You can't please everyone. Here are just a few of my pet peeves as a repair 
technician...

Dirty equipment.
     Is there any excuse? Some of the equipment I get in my shop for repair would 
embarrass me if I was the one taking it in to be fixed. A VCR or TV with a thick 
crust of gunk all over it from dirt, food, and I'm afraid to guess what else is 
disgusting to work on and worse to clean. I understand the dust inside and 
soiling on the buttons from normal use, but some of this stuff is pretty bad. 
I sometimes spend more time cleaning it than repairing it. One fellow accused me 
of switching TV sets on him... he didn't recognise his own set when it was clean. 
I draw the line at pets releaving themselves inside a VCR. A tangle of hair in 
the mechanism is bad enough, but there's a limit.

Pet lovers.
     No, I'm not talking about normal people who love and take proper care of their
pets. Once upon a time, I was a field tech (remember house calls?), until a visit 
to one customers house cost me my job. When they opened the door, the smell was so
bad it would gag a maggot. I walked across a carpet that was squishy under my feet
because it was soaked with urine. I went to the TV in the corner and pulled it out
only to discover piles of dog waste behind it. Without saying a word, I picked up
my tools and walked out the door. The next day, I was looking for a job... and 
glad to be. It's just one more reason I'm a confirmed "bench tech".

It's fixed... why don't they come and get it?
     I can understand sudden financial problems, but why don't some customers let 
me know if they can't pick up their repaired equipment in a timely manner? When I 
call them, I get promises and more promises. I work cheaper than any other shop I 
know (but I don't do cheap work) and most of my customers appreciate that. It's 
not the money. Even when the work is free for whatever reason, they still take 
their sweet time picking it up. I just don't understand that. If they wanted it 
fixed and cheerfully approved the estimate, why not come and get it? Fortunately, 
not all customers are like that.

Big remotes, small batteries!
     Why? No matter how big the remote control unit is, the manufacturers insist 
on using the smallest (AAA) penlight batteries for power. There are sometimes as 
many as four cells required. This represents the highest cost per battery of any 
cell and they don't last nearly as long as any other battery type and so require 
replacement more often. Remote manufacturers are obviously in bed with battery 
vendors. 

Most of all, I hate waste!
     The direction that all of consumer electronics is going is disturbing for 
many reasons. The incredible waste makes me crazy. Equipment is built with the 
dumpster in mind, not the repair shop. With more and more electronic devices 
nowadays, we simply cannot repair them no matter how much we are allowed to spend 
or how much effort we put into it. The manufacturers will not support the things 
they make with service data and parts any longer. That means the equipment will 
go in the trash, no matter what the initial cost was or how well it worked when 
new. The waste is probably the hardest thing for me to accept. That's one reason 
I stay in business here... to save what I can. It's hardly because of the profit. 
I don't intend to quit my "day job" as a repair tech for the University of 
Washington. Those electronic classrooms don't fix themselves when something 
breaks. Nobody can afford to toss everything in the garbage... certainly not a 
$10,000 video projector. The customer with the $100 VCR should at least have a 
chance at a repair before thinking about dumping that machine. I'm still here, 
but I don't know for how much longer. My sons will not follow in my footsteps.
They are smarter than that. 

Ray Carlsen CET

PS  The CET stands for Certified Electronic Technician. That just means someone 
else thinks I'm qualified to repair electronic equipment. I should be by now. I've 
spent my whole life doing just that. One drawback is that we die-hard types do 
tend to collect a lot of useful "stuff" in our garages, basements, spare rooms, 
etc. It goes along with the "no waste" policy. My home is now full of stuff I 
just couldn't bear to throw away. But, after 50 years of accumilating all this 
"treasure", I now admit that CET means "Collected ENOUGH Trash".