Few people feel like they can tackle tasks like this in today’s America. Like you, I’m one who can do that and repair items frequently.
But, some items are simply unrepairable due to fatal design flaws. The problem gets worse when the companies who make and market the item have no interest in fixing the design problem. It appears the company’s manufactured cost is so low that it’s financially better to replace the entire unit than it is to redesign the unfixable part because a such low percentage of users actually ask for a repair or replacement. Statistics drive the equation more than building a perception of delivering quality products.
I had a similar issue with some new honeycomb shades from Lowe’s. They were made in China and when I installed them, nearly all of them pulled down inconsistently. There was a customer service number for the manufacturer so I decided to call it. I reached a woman in Atlanta who asked me to text her a photo. She immediately identified that I had pinched one side of the blinds when I installed them and texted me back photo instructions on how to fix. It was a 2 minute phone call and user error, when I assumed shoddy manufacturing and planned to simply return to the store to exchange for others.
I had a similar but more embarrassing experience with a little Chinese fingernail sander. It ran intermittently. I opened it up and found a similar setup to what you see here. Easy to open and close, everything visible. Nothing seemed broken or poorly connected, so I put it back together. Then, using a voltmeter, I found out that the intermittent was in the cord from the DC converter, where I had soldered in a longer wire because the original was too short to use properly. As usual, I blame the maker for my own problems!
Few people feel like they can tackle tasks like this in today’s America. Like you, I’m one who can do that and repair items frequently.
But, some items are simply unrepairable due to fatal design flaws. The problem gets worse when the companies who make and market the item have no interest in fixing the design problem. It appears the company’s manufactured cost is so low that it’s financially better to replace the entire unit than it is to redesign the unfixable part because a such low percentage of users actually ask for a repair or replacement. Statistics drive the equation more than building a perception of delivering quality products.
I had a similar issue with some new honeycomb shades from Lowe’s. They were made in China and when I installed them, nearly all of them pulled down inconsistently. There was a customer service number for the manufacturer so I decided to call it. I reached a woman in Atlanta who asked me to text her a photo. She immediately identified that I had pinched one side of the blinds when I installed them and texted me back photo instructions on how to fix. It was a 2 minute phone call and user error, when I assumed shoddy manufacturing and planned to simply return to the store to exchange for others.
I had a similar but more embarrassing experience with a little Chinese fingernail sander. It ran intermittently. I opened it up and found a similar setup to what you see here. Easy to open and close, everything visible. Nothing seemed broken or poorly connected, so I put it back together. Then, using a voltmeter, I found out that the intermittent was in the cord from the DC converter, where I had soldered in a longer wire because the original was too short to use properly. As usual, I blame the maker for my own problems!
Related Reading bookshelf: “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M. Pirsig.