This was a great article and I love how the author related it to a common purchase most people have made in their lives already.
Ask a Repair Shop
91–100 of 135 posts
Re: Ask a Repair Shop
#92I did this when I was choosing a laptop. I called up a few laptop repair shops. It as so helpful! They could tell me what was junk and what was OK. I also do something like this this when choosing a new ISP. I call the support line instead of the sales line. Somehow ISPs can answer sales enquiries instantly while support calls take 45 minutes to answer. This strategy has led me to use some of the smaller (slightly mo…
So how's your new Macbook Pro?
Re: Ask a Repair Shop
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's interesting to me is that for all my appliances in my house (different brands), I've been able to repair each of them (microwave, air conditioner, washer, dryer, dishwasher, and wine fridge) on my own, using some basic instructions on the internet and a part that at most has cost $50. I believe we're in a golden age for self-repair (particularly with YouTube videos), but I keep hearing about how everything is…
Couple of recent attempted fixes: Food mixer - resin washer instead of metal, without tools to machine a purpose fit washer is irrepairable. TV - 4 years old, needed new main board, nothing at less than 50% cost of a brand new (better) TV. No parts from named manufacturer (re-badged). Kettle - plastic in switch, clearly a weak point, suspect it was designed in, double thickness and the kettle would probably go foreve…
FWIW, Harbor Fright sells pliers for retaining clips. They're not the best, but like everything from Harbor Fright, will either suffice for the occasional job or demonstrate that you use the tool enough to buy a better version.
Re: Ask a Repair Shop
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Louis's axe grinding is not without justification. But I don't disagree that these days repairing your own devices is much easier than it was 50 years ago. My point was that companies are trying to counteract that by creating devices and instituting (possibly illegal in some countries) policies that are anti-consumer repair.
What's the justification? Yeah, I'd like more easily repairable devices, but I also get the trade-off. Why is he so angry about it all? (from what I can tell - because he knows how to fix stuff, rather than replace parts wholesale, and fundamentally believes this should be the norm, without taking into account the economics)
A lot of it isn't even about changing their design (which is terrible in terms of repairability), but basic ethics. Apple actively prohibits third party repair, as-if they own the device I paid full price on. I couldn't imagine being forced to only service my car with a particular dealership. I prefer being able to change the oil myself or having the option of going to the local mechanic.
Re: Ask a Repair Shop
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you ask an enterprise vendor if their software has feature X, the answer is always, "Yes!" FWIW, not all enterprise software vendors do that. We don't, for example. Just last night I was running through a demo for a prospective customer, and my contact asked about some new features. The answer was "we have some of that partially implemented, another is trivial, and another one is going to take some research. Ballp…
" ... another one is going to take some research. Ballpark estimate is probably 6 weeks or so to do all that. " One of these things is not like the other.
"some" research. Not talking "fundamental research" stuff (like particle physics) here. Just looking at the API's provided by a 3rd party product to see how the integration would work.
That said, I did change that answer to "more like 8 weeks" after we spoke further. And that was still just a rough estimate. Anyway, regardless of how accurate that is, the point is that we don't do the "anything can be done in two weeks" thing. :-)
Re: Ask a Repair Shop
#96I did this when I was choosing a laptop. I called up a few laptop repair shops. It as so helpful! They could tell me what was junk and what was OK. I also do something like this this when choosing a new ISP. I call the support line instead of the sales line. Somehow ISPs can answer sales enquiries instantly while support calls take 45 minutes to answer. This strategy has led me to use some of the smaller (slightly mo…
My best customer support experience was calling an American ISP (I guess a small regional one but I have no good way to judge their size). I had been emailed billing details for a customer - the customer had presumably mistakenly entered my email address. I was expecting the usual 40 minutes on hold but it was answered promptly and politely by someone who understood the problem as I presented it. This contrasts great…
I'm paying 5€ extra per month (Germany) for more upstream, a crappy sla and most importantly a dedicated support hotline. Whenever I call, it's a waiting time measured in seconds and the people answering have technical knowledge.
Re: Ask a Repair Shop
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you ask an enterprise vendor if their software has feature X, the answer is always, "Yes!" FWIW, not all enterprise software vendors do that. We don't, for example. Just last night I was running through a demo for a prospective customer, and my contact asked about some new features. The answer was "we have some of that partially implemented, another is trivial, and another one is going to take some research. Ballp…
> who has spent his entire career as a developer If I'm right, this means you're selling to software companies, or companies doing in-house development? As much bullshit as there is in selling software to software companies, it seems to be so much worse outside of this. Enterprise vendors selling to non-technical firms seem far more willing to promise the moon and stars on the basis that they can hand-wave it as "a j…
If I'm right, this means you're selling to software companies, or companies doing in-house development?
Not really. We're not doing developer tools or anything like that. Well.. not like an IDE or anything. The products we're talking to this prospect about are an Enterprise Social Network product and a Document Management product.
That said, we do have a machine learning /cognitive services platform in development, so that's borderline a "developer tool", but we're not in the same space as like an Atlassian or anything.
Re: Ask a Repair Shop
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish there was like a rating system for how well-built appliances are. I guess the poor man's version of that is looking at how long the manufacturer's warranty is.
www.consumerreports.com
I'm actually on the market for a new kitchen range and I bought a CR subscription last night. I was disappointed. Almost none of the ranges have textual reviews, just a 5-star rating on about 6 different feature points. They each have a User Reviews section, most of which were unpopulated, and the remainder having one or two one-star reviews cursing it for falling apart in the first month. CR has a short blurb about reliability across entire brands, but the range was between 10% and 16% expected failure rate across the small subset of brands that were listed; most of the manufacturers were not even on the list. I'm left about as clueless as when I started.
Re: Ask a Repair Shop
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
I knew a CEO once who honestly believed that any feature he could conceive of could be implemented in two weeks. He was quite successful.... Any before anyone asks what the logic was behind this - there wasn't any - he just chose to believe it and ignore any evidence to the contrary.
Optimism beyond the reasonable may be a critical trait for a successful CEO. Not necessarily what you want in your own manager, of course, but company leaders need to chase risk in order to do well and that's hard to do if you're ready to believe all the (reasonable) opposition that new ideas face.
Add survivorship bias to unreasonable optimism, and you get a culture of celebrating CEOs who demanded the impossible and got it enough times that the companies made money.
Meanwhile, CEOs who demand the impossible and don't get lucky are not celebrated, but are also not widely publicized as failures, so people don't learn from those lessons.
Re: Ask a Repair Shop
#100I got a full education on washers, including a lot of industry dirty laundry. Please tell us more.
A friend asked me the same, so here's my info. It is dated, and you're best calling a repair shop before buying, but likely still some nuggets of truth here. Big trend is consolidation in the industry. Whirlpool, Maytag, and Kitchenaid are all the same company now. For dishwashers (and I got this info recently), repairman said they all have the same motor and core components, which is the most important. They differ…
> Big trend is consolidation in the industry. Whirlpool, Maytag, and Kitchenaid are all the same company now.
You might be indirectly referencing this site (and article):
https://recraigslist.com/2015/10/they-used-to-last-50-years/ (ffs - just saw this link was posted below)
...which essentially says the same thing, but in more detail.
> For washing machines, the guy said
Another thing: Stay away from front loaders (unless health or other reasons prevent it) - the door seal always goes, and makes a huge mess when it does.
> Some years ago, a vacuum cleaner shop explained that everyone is racing to put out a lighter vacuum, and hence they switched from metal gearing and components to plastic.
When I was in high school, my friend's mom had an old Kirby upright bag vacuum - probably dated from the 1950s. All steel, everywhere. Sounded like a jet engine when it was running. But the thing could pick up the moon if you positioned it properly.
One day, being the dumbasses we were, we decided "hey, let's put it to the test!". So we started vacuuming things up. Bits of plastic, legos, pennies, washers, nails - all of it, no problem. There had to be something that would stop it dead (we had no clue what we'd do if it did die - like I said, we were dumbasses)...hey, how about a roll of quarters!
It made the most horrendous noise imaginable. The lights flickered in the home as the motor struggled. But it kept going. Eventually, the whole thing was sucked up into the vacuum. No damage to anything in it, and it continued to run and work like always...
I'm pretty sure that old Kirby is still running somewhere.
His mom never knew (we weren't so dumb as to do this when she was home, though)!