Off topic: Schematic for monitor

[Glen Zook]

A company has to make available any service
information that exists (for which they may charge an
"appropriate fee") to any bonified service
organization or to any owner so long as the owner is
"qualified" to service the equipment.

Any charge for service information cannot exceed that
which is charged to the manufacturer's authorized
service organizations.

Back in the 1970s there were several two-way radio
manufacturers that were made "painfully aware" of this
law.  Also, any parts must be sold at the same price
to any service organization purchasing them.  That is,
the manufacturer cannot charge less to their
authorized service organization than they do to any
other service organization, individual, etc.

Motorola learned this the "hard way" when they had a
"3-tier" pricing on their service parts.  They had a
"suggested list price" (which is legal), a price that
they charged their authorized service shops, and a
price that was less than suggested list but more than
the authorized service shop that they charged other
service organizations.  The federal government got
"very" upset when some of the independent service
shops complained.  Motorola had to start selling their
service parts to the independents at the same price as
they did to the authorized shops.

I ran into this "no service data except to authorized
warranty stations" on a refrigerator that developed a
slight problem.  At first the manufacturer (major
manufacturer of appliances) refused to provide any
information.  Then they said that the manual cost
almost as much as the refrigerator.  Finally I
contacted the upper management of the manufacturer
pointing out that they were required to provide
service information and that their customer service
department was trying to "snow" me.

In less than a week a full service manual and updates
appeared in my mailbox along with a letter of appology
from the president of the company.  There was an
invoice along with the manual that had been marked
paid.  The invoice was for about $15 instead of the
several hundred that customer service had tried to
tell me the manual cost.  The $15 was the "normal"
cost for the service information when requested by
their authorized service centers.

The fact that the "repair" cost was almost the retail
cost of the item basically says that you would
probably get a replacement item and the company would
make more from the "repair" than they did from the
original sale.  This is a "ploy" to keep others from
easily repairing their equipment.  Since most consumer
products cost more these days to repair than to
purchase new replacements I suspect that many of the
companies don't have a clue as to how to actually
repair the equipment and thus do not have any service
information available.  Since the repair information
is not available to anyone (including themselves) it
would be very difficult to provide this information to
anyone.

However, certain information, like a basic schematic
should be available.  In fact, a small copy of the
schematic can often be found somewhere inside of the
equipment.  The only problem is that you often have to
remove the schematic and take it to a copy machine
that can enlarge several times in order to be able to
actually tell what the circuit looks like!

Glen, K9STH


--- Ron <ra.ah at RCN.COM> wrote:

I asked APC for a schematic and they refused, claiming
it's proprietary information. FYI, there is nothing
proprietary in a UPS. OTOH, fixing the darn thing
without a schematic could take hours and hours, as
opposed to 20 minutes with a schematic and PCB layout.

The UPS was about $130 or so at the time. Turned out
repair was (flat fee) $90, and just a bit less for
replacing it with a brand new one... No wonder these
pillars of honesty wouldn't give out the schematic...


=====
Glen, K9STH

Web sites

http://home.comcast.net/~k9sth
http://home.comcast.net/~zcomco




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