On Tue, Aug 27, 2024 at 09:05 AM, Frank Mashockie wrote:
It is about having the choice.? The customer having the choice to repair the item THEY BOUGHT, the way they want to it.? They should be able to make the determination of which repair is economically viable.?
Frank, but you do have the choice. You work in biotech, right? Is anyone stopping you from taking your Illumina, PacBio, or Aviti apart to repair it? The only person who would stop you is your employer who paid for the equipment. If they are fine with your repair skills, I am sure they will let you work on the equipment. You could do what the people on EEVBLOG do so well - figure out how it all works without schematics and code. In return, your employer would save a lot of money on service contracts.
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The truth however is that you would have a very hard time figuring out how it all works, so you are asking for free support from the manufacturer. When you purchase a piece of equipment, you are not automatically buying the rights to intellectual property, manufacturing know-how, software that took years to develop, or advice on how to repair the equipment beyond expected and predictable malfunctions. I understan you feel morally entitled to that, but owners of product rights often feel otherwise.
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As I mentioned, many of us here are with one leg in each camp. We love to repair certain things, but some of us also have a main life making a living in the business. Those who run a manufacturing (or software) business know what the majority of customers want. They cannot cater to the 0.001%. Take for example the lower end of the oscilloscope business. It is flooded with Rigols, Siglents, and others. Customers like the low prices and apparently don't complain about the missing service manuals.
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Take another example. A customer decides to do a DIY repair, ruins an otherwise repairable assembly, then sends it in for factory repair on a fixed price quote while pretending that they had no idea what happened. Factories can absorb a small amount of that, but not too much. The worst case scenario is when an independent repair shop inserts itself between the customer and the factory. Then the blame game starts as to how the product was ruined, why it's so expensive to repair, and who is responsible.
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Hobby and professional don't mix well in this world. They can coexist, but the rules are different for the two.
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Vladan
