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Comment by asdaddasdad | Hacker News Reader

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.

> 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".

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.

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.

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