Thread: TV repair shops
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Old 5th Jan 2019, 5:31 am   #26
Radio Wrangler
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Location: Fife, Scotland, UK.
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Default Re: TV repair shops

Brand names are used to instil buyer confidence. That new telly sounds reassuringly Japanese, but was probably made in Turkey.

Dixons were at it in the late sixties with 'Prinz' trying to make cheapies from countries-of-convenience sound like they came from Austria! Then they floated their own Japanese-sounding brand name when Japanese-made started to mean reliable to joe public.

Nowadays parts and sub-assemblies are traded around the world to an amazing extent It's all slight-of-hand. Say you want to do the right thing, support jobs in our own country. It's hard to find a product with more union jacks crammed onto it than a new mini. Famously made in Oxford... but the engine unit comes from Brazil and the profit goes to Germany.

Maybe the best we can do is to try to prefer products where the badge bears some relation to who made it. I think Samsung and LG are still in that bracket, or have they too transferred their cheaper models to other countries or subbies?

At the end of the equipment's life (limited by irrepairability or just fashion) even the recycling process is globalised.

A man who previously ran a firm operating in China told me, the other day, that China is getting expensive. So whither then 'cost effective manufacturing'? My guess is it'll bounce around until eventually Zimbabwe and N Korea carry the torch.

Is it a case that transport of goods is just too cheap?

David
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