consumer goods why arnt they repairable?

Question

many years ago as a tv man i could repair many tv's in customers houses there were known brands and real wood cabinets some even came with circuit diagrams in the box.
now they are all made in foreign lands no circuits and if a main part has gone its scrap time even though the tube and other parts may still be ok
Why now with modern technology cant we have standardized circuit boards for all models which are interchangable and just have different case styles it would save an awfull amout of waste and mean a repair could be done if they all had standard boards per model type and you would not have to stock so many parts.
Do you agree or am i just being a silly old fart

Answer 1

The problem is that every thing is made so cheap now days. At the end of the day things are mass produced as a whole item and sold to the public very cheap. Single parts in most cases cost more than the set or machine. If you look at the cost of things like video recorders they used to cost the equivalent of about 3 months of an average wage, now they are about £30.
I used to be a TV engineer myself but as you say there is too much waste as we live in a throw away society.

Answer 2

How do manufacturers come up up w/ sophisticated electronics for cheap? Massive integration of circuits onto a few chips.

There are not many companies that can do those chipset in mass quantities and make money off of them. Standardized circuits would entail standardization of things like form factors and voltage levels and such, something we sorta see in PCs and in TV connectors. The guts are what makes the TV different from one mfger to another, though, and that's what differentiate products. Standardizing them would make TVs, well, dull.

The complexity of these chipsets makes it near to impossible to replace, much less repair. So the best option, in most cases, is to replace the entire set.

In any case, by buying a replacement set, inevitably you're buying an upgrade on the old one, which is a win/win in a sense, both for the mfger by selling more goods and the consumer in getting a new item w/ more capabilities than the last one.

I jettisoned my B&W TV and my 486-33 PC a long time ago. Time to move on.

Answer 3

The answer is in your question, they aren't repairable because they are consumer goods. Such goods are designed to be made cheaply, and have a limited life, when something breaks you buy a new one and the manufacturer makes more profit. Making products in this way ensures a constant demand for goods, if you buy a TV and it lasts 20 years, you don't buy another TV for 20 years, if it lasts 2 years you buy another one in 2 years time. It is interesting to note that manufacturers very rarely give more than 1 years warranty nowadays even on £1000 LCD TVs, that's because they are made to be disposable.

Answer 4

I totally agree, but consumerism means they'd rather you bought a new TV than fix your old one. It's obvious that CRT(Cathode Ray Tube) TVs are better in picture quality than Plasma/LCD TVs but they will phase them out anyway. Why should you have to buy HD TV (and Subscribe) to get a picture only approaching normal TV (With a decent rooftop/loft arial) Yes we know those balloon/castle shots look lovely but show me a clear picture of a bloke jogging on Dartmoor! Oops can't do it! Say no more.

Answer 5

I imagine it is to force the customer into upgrading, that way they don't have to spend money supporting defunct products. If you think about it, their call center personel has to be versed in all the products that their customer base is using. If you can phase out a product line by not allowing for repairs, then you have to spend less time in training, that means more time for taking calls, which means fewer call center employees are necessary.

Answer 6

I think the last sentance summs it up .
I remember trying to fix a toaster, and there were peculiar screws on it, I went to the trouble of obtaining a special socket set in order to disassemble it , and when I opened it, it fell asunder LESSON LEARNT
I was talking to a retailer friend of mine and he told me that it was actually IMPOSSIBLE to repair it, as it had been assembled by robots and was designed to fall asunder.
We seem to live in an age where they don't want you to repair anything.