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Vintage Television and Video Vintage television and video equipment, programmes, VCRs etc.

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Old 4th Jan 2019, 2:09 am   #1
martin.m
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Default TV repair shops

I spent much of my working life in the TV repair business, starting in 1973 as a field engineer for the TV rental side of a large department store. Many of the sets were dual standard B/W models with a few 405 line ones. Colour sets were mainly Fergusons fitted with the BRC (Thorn) 3000 chassis. These went straight in the back of my van to be looked at in the workshop. Customers couldn't understand how a TV only a few years old could possibly go wrong. A few months later the TV rental side of the business was sold to Visionhire and a lot of the older B/W sets were swapped for the more modern Philips 210 types.

In the 1990s and early 2000s I worked in a small TV and video repair shop. Business was booming and the phone never stopped ringing. A lot of the work was setting up and tuning in new equipment that customers had bought from the large electrical retailers (box sellers). Most equipment then was usually straightforward to repair, even the various analogue satellite receivers. There was a huge trade in people getting VCR heads replaced, especially on the more up-market machines.

Then around 2003, things started to go downhill. Supermarkets were selling VCRs for under £40 and DVD players for under £25, while many people wanted to buy the then new flat screen TVs. ASDA started to give a free three year guarantee on electrical products, simply refunding customers if the item went wrong. The result of all this was that fewer people wanted their TVs and VCRs repairing.

I left the TV trade a few years later and am now (happily) retired. I wondered if there are still any "old fashioned" independent repair shops left now and how would anyone repair today's electronic products anyway.
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 3:38 am   #2
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Default Re: TV repair shops

None that I know of in the UK but out here in the Philippines there is at least one in every town of reasonable size.
There is usually a pile of CRT TVs on the footpath outside, mostly they get scrapped. Recycling is good here but you see the CRTs dumped in ditches at the side of the road. Guess that they can't recycle the glass.
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 4:01 am   #3
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Default Re: TV repair shops

There's a few in Adelaide South Australia (more than when I closed up shop), but looking at their websites, a couple at least I would put in the dubious, wont last long category.

When I did a stint in the then largest repairer (back in the 90's), there was at least 15 techs most of the time, now it is (as far as I know) 2-3, their main business is selling or installing stuff now.
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 8:54 am   #4
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Default Re: TV repair shops

There is only 1 TV shop left in my town now.
The other shop closed and they massively increased their price, as they were the only game in town, so to speak.
Actually, its like over 40 miles to any other shop, and that one is dubious.

I thought about opening my shop again. But from the lack of mfg. support here in the States, the lack of parts, and pricing, I doubt I could even break even.

Since my knee surgery,It's still hard walking. The surgery did not go well, IMHO.

Looks like I should have stayed with blacksmithing as a youth. I could make a good living with that here these days. They are considered "Craftsmen" here now.

Electronics repair techs are now becoming "buggy whips". (I am even heir to a patent from my grandfather, but who needs a "New and improved stirrup buckle" these days. LOL.

One day in the not so distant future some child will ask their parent "What is a TV repairman?"
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 9:32 am   #5
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Default Re: TV repair shops

Yes we have one, TV/white goods etc in the local high street of a small village in the Wigan area. I think I posted a photo on the forum a while back. Just bought a washing machine from them last week, slightly more expensive than online but installed and tested within 2 hours of buying it.
First place to go to if I need anything, always a customer in the shop, I can only hope it stays open, been there 40 years, family business.
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 10:15 am   #6
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Default Re: TV repair shops

Quote:
Then around 2003, things started to go downhill. Supermarkets were selling VCRs for under £40 and DVD players for under £25, while many people wanted to buy the then new flat screen TVs. ASDA started to give a free three year guarantee on electrical products, simply refunding customers if the item went wrong. The result of all this was that fewer people wanted their TVs and VCRs repairing.
I worked for a small TV repair firm in the first half of the 80's, but left in 1986 when I moved to Sussex.
There were many small shops back then, one of which I did casual repairs for.
Fast forward 33 years and they are all long gone, in fact there is only one still in business locally.
I got a job in industrial electronics, and that saw me through to early retirement.

As you say, TV's are now a throw away item, along with most other domestic electronics.
I still do repairs, but there is no money in it now.

I really enjoy repair & restoration of vintage sets, all hand made in an era where quality mattered and the sets were designed to be repaired.
I can not imagine anyone being able to restore electronics from this era in forty years time.

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Old 4th Jan 2019, 10:17 am   #7
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Default Re: TV repair shops

Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankB View Post
Electronics repair techs are now becoming "buggy whips". "
Frank, what is a "buggy whip"?

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Old 4th Jan 2019, 10:57 am   #8
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Default Re: TV repair shops

Buggy whips.
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/buggy+whip
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 1:20 pm   #9
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Default Re: TV repair shops

The customers comment on reliability made me smile. In the '50s when of course TVs were all valved I reckoned that the average TV failed about twice a year, so once the set was out of guarantee they gave you quite a good income.

There was a permanent shortage of TV engineers so regardless of qualifications if you could repair TV's you could get a job. They were generally very easy to repair then and many engineers used to spend their evenings doing 'private' work and it was a good earner. A teenager owning a car in the '50s was a rare thing, if you saw one there is a very good chance he was a TV engineer.

Even in the early days of transistors the repair trade was still pretty good as there were a lot of valved TVs still out there but as they were replaced and became cheaper the trade started to die. By the time I retired in 2004 it was getting difficult to make a living from it.

I was told when I started work that if I went into the TV trade I would have a job for life, I nearly did, for my working life anyway - but its a different world now.

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Old 4th Jan 2019, 2:15 pm   #10
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Default Re: TV repair shops

Last summer I went to Potsdam, Germany to pick up an oscilloscope I'd arranged to buy, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the seller worked in a TV repair workshop which was at the back of quite a smart home audio and video shop. There were two or three people working in the workshop, on large flat-screen TVs and various audio components, as far as I could see.

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Old 4th Jan 2019, 2:33 pm   #11
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Default Re: TV repair shops

By the 1980s-90s most home electronics seemed to become more reliable, & disposable when they eventually broke down.

It's mostly computers & mobile phones that have a market for repairs these days.
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 3:12 pm   #12
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Default Re: TV repair shops

Hello - we're not dead yet!
Well, there's me with a workshop and Andrew that has the high street shop. We are "competitors", but work closely together.
We just do repairs and reconditioned TV sales. Of course the trade has almost gone now, but there's still a market for installing new TVs (one to do this afternoon), retuning (two this morning) and large screen repairs (one set of backlights fitted on a 46" Samsung 3D, capacitor replacement on an old Samsung and a power board on a 43" LG today).
Of course in the Nineties there was me on the TV bench, Charlie on the video bench and Raymond doing collections, deliveries and installations. Then we had a waiting time of a good few days before we could get to look at the TV - now it's the same day.
While there's still work we'll carry on, though it seems as much time is spent persuading customers to have the TV repaired as actually repairing the thing!
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 3:51 pm   #13
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Default Re: TV repair shops

Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard_FM View Post
By the 1980s-90s most home electronics seemed to become more reliable, & disposable when they eventually broke down.

It's mostly computers & mobile phones that have a market for repairs these days.
Yes, TVs were remarkably reliable from the 1980s onwards: once they were through the first few weeks of operation [to weed-out the failures which statisticians refer to as 'infant mortality'] then it was not unknown for a TV to need no further attention until it was scrapped.

Someone I know (we ran an amateur-radio evening course at the local school) who ran a high-street electronics sales/repair shop in a small South Oxfordshire town reckoned that around the time TVs became fit-and-forget appliances, along came the VCR which, with its wearing heads, juddering belts tape-tangles and 'convenient' slot for kids to post coins/their toys/stale-jam-sandwiches in - provided a revenue-stream that kept him in business for another decade and a half.

Then in turn came satellite-TV, but by that time he decided he was too old to spend time climbing ladders in the dark and nailing dishes to walls in the rain, so he retired in the late-1990s.

Checking with Google StreeetView, his old premises are now a chiropodists.
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 4:19 pm   #14
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Default Re: TV repair shops

Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard_FM View Post
By the 1980s-90s most home electronics seemed to become more reliable, & disposable when they eventually broke down.

It's mostly computers & mobile phones that have a market for repairs these days.
There's an electrical shop in our village but I checked his web site and no mention of TVs anymore just phone and laptop repairs.

I do pass this one on the way to work sometimes, they still advertise TV repairs, interestingly they were only established in 1985!

John

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There's actually 2 in the same village, the sign above says TV repairs.
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 4:35 pm   #15
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Default Re: TV repair shops

I am not aware of a proper shop in Liverpool but there is a wonderful shop in Wallasy on the Wirral. SS Radio was established in 1937 and is still going strong.
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 4:55 pm   #16
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Default Re: TV repair shops

Ther's about five left covering the Sheffield area, including Nova Electronics, where you can still get parts.
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 5:02 pm   #17
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Default Re: TV repair shops

Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankB View Post
Electronics repair techs are now becoming "buggy whips". (I am even heir to a patent from my grandfather, but who needs a "New and improved stirrup buckle" these days. LOL.
TV repairman?"
My weight was being supported on a pair of stirrup leathers just last evening and the buckles held just fine! AND I had a schooling whip (just a long stick for the uninitiated) in my hand. Buckles that are easier for adjusting the length of leathers seem a good idea, ones that don't make painful bulges under the saddle skirts also seem like a good idea.

Horse tack makers may just outlive repairable TV sets, infernal combustion engines and many other technologies.

Blacksmiths round here are surviving OK, Farriers are in short supply and high demand, but that's a profession with high risk of injury.

David
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 6:56 pm   #18
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Default Re: TV repair shops

Well I do repairs for what is probably the only remaining repair shop in Ascot. Steady trickle of sets but it has declined enormously in the past year to just one or two a month. The shop is now largely run by the owner's son and daughter as father is well past retirement age and not in the best of health. Try and do repairs where possible but getting very difficult with today's sets - especially now that the trade spares outlets like CHS are no more and support from manufactures is virtually non-existent.

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Old 4th Jan 2019, 7:30 pm   #19
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Default Re: TV repair shops

I'm trying to think of anywhere around Stockport that still does TV repairs.
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Old 4th Jan 2019, 7:32 pm   #20
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Default Re: TV repair shops

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Originally Posted by FrankB View Post
Looks like I should have stayed with blacksmithing as a youth. I could make a good living with that here these days. They are considered "Craftsmen" here now.
That's quite amusing. When people ask me what I do (Electronics Repair Technician) they may say "Oh, that's useful", and I say "Not really, when did you last pay to have something electronic repaired?". I usually then go on to describe myself as a 'Blacksmith for the modern age' - in possession of an interesting skill which nobody really needs me to have any more.

For the past 15 years I've earned a very modest living in the repairs department of a small British manufacturer of niche electronic equipment, partly repairing customer returns and partly repairing items which don't work as they come off the production line (we actually make and populate the PCBs here, itself an increasingly rare thing in a world in which everyone outsources to China).

If domestic / brown goods repair (in which I started) had remained my sole source of income I would be eating out of the bins behind McDonalds by now.
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