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Comment by qes | Hacker News Reader

> I know if I e.g. break the USB C port on my phone I just need a new $5-10 sub-board. Compare that to breaking something essential on my washing machine, drier, TV etc., those things are typically easy to open, but a lot harder to actually repair in practice.

It's much easier to find the replacement part for the phone - as long as it's not more than maybe 5 years old - then it is to find the replacement part for the washing machine.

That's been my experience, anyway. Perhaps I'm just not aware of where to go for appliance parts.. but I don't have much problem finding anything else I ever want to buy on the internet.

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> Perhaps I'm just not aware of where to go for appliance parts.

Usually the manufacturer has them, though they may optimize for selling to service professionals, and these days there tend to be third-party sellers more focussed on consumers, as well (and you can often get parts on Amazon.)

IME, getting the right part number is often the hardest thing, though usually docs available from the manufacturer (even for units no longer sold) can be downloaded that provide this, and lots of time searching by description and appliance model can find the part, too.

> Usually the manufacturer has them

My experience with this has been terrible for e.g. circular saws & power drills, to name one example.

I had a part I needed for a Makita circular saw & Black & decker power drill. In both cases buying every replacement part would easily cost 10-20x of the retail price of a new saw or power drill, compared to maybe 1.5-2x in the case of a modern phone. The aftermarket for OEM car parts is similarly brutal for most manufacturers, but for some happy reason phones are the exception.

That happy reason is Chinese knock-off factories, which can make anything from knock-off screens to main boards, sometimes recycling some chips. If you were to go to China, you would often be able to buy every replacement part for more or less the going price of the phone.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. That you're not going to easily find replacement parts for your washing machine, but you will for your phone.

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