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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

>>Owners are usually unable to repair the machines themselves - or find anyone else to do it at a decent price

That's just a result of high labour cost in western countries though. Parts for appliances are usually pretty cheap, it's getting a specialist to come out that costs an arm and a leg. A heating element for an oven will be like £40, but good luck finding someone to come out and fit it for less than £80-100. Considering you can buy a brand new oven for as little as £200(with free delivery) the option to replace something instead of repairing it is unsurprisingly tempting. The further East you go the cheaper the labour gets, so it's normal that a repair that's completely unreasonable in the UK is actually pretty reasonable in Poland or Slovakia - the same part fitting would cost you maybe 50-100PLN(£10-20)? So actually the parts are almost always more expansive than labour.

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Indeed. We recently replaced our 5 year old fridge. The compressor was running very frequent and hard, and it produced a lot of condensation, to the point that the evaporation bucket on the back overflowed.

I'm guessing it could have been repaired (gas leak?), but the absolute minimum for a tech to come out and try to fix it would have been 150-200 EUR (driving + 1 hour labor), plus parts/gas.

Part of the problem with repairs is that you often don't know what the final price will be. Sure you might get a quote based on a most likely scenario, but if that isn't the problem you just wasted all that money. And due to cost of labor, spending a lot of time troubleshooting isn't viable either.

We just got a new fridge instead, 400 EUR delivered at the door.

It sounds like someone needs to make a business getting broken appliances from rich western nations, then shipping them to underdeveloped nations where they can be repaired cheaply, then resold locally.

Around here that happens with cars: old Toyotas are (were, I'm not receiving updates from that market anymore?) bought to be shipped off to Africa and competition seemed crazy (multiple buyers calling immediately if you posted certain models for sale, some going as far as being threatening IIRC.)

Source: two close friends of mine sold their HiAces.

Maybe instead of the labor being too expensive, the raw materials, including energy, are too cheap.

Agreed.

It's the reason #16238 for instituting a carbon tax, and all those reasons are essentially the same: internalizing externalities. If, after accounting for full environmental impact, it turns out that replacing is still cheaper than repairing, then all is fine because the price correctly signals that it is better. In reality though, I'd expect that under carbon taxing, repair would be the better choice.

Self-repair can be made tempting too.

If it can be made simple[1] and affordable - it becomes a nice home project.

[1]How easy it's to repair a broken drain pump in a washing machine - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv-arx3FKRo

So just ship your washing machine to Poland for repairs, I guess. Very energy efficient.

I mean, washing machines probably aren't worth it because they weigh a lot, but I know as a fact that if you need to get your OnePlus phone repaired it will be shipped by next day courier to a repair centre in Warsaw, then shipped back(I rang them up on Monday, phone was collected on Tuesday, delivered and repaired on Wednesday, shipped back on Thursday, I got it back on Friday - it was incredible). I have also done this with a speaker that broke - a local electronics repair shop wanted £60 just to diagnose the issue, I was driving over to Poland for summer anyway so I took it with me, a local shop there charged me an absolutely ridiculous for Poland 2x50PLN/hour(£10/hour) to fix it + £20 for parts = £40 total. Obviously that completely ignores the cost of driving over, but I was doing it anyway.

I'm just trying to point out that it's not some grand conspiracy to stop people from repairing stuff - here in the West labour is just very very expensive(which means our wages are also very high, so it's hard to complain). In countries where labour is cheap the same repair suddenly makes sense.

And to add to that, when I've been in Shenzhen, China, I saw lots of recycling of smartphone parts. I've managed to replace my cracked S4 screen and a broken camera for a small fraction of the part price, on the spot in 10 minutes, on the condition that they get to keep the broken part - because what they're doing is taking the part further apart, repairing or replacing the broken component, and then using it to repair someone else's phone.

> shipped by next day courier to a repair centre in Warsaw

Don't worry, that will change next month

What happens next month?

Items being sent from the UK to Warsaw will have to run through customs twice, attracting very large tarrifs - at least in the "UK->Poland" direction. That's assuming the airplanes are allowed to fly, and the customs clearence delays will be measured in days.

Oh, because of Brexit you mean, it didn't register that the GP was in the UK.

I inferred from "local electronics repair shop wanted £60 just to diagnose the issue".

HP used to do that, and probably still does, with their business laptops/computers. Had an Elitebook under warranty in Germany, the graphics card burned out, requested an RMA, they sent a box to pack it in via UPS, it was shipped to Poland, fixed and returned via UPS.

In my case it was. The washing machine died, the repairman said the circuit board died, a new one is say 120, plus 80 for his work (all numbers approximate). His recommendation was to buy a new one.

I found somebody on ebay that repairs the boards for 35 (same developed country), popped the hood, took the cables off and sent the small plastic enclosing by post. They probably just replaced a capacitor or so, sent it back to me and voila.

So I don't think the legislation is perfect, but I'm happy there's some movement in the right direction. I think it's obscene to throw away the whole thing because of a tiny repair. Everything still depends on having people skilled to do repairs, but that's maybe also part of the problem. Why is a repair person's job these days to take a manufacturer's part in a plastic enclosing and connect the cables? I can do that myself. If it was some advanced technology fine, but it isn't for a lot of things.

Repair technicians who show up at peoples' homes aren't highly skilled electronics technicians. If they were, they wouldn't be working as appliance repair people and driving to peoples' homes. So those repairs just entail swapping out entire circuit boards or assemblies, because that's all those repair people can handle (and all the repair companies or manufacturers are willing to warranty).

The guy on Ebay is someone with electronics skills who discovered that that particular machine had a very common problem with that board, and offered a service to fix that one thing.

It's too bad that can't be done more. It is done some: smartphone makers frequently will repair their devices, usually by having you ship the phone to a repair center. But an appliance is harder since you still have to have the on-site technician take the machine apart and get the board out for shipping, since you can't rely on consumers to do that. It's too bad consumers aren't smart enough to use a screwdriver and take simple things apart, but that's just how it is.

If you take the huge concrete brick (some use water as ballast) out of a washing machine, they’re not that heavy. It shouldn’t be a great surprise that a washing machine without clothes or water inside has a lot of empty space in it.

It's health & safety.

They are don't like that unqualified people play with gas or electricity, so they certainly don't try to make it easy for people to be able to repair themselves.

What do you mean? The repair in Poland would also be done by a qualified electrician or a gas technician . It's not the qualification requirement that is pushing the cost up, it's simply that the wages are so much higher. A very very basic £10/hour in the UK is absolutely astronomical for Poland(50PLN/hour is maybe what a senior programmer would make, not an electrician).

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