The Pest |
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While reading through these vintage electronics magazines, I often wish I could have lived in the era and owned an electronics repair shop. Radios, televisions, record players, tape recorders, amplifiers, etc., were very serviceable with plug-in vacuum tube active components and point-to-point wiring with all leaded passive components (capacitors, resistors, inductors, lamps, etc.). I know this from first-hand experience working on a 1960's air traffic control radar system while serving in the U.S. Air Force. As with today, servicemen often get a bad rap undeservedly because of the low morals of some fellow practitioners. While it is unfortunately true that bad eggs exist in the service world, a lot of customers are rotten and try to take advantage of or outright rip off the technician. This story from a 1952 issue of Radio−Electronics magazine is a tongue-in-cheek parody from the viewpoint of a self-righteous customer looking to get his radio repaired. The Pest
All radio repairmen, jewelers, auto mechanics, and the like are crooks. Everybody knows they take the parts out of what you bring in for repairs and put in old stuff; that they're out to get all they can from you and don't care what cheap tricks they use to do it. That's why I insisted on watching the repairs on my 5-tube table model set when I brought it to the service shop. I kept a careful eye on the repairman while he made some tests and when he picked up a pair of snippers and started to cut something out of my radio, I let him know I was watching. "What are you doing?" I asked. "Move over a little," he said, and prodded me with his elbow. I suppose I was crowding him. I moved, but kept my eyes on my radio. "The trouble is an open resistor," he said, holding up a small, colorful object. He looked through some boxes and found another jigger that looked something like it, and soldered it into my radio. When he turned the set on it worked all right. Then right away he tried to sell me something else. "The speaker's warped," he said. "You'll need a new one." "It sounds all right if I keep the volume down," I said, feeling firmly that I wouldn't buy anything I didn't want. "If I put in a new speaker now," he said, "it will cost you less because the time will be charged to the same hour with putting in the resistor." "The speaker's good enough for me," I said with finality. He was still probing around inside the set, and suddenly he found something else. "Oh, oh," he said, "the isolating condenser is shorted." This man was deliberately trying to raise my bill. "The set sounds perfectly all right," I said.
There seemed to be no stopping this fellow. He'd go to any lengths to make a sale, even to the extent of frightening people. I said coldly, trying to make myself perfectly clear, "Since my set works nicely as it is, I hardly think it necessary to buy anything else for it." "Where do you keep this radio?" he asked. I always kept it on a window shelf over a radiator. "I don't see why that should be important," I replied. "Well," he told me, "this radio's got fancy metal designs on the front of the cabinet that touch the chassis. If you get between them and a grounded object you could get a fatal shock." "I don't intend to buy a new condenser," I repeated, solid in my stand against having anything I didn't want forced on me. "The radio is O.K. as it is." He sighed, I think he was getting the idea I wasn't a yokel he could hoodwink. When he turned the set over it made a little static noise I had been noticing lately. He picked up a pencil and tapped the tubes with the eraser. "Be careful," I warned. Suddenly the radio went dead as he tapped one of the tubes. Naturally that made me sore. "Now what did you do?" I demanded heatedly. "The tube was shorting intermittently," he told me. "Tapping made the short permanent. You need a new tube." "I never needed one before you hit it," I said. He put his pencil down on the bench. I backed away from him because he seemed angry, but his voice was quite calm as he said,· "You brought your radio here for repairs and I'm trying to repair it the best way I know. It has a bad tube. A radio in that condition never leaves this shop without a new tube or without the customer knowing about it. Otherwise it will come back and reflect on my workmanship, and to stay in business I have to do good work. You can buy your tube somewhere else. I'm interested in your knowing that the work you buy from me is complete." His remarks didn't have the slightest effect on me. Like I told you, I've heard a hundred times how these fellows operate. "Put in a new tube," I said, "and let that finish the job. I definitely don't want anything else." He looked angry again as he put the radio back in the cabinet. I don't think he was used to getting caught ruining tubes. One thing I was sure of: he was going to hear more about this from me. I planned to get action through the Better Business Bureau! We went out to the front of the shop and he put my radio on the counter and wrote up my bill. Forty cents for the resistor - that was all right; two dollars and twenty-five cents for the tube - that was all right; but when he put. down two dollars and fifty cents for labor, I blew my top. "You're making a profit from the resistor and tube," I said. "What more do you want?" "People like you ought to know," he said, pointing an angry finger at me, "that repairmen like me are in business to sell time. A shoemaker makes a profit on his leather when he repairs your shoes, doesn't he? But he charges you more for his time. So does a carpenter. Their time is their most valuable asset, just like my time is to me." "Radio repairmen are all crooks," I retorted. "They get you one way or another. I've heard how they take hard-to-get parts out of radios and put cheap parts in their places. I've heard how they're liable to 'fix' a radio so it has to come back to the shop and they can make more money on it. And I've heard how they charge for parts they don't replace, and ... " He looked so mad that I thought he was going to jump over the counter at me so I backed a safe distance away. Then he opened up as if I was at fault: "Once in a while I get a customer like you. You're in a very small minority, thank God! When are people like you going to learn that businessmen like me have to satisfy their customers to remain in business?" he said, getting control of himself. "If I can't satisfy them, the shop around the corner will. It doesn't take a customer long to learn when he's being robbed, and when he finds out he spreads the word around and the shop that's robbing him soon finds itself with bankruptcy papers. I've been in business for ten years. I wouldn't have lasted ten days if I were dishonest ... " A woman walked into the store, interrupting him. She wanted a radio she had brought in for repair. "I'll get it from the back room," the repairman told her. To me he said, "I'll be back in a minute and we'll settle this." While he was in the back of the store, I picked up my radio and hurried out without paying. He hadn't convinced me with all his talking. Radio repairmen and others in business like that are just plain dishonest.
Posted July 11, 2022 |
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By B. W. Welz 
"The isolating condenser," he explained, "isolates
the 110-volt line from the chassis. If it's shorted you might get a bad shock or
even electrocute yourself."