Wednesday, January 09, 2008

You Can't Get The Parts


This morning our TV went pfft! in the middle of the always inciteful GMTV news hour and the screen went blank; the little 'start up' light flashed distressedly instead of 'starting up' and a nasty smell like your dodgy Scalextric transformer of old came out the back.

Probably a component worth 75p has fused.

But I know what this means. It means I will go to a TV repair shop, if I can find one, and they will come around and look at it and breath in sharply and ask me how long I've had it and say, well, it'll cost £90 plus VAT for the parts plus the £80 call out charge and then there's the labour and do you know what mate it's probably not worth your while repairing it because next month you'll find something else will blow and let's face it you can get one of them new flatscreen jobs for under £500 in Currys.

*sigh* And my already bloated credit card will be asked to ingest still more debt.

Why does nothing get repaired anymore whilst at the same time we are hectored incessantly by those in power about the need to re-use and recycle and told that our complacent days as a throwaway society must surely end if we care at all about this beautiful planet on which we live?

It'll be me next.

"Thing is love, the brain's started to go and the physical dexterity's not what it was - I could patch him up for you and he might last a bit longer but to be honest you'd be better off with one of them new flatstomached models down at the gym. Shall I see if I can order you one...?"

Delgados - 'Pull The Wires From The Wall' (1998)

9 comments:

  1. Mine had a dizzy spell a few years ago, never recovered and it's been permanently stuck on 'stretch' ever since - giving everyones head the proportions of Zippy from Rainbow

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  2. we're not having a telly in our tiny council box up high but will be cherry picking the best of the bbc from their fab new web doodah and downloading prison break and dexter and heroes and booshes as and when. to be honest i don't think i'll be able to tear myself away from the post office tower and centrepoint from 14 flights up.
    ps
    throwing a telly out of an upstairs window is ace - it makes a really good wooooosh noise. we forgot to leave ours plugged in which i bet would've been even better
    x

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  3. Who needs telly when you've got The Delgados?

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  4. 'Inciteful GMTV' - better than any of the common abuse I would've come up with. Fiona Philips ... Why?

    There's no more in the pot like you old lad. You'll ne'er be as disposable as a BIC Razor.

    My fridge freezer smelt like that as it gave up the ghost - on bloomin' Christmas Eve of all days. Fortunately the 'beer fridge' up the shed remained fully servicable. Mrs VanDyke asked me to 'get it sorted', so I 'cool bagged' the turkey and left it on top of the beer fridge which remained fully laden with ale.

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  5. 'Insightful' contributions as ever - and I can't help but feel we get a better class of comment here in general.

    Er.. and actually Dick, I meant 'insightful' re. GMTV (with sarcasm) but you're right, 'inciteful' is far superior and will stay. How very serendipitous. Top marks on the Chrimbo 'cool bag' tactic there old chap.

    Wouldn't it be great if the sound went on Mondo's TV too and everyone ended up talking like Zippy as well?

    Miss Ally and MB, I succumbed and bought a new one. It'll be nice for nature films. The old one's awaiting disposal if any 14th floor flat dwellers fancy a Led Zep moment.

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  6. So what did you get? I'm guessing 172 cm of retractable plasma with mahogany lift cabinet. You'll be able to see every blackhead on David Attenborough's nose.

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  7. A flat black 32" Samsung thing. But everybody does look spottier, it's true.

    Now I have to sell one of my children to pay for it.

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  8. Here in South Korea, they have a novel way of dealing with such annoyances that are minor to them but important to us.
    They repair everything except the part that is causing the problem.
    Indulge me.
    I bought a lovely DVD recorder from the electronics market at Yeongsan (a place that is the Korean counterpart of about 40 PC Worlds and Currys on top of each other) for the equivalent of £80 (well, it was a Korean make).
    Got it home, it plays all the stuff I download from the PC AND the DVDs I bought in England (Wind In The Willows and Yes Minister cos I can't buy them here).
    Starts making a loud buzzing noise when I load anything after only 2 weeks' use, so I take it to the A/S in Anyang (20 miles away) and they just HAVE to keep it overnight (well, it's under guarantee, so I grit my teeth and plod home).
    Next day, I go and get it, bring it home, and almost immediately it starts the same noise.
    I take it back again, this time in the pouring rain on a Saturday and remonstrate with the same guy in my best Korean. He gives me some involved spiel about how they cleaned it, tested it, retested it for hours and hours...and of course, it never made THAT noise in THEIR shop.
    I was on the verge of camping out in their head office, when, obviously wise to some bad publicity for a Korean company (and the Koreans will move heaven and Earth to avoid that), he says, 'It might be the switch', takes it in back, changes the switch in 15 minutes, and it's worked perfectly ever since.
    Now I COULD tell you about my missus' music centre...have you got an hour? Put your feet up, I'll make you some green tea.

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  9. I've just wasted an evening getting the printer to work again. Printers - guaranteed to make the blood boil. I hardly use the thing but it is very good at telling me it needs more ink. So I put a bit of software on that is supposed to get round that problem and what happens? I get an ink out message AND it won't let me change the cartridges. So I have to go thru the whole software uninstall/reinstall merrygoround, then it finally lets me change the cartridges, but tells me it wants it nozzles cleaned. So I clean its nozzles twice which doesn't seem to be quite enough but I'm not doing it anymore because that process uses ink so before I know it I will need new cartridges and I haven't even printed anything yet. I could go on but I won't.

    Thanks for the birthday greetings over at Feel It. I'm feeling like an old get at the moment - technology is starting to bug me, and I've got man flu. The incontinence can only be just around the corner (or down the leg).

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