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Written by Geoff Jones
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Wednesday, 04 November 2009 12:30 |
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In today's society a lot of items are just to expensive to get fixed, or are just as cheap to buy new so it creates a bit of a tough decision for many people who are faced with considering to repair something or replace it. I think the area that this is most common is with electronics.
This blog post is a little different from most of my posts but i've been in this situation several times and wanted to share my experience and get your thoughts too.
Recently our microwave stopped working. Let me tell you, when your microwave stops working, only then do you realize how often you actually use it. It certainly is convenient. So, to replace the microwave with an equivalent unit, or the same unit (which I happen to like) is about $200-$250 plus taxes. I decided to look at what it would cost to have it repaired instead. The repair costs for it were $130 including taxes. This is certainly cheaper than buying a new one but the tough part of the decision is that the thing that was wrong with my microwave was not one of the more common failure points for microwaves according to the people at the electronics repair shop. If the more common failure occurs in the future it would cost an additional $60-$100 to repair that as well. So, it's a little bit of a gamble. The repair place indicated there are no tests that can be done to determine life expectancy of the parts that more commonly fail (i.e. magnatron and invertor) so I would have to take a chance.
Well, I decided to have the unit fixed since there was no way I would send it off to landfill, and I figured that even though electronics recycling is great, it's still better if you don't have to use energy to recycle something at all. It cost me $130 (incl. tax) to fix the unit and it's running great. I hope that it will still be running great in 3-5 years from now as well.
I think that the decision would have been very different if the replacement microwave was only $100 or less. It's hard to justify repair when replacement costs are the same or possibly even less.
I had a similar decision to make a few years ago when my expensive coffee maker ($200) started leaking after 3 years. The aluminum burner had a small rust spot and was leaking (apparently it is possible for aluminum to rust although not very common). I employed the help of a local metal worker I had used before to get some fabrication work done and he was able to weld the burner for me and plug the hole for $20. So far it's been over 2 years since I did that and the coffee maker, although aging in other areas, is still working fine and doesn't leak. That decision was certainly a good one.
So, the point of my rambling is mearly to generate some discussion from you, our readers. Leave some comments, let us know about your experiences and tell us what you think. If this is an interesting topic for people we can start a discussion group in the community for it.
thanks for listening.
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