[vtech]

Agreed...

Bottom line. it all has to do with cost of manufacturing & what the market bears. Probably worst in USA's consumer market where majority have always shopped for price . Yet the "quality" is a thing of a past & not going to come back despite how most every manufacturer beats the drum. They are ALL neck & neck in junk business.

It is most difficult for those who've been around & seen equipment that last for a long time,...no doubt the aim is to train a new generation on disposable electronics.

Seem to remember that it WAS rather differnt in European market where quality was more important (lived in London/Munich/Eindhoven..)

As an example , remember seeing quality equipment from big names such as Philips in EU while they have been marketing some of the WORST crap in US market for some time.... probably it has changed in EU by now.
Gone are the days of pulling schematics & troubleshooting to component level. As you have pointed out, Manufacturers could care less about repairing & much rather replace & who is left holding the bag?...Service tech's who have been doing this as a passion for a long time.
"Repair" is still big & worthed in places like South America or Middle East where resources are limited .

If You plan on staying in this field, it's best to get with Industrial /commercial side of the business if possible.---anything beside consumer. I know of many folks in the consumer field who have simply given up & moved on to other aspects of electronics.

[Jenny]

I'd like to invite what's left of the repair & service industry to contribute your experiences of the Greed & dirty tricks by Manufacturer's these days.

As all of you will know only too well! even though the cost of products have come down they have inflated the price of spares by so much these days that many products end up being scraped while we as service engineers are left to deal with the displeased public & often take more than our share of the blame from ordinary people who have no knowledge of what's happening!

They make it costly & difficult if not impossible to access the necessary service information & spares to repair there products efficiently these days.

Manufacturer's don't have any interest in how much equipment ends up as hazardous waste in our environment, Or how many job's are lost in our industry. Profit is all that matters to them! Crazy that government & environmental authorities let this happen when very little manufacturing takes place in this part or the world

Seems all manufacturer's have learned to use the same dirty tricks these days!!!

I Repair mostly Car Audio in the UK Please state your country when making comment!!!