Repair or Replace

[Jonathan Hutchins]

On Monday 13 August 2007 01:24:45 pm gary hildebrand wrote:

> You've discovered the high price of American labor . . .  and most
> repairmen would rather replace something than "fix" it.  Or he simply
> doesn't want to fuss with it, which is more likely the real reason.

> We are all now in a throwaway society ...

Kids these days, everybody's a critic, barbarians at the gate, hell in a 
handbasket, etc.  My wife has a text from about 3,500 BCE that says pretty 
much the same.

Take a look at what it would cost for a knowledgeable technician to 
troubleshoot down to the component level and fix a system rather than replace 
a module.  Do you want to pay the difference?  You'd be outraged if somebody 
charged you for that.

At the very least, the savings of troubleshooting the module on a bench where 
you have automated test equipment and room for plenty of gear and spare 
parts, wave-soldering tanks, etc. make it much more reasonable to swap a 
module and get you up and running that much quicker.

It's not the high price of American labor, it's the high price of _skilled_ 
labor, and the low price of machine-made spares.  Often a whole module can be 
manufactured for less than it costs to troubleshoot a bad component, so it's 
not even bench-refurbished.

Add to that the cost of having an inventory of new/refurbished modules facing 
a very rapid obsolescence, and pretty soon you have a warehouse of junk you 
can't give away.  You're paying taxes on it too!

It's pretty clear the most of the people who replied to this thread didn't 
read the original message very carefully.  Labor wasn't the high cost in this 
particular instance.