103. I thought she was joking she was still getting about and had just been for her morning walk. I saw her face in the local paper a few days weeks later talking about being 104 and still active.
Amazing.Re: Three reasons not to go!!!!
The second they tell me their husband has taken the back off I say I’m not here to help diy failures, I’m here to earn a living and hang up.
I refuse point blank if they mess about with any appliance before they call me.Diy nuts are a pain, I never go out to have a go heros.
Re: FIGHT….!!!!
DDSDDS wrote:that has just made me chuckle
eastlmark wrote:and then Jeremy beadle appeared!
oh, forgot he died!
I must admit I had a chuckle when he died. I fixed his dishwasher once he was a a nasty bugger in the flesh a real grumpy old moaner.Re: washing up liquid in GDA dishwasher
jag-12 wrote:I find if you put milk in the machine it kills the foam. No idea why but it works.
It raises the surface tension of the water solution, any fatty liquid would have the same effect. Soap lowers the surface tension, hence the bubbles.
Dishwasher powder does not change the surface tension of the solution, in fact it is a non detergent cleaner.Science lesson over, back to work chaps 😉
Re: Connect changed courier?
I have had DPD delivery from connect, hopless, the day the item was due the web site said undelivered returned to depot, the next day I asked the driver why I had not had the item the day before, he spoke very little English.
Connects prices are bad enough, now their delivey system has gone to the dogs.Re: has anyone ever seen one of these ?
cornwell40 wrote:goosegreen wrote
Creda made them, Replaced loads years ago in the Barbican development in the city of London
I knew I’d seen them before but couldn’t remember where 😉
TC
I remember them, in the Barbican 😕 Awful things.Re: radio
Not really in to ham radio these days to be honest, I began to find it boring after the CB craze made 2M almost impossible in the eraly 80s. No doubt the craze died out and the more technical hard core hams are around again now.
I might one day blow the dust off the gear and put out a call.
I moved out into the country so antena space is good here, still not tempted yet though. Second hand stuff on ebay is at give away prices, I can rember an FT101 costing a mint. I’ve got an FT1 gathering dust.Re: radio
My call is G1NDA not been active for years. No gear set up, the internet killed Ham radio for me.
Years ago I had a G3 call then let the licence slip. I only just found out that it’s now free. had a licence since I was 14 😳
One day I might dig out the old TX and fire up on 80M or 2M not even had a listen since the early 90s
Re: Is this job worth it ??
I know just how you feel, this trade is going to the dogs.
I’m sick to death of customers wingeing about just about everything. It’s not going to get any better in fact things will just get worse.I’m thinking of throwing in the towel, I’ve really had enough.
Re: New Electrolux Washer (Chinese)
gandh1 wrote:you cant imply john lewis refused them because they were poor quality, it was down to economics, otherwise they wouldnt be shifting shedloads of tactical boschs in search of profits over customer satisfaction. the only reason they refused to sell the zwg’s is because they undercutted and therefore devalued the JL branded wm’s that were their bread and butter.
I have a family member who is a buyer at J Lewis. They will not stock a pile of poo, no matter who make it, or where in the world it is made.
They have some very tough rules about what they will or will not sell, quality is very high on their list of requirements.Unlike the sheds they do have standards to maintain.
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
kwatt wrote:There still are TV and electronics repairers, just less of them. Most have also moved into other product areas such as mobile phone repairs, computer repairs both of which didn’t exist in the 70’s… new stuff, they adapted and moved on.
I’m sorry but you can’t live in the past.
I’m not asking anyone to live in the past. All those that were in the Trade that I knew, have given it a go right up to the end. Some adapted and moved on like I did, others Simple went bust.
kwatt wrote:
The industry has changed and the repair market has shrunk, yes and there’s a plethora of reasons why that’s happened that I’m not going to go into right now. But in some ways the whitegoods have and is mirroring the browngoods side, the products have changed and the repair market has changed with itThe days of running about changing sets of carbon brushes on Hoovers and Hotpoints are long gone and will never return.
That was my point it has changed, but we as a trade can’t move on if there is no profit in repairs, a few side by side fridge repairs a month won’t keep you in business, the volume of work is slowly failing away, what ever you repair.
kwatt wrote:We’ve moved on to integrated products, side by sides, range cookers and more technological products, many of which you can make a decent living on if you are prepared to work on them.People don’t throw these out carte blanche and will have repairs on them.
K.Most of my profitable work is on these products, but there is not enough work to sustain a large number of repairers. In time appliances will get cheaper to replace. It’s not that long ago a crapy Samung was well over a grand. There was a time when nobody would throw away a colour TV. Who in their right mind spends money one repairing an old TV these days.
I’m not living in the past, I’m just being realistic, I’ve seen it all happen before. A few might survive but most of the smaller firms will be gone.
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
kwatt wrote:I don’t agree.
I don’t think that the repair industry is quite ready to curl up and die just yet.
Unless there’s some new technology that will replace cooking, cooling and laundering. But then, the new technology will probably need fixed too.
K.
Back in the 70s If someone said there would be no TV repair shops in 30 years everone would have laughed. Lets just look back a few years in this trade, at a common machine and it’s common faults that kept us busy and earning, the good old Hotpoint 95 series.
Brushes stuck, caused by the over heating of the motor because the machine would try to go into spin full of water if the filter became blocked.
New technology came along and the machines will not spin if the drum has water in it, likewise it wont spin if the load is uneven, the result is less faulty motors and bearings they don’t fail as often as they did, and we could change a bearing and shaft, not possible on a sealed tub and how many customers are happy to pay repair bills over £100, machines are far cheaper now.
The old style mechanical timers got burns on the heater terminals, half the time a new spade connector and a clean and the machine was up and running again.
You can’t get away with that on new timer modules, another regular fault gone.
Who could have predicted that a timer would need to be programmed with a smart card after fitting it, 15 years ago that was not possible.
New technology has not made the job easier in fact it just adds to the list of thing we no longer need to be called out for.Before long only a few faults will be repairable and left profitable for the independents, with less suitable profitable work around how will we survive, we can’t charge more to compensate for the lost revenue It’s hard enough getting them to pay repair bills now, they just buy a new machine if we out price our services.
It will not get better for any of us with any new technology. In fact new technology will be the final nail in this trades coffin. We can all bury our heads in the sand and pretend it’s not going to change, but deep down we all know it is only a matter of time.
Re: The Future…….. is there one for this industry.
I’m not sure there is a future in this trade, I call it a “trade”, it is certainly not a profession and never will be.
I’m only a one man band, I do not employ anyone, I work from home, so my overheads are low. I make a living but not a fortune and never will do if I stay in this trade.
In my view it has had it’s day, it is now in decline, slow but steady decline.
When I left school in the early 70s the TV repair trade was making a fortune. I had worked in the local TV shop after school since I was 12 years old, I went to technical college at 16 and got qualified, at that time it was seen as a job for life, TV’s would always need repair. We even fixed electric kettles and steam irons, toasters radios record players tape recorders etc in fact just about everything that had a plug on it, except white goods.Business was booming, the man I worked for was opening a new shop every 4 months all over London, he was earning a mint. Back then TV repair shops were everywhere and always busy TV rental was big business too.
By the early 80s it all started to go pear shaped, valves were no longer in use in the new sets, so reliability got better, things like toasters and electric kettles got very cheap, nobody bothered to bring them in for repair. The first microchips started to appear in TV’s at that time they were called integrated circuits. TV’s get even more reliable, or un repairable.
At this point I left TV and got a job in white goods, and just at the right time looking back on it.
Where are all the TV repair businesses now, all gone.
TV’s now have to be sent back to the manufacturer as it is now almost impossible to fit parts on surface mounted boards or get any kind of technical info.This trade is on the same slippery slope, we already have sealed drums modules that need to be programmed and very little technical info being sent out to the small business.
Things will only get worse over time. it is only a matter of time before, only the manufacturer can repair a machine.
In a few years only the simplest of faults could be sorted by the man from the shop, and there will simple not be enough work to keep you in a repair only business.
Big stores, the likes of Tesco on line, will be selling white goods delivered free and at silly prices.I bet a few of you will shoot me down in flames, with opposing views of how it will all be fine, but in reality I think you are kidding yourselves.
The writings already on the wall, there won’t be a white goods repair business in 20 years from now.
The big firms, that are springing up with money to throw at big advertising budgets will do well for now, they will have made there money in the next few years, then moved on to the next big investment.
I’m such a cheerful soul. 😉Re: seized/broken isolation valves
They work a treat, just fit them mid pipe not to close to the plastic ends, even if the valve seems to work fit them anyway till the job is done.
