12 Mar
2012
12 Mar
'12
8:01 a.m.
m?n 2012-02-27 klockan 18:07 -0500 skrev Mouse:
A number of years ago we had in Sweden multiple independent
manufacturers of household items (stoves,fridges including dish
washers.)
Nowadays it is 'Cylinda' (washers, cloth driers, dishwashers),
Electrolux (who really only makes fridges and tabletop dish washers here
in Sweden, the rest of their plants is in Germany,Italy and Hungary)
Until the 80's it existed a number of import firms/manufacturer
suppliers including a guy who sold 'Hanning' pumps to the washer/dish
washer manufacturers. He saw early the industry consolidations who would
come so he started to sell the same parts which he sold to the
manufacturers as repair parts directly to consumers and independent
service techs.
A number of industry pundits warned him against this because he risked
loosing the manufacturers.
Later on it was an hullabalo about electric machines catching fire and
the use of below-spec parts was blaimed and the manufacturers got a lot
of questions about their policy against independent import of oem parts
for their machines.
After that bit of lesson to the manufacturers the independent importers
didnt have to worry anymore....
Not supplying
spare parts for 'safety reasons' (I've got news for
you. It can;'t be less safe for me to repair somethng with the right
parts than for me to have to werk out the imporat characteristics of
said parts and make soethign that will work).
Your safety is distinctly secondary there. The relevant safety is
_their_ safety, from liability suits. If they don't support user
repairs at all, they have a more effective legal shield against idiots
botching repairs and then blaming them. Calling it user safety is a
CYA measure on their part.
If more of the world had sane legal systems, this wouldn't be an issue.
But a discouragingly large fraction of the world isn't sane in that
regard.
There's also another effect at work: not providing parts raises the
bar. There are people who would attempt a repair given parts but,
faced with no easy-to-obtain "correct" parts, will give up and get a
new one rather than doing what you do and creating a suitable part or
deducing which stock item already is suitable.