From: becka@rz.uni-duesseldorf.de
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 13:43:56 +0200 (MEST)

Re: The Good Old Days... (was: Re: Political-corporate rant)

Hi !

> > You are failing to realize that your vcr is *supposed* to break after a
> > year ( or just after your warranty ends).  

Yeah, though a few companies are shifting toward things like
"3-year-on-site-replacement-warranty" here. AT least for me, this is
definitely a good point when considering a buy.

> > It is a little know policy of
> > "engineering to fail", where a 2 cent piece of plastic is designed to fail
> > so that they can charge you $35 to replace it (plus labor of course).  

Yes - I have just seen such a case. My CD-R broke due to

1. They used an unsuitable lubricant for some silly plastic guide that will
dry out after about a year. Using a real metal bearing would have done much
better. Or at least using a suitable lubricant.

2. They used a tiny little piece of wire (less then 0.1mm diameter) to apply 
pressure to a rather massive gear (the slider drive).

I fixed these two problems (they are known on the internet and known to the
company, but they still don't replace units ...) and now it at least reads
CDs again. Writing still does not work, which I suspect to be caused by
deadjusted optics, which is just a logical consequence of the optics being
banged at the spinning CD due to problem 1 and 2.

Well - so the simple outcome for me is:

I'll not so easily buy a product from that company again. However this won't
hurt them much, because those tiny businesses like the one I run which can
afford to tell the customer : "No, I won't sell you this piece of junk, 
because you'll come back whining that it broke in a year, and this will
hurt my reputation.", don't mean the big money for them ...

And those that sell in huge numbers will put such junk in, to keep _their_
shareholders happy.

> My current VCR was bought 1981 (by my parents, I was too young to
> buy a VCR then ;) and it still works fine. My TV is from '86 and 

Yeah ... similar experience here ...

CU,ANdy

-- 
= Andreas Beck                    |  Email :  <andreas.beck@ggi-project.org> =