CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

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[CxTurbo]

I personally think the underlying issue is that you are pissed off that you put money in to the sets,Period.

Ask yourself this. Would you have sent in both whole projectors to get a 100% know good repair? I bet not as even that is not 100% because things can happen in transit. Not that I am making excuses for Curt.

Therefore you spent money on something hoping for the best only to be let down due to your own expectations. Do you feel like you wasted money on something only now to been told they are more or less worthless? With the exception of a few common failure parts as nobody is looking for complete lower end 7" and 8" sets. They just want to keep limping there current projector until something else comes along.

Just a little food for thought.

James

[jbmeyer13]

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[CxTurbo]

I hear you on the shipping. It sucks and with USPS almost doubling the cost of shipping it has/is going to continue to hurt business across the board.

As you said though there are two sides to every story.

If Curt has offered to redo the repair then he is trying. As far a shipping. It sucks but is something that is not covered by the company providing the warranty.

I had to send my DVDO VP50+ back to them once for an HDMI issue when I still had it. I paid for shipping both ways. Then when it was returned to me UPS decided that they would charge me brokerage and customs charged me duties on something I already bought here and paid taxes on once. That was a hard pill to swallow but something I needed to do. Same with a cable repair that I needed on my Cinemaquest RGBHV cable I had to send it back to Audioquest and payed shipping both ways but not for the re-termination repair.

I do sympathize with you. I hope that this can get resolved in an appropriate manner.

James

[Tinman]

You know, based on what I read so far, I would have done the same thing Curt did in an effort to save you money on shipping things that were not likely to need it. Yes, it sucks, but NO ONE could know that there were other problems. Techs are not psychic.

I do a lot of audio now, and to cover my own ass I insist they ship me the whole unit. I do NOT sell or repair parts. They send in the whole amp only to find that the preamp board is actually bad.... then they get pissed off at ME.

I avoid the whole problem by diagnosing the entire set, period. Don't want to pay the shipping... find someone else. I cannot please everybody.... neither can Curt. And he certainly knows his projectors.

Sorry you had more trouble with your projectors..... but honestly... this stuff is so old that ANYTHING can happen. It's no longer reliable enough to service with any sort of guarantee, so I stopped doing it.

Marc

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[Curt Palme]

Dan, to clarify, you sent me 21 emails, each one that I responded to, before sending me the boards in for repair. A whopping 12 of them were regarding shipping prices, and why it can't be cheaper. 44 emails in total, just on these repairs. I didn't respond to one of those because yes, I was tired of responding, and I'm swamped with work.

As for not complaining about my repair pricing:

Well, then why did I just pay $200 to get them repaired if you have
plenty in stock and they have no value? :/ That makes me feel like I
over-paid for a non-repair.

Bottom line is, we're never going to agree on this. If a customer calls or emails me today saying he has a dead 800 and a 708, I'd still only tell him to send in the power supplies to be repaired first. I don't believe there's any misunderstanding here. I believe that you expected to make a profit on flipping one of the sets, and to hopefully cover the costs of the repairs of the other one. Unless you're doing bulk volume, or have a rare high end set that you found at a thrift store for literally nothing (it's happened, people have posted about stuff like that), the market for older and lower end CRTs simply doesn't exist. Unfortunately I can't repair the boards for free, but I did give a substantial discount for the two as we discussed prior to you sending them in.

My offer still stands: Send in the boards that I've outlined in my emails last week, and there's a really good chance that both sets will work. It is however possible that there will be other issues in the set that will prevent them from working. They are used sets, one is 22 years old, the other one is about 15 years old.

I will re-repair the 708 power supply board at no charge. If it appears to be defective parts, or I missed something with the original repair, I will send it back and I'll cover the return shipping. If there are issues with the 800 boards, then I will charge for any repairs needed, as I have not seen the boards here before, and you cover return shipping. If it appears that a HV arc took out the 708 board, then I will only warranty the power supply if you buy 3 new HV leads at $50 each for the set, and you pay for the return shipping costs.

[Curt Palme]

Dan, to clarify, you sent me 21 emails, each one that I responded to, before sending me the boards in for repair. A whopping 12 of them were regarding shipping prices, and why it can't be cheaper. 44 emails in total, just on these repairs. I didn't respond to one of those because yes, I was tired of responding, and I'm swamped with work.

As for not complaining about my repair pricing:

Well, then why did I just pay $200 to get them repaired if you have
plenty in stock and they have no value? :/ That makes me feel like I
over-paid for a non-repair.

Bottom line is, we're never going to agree on this. If a customer calls or emails me today saying he has a dead 800 and a 708, I'd still only tell him to send in the power supplies to be repaired first. I don't believe there's any misunderstanding here. I believe that you expected to make a profit on flipping one of the sets, and to hopefully cover the costs of the repairs of the other one. Unless you're doing bulk volume, or have a rare high end set that you found at a thrift store for literally nothing (it's happened, people have posted about stuff like that), the market for older and lower end CRTs simply doesn't exist. Unfortunately I can't repair the boards for free, but I did give a substantial discount for the two as we discussed prior to you sending them in.

My offer still stands: Send in the boards that I've outlined in my emails last week, and there's a really good chance that both sets will work. It is however possible that there will be other issues in the set that will prevent them from working. They are used sets, one is 22 years old, the other one is about 15 years old.

I will re-repair the 708 power supply board at no charge. If it appears to be defective parts, or I missed something with the original repair, I will send it back and I'll cover the return shipping. If there are issues with the 800 boards, then I will charge for any repairs needed, as I have not seen the boards here before, and you cover return shipping. If it appears that a HV arc took out the 708 board, then I will only warranty the power supply if you buy 3 new HV leads at $50 each for the set, and you pay for the return shipping costs.

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[Elaine Benes]

[Phoenixed]

I say post the emails then. Since we are debating this.

Of course emitting personal details then.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

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[Curt Palme]

Dan, I think you're beating a dead horse here. I linked you to the post simply because I wanted to make sure my approach to this repair job was what most people would think I should have done, it wasn't to call you out (I didn't mention your name or post emails, etc, you could have chosen to not post in this thread) or to spread malice. I also didn't post to garner accolades.

I've already said, bottom line is, I'd tell you to send in the same boards if we started this process all over again. If you don't understand that I can't have 100% accurate troubleshooting, or that once in a while a repair a repair might fail again due to bad parts or hey, even sloppy workmanship (I won't rule that out either), then I'm sorry that you sent anything in in the first place. These are old projectors, although I dare say, I'll bet my repair success ratio is far better than anything just out of warranty with anything bought new these days.

I stated up front, I gave you a significant discount on the repairs, and I tested both boards for 24 hours before sending back. As for quality control, that's about all I can do to ensure the work is done correctly. SHort of you sending up the whole projectors for a 100% workover (in which case it would have been significantly over $200 for the pair), I gave you no better or worse service than anyone else.

I do think it's unreasonable for you to expect me to cover shipping both ways, or to tell me that I should have diagnosed other boards as being defective, when the chance of that happening is slim to none based on 1000s of repairs I've done over the years.

I've offered you several solutions, including selling the sets as is on eBay or Craigslist or parts thereof, and have even offered to buy 2 parts back in the sets so you could recoup most of your investment. If that's unacceptable to you, then I'm sorry, I don't think I can offer you a good solution.

[Curt Palme]

Dan, I think you're beating a dead horse here. I linked you to the post simply because I wanted to make sure my approach to this repair job was what most people would think I should have done, it wasn't to call you out (I didn't mention your name or post emails, etc, you could have chosen to not post in this thread) or to spread malice. I also didn't post to garner accolades.

I've already said, bottom line is, I'd tell you to send in the same boards if we started this process all over again. If you don't understand that I can't have 100% accurate troubleshooting, or that once in a while a repair a repair might fail again due to bad parts or hey, even sloppy workmanship (I won't rule that out either), then I'm sorry that you sent anything in in the first place. These are old projectors, although I dare say, I'll bet my repair success ratio is far better than anything just out of warranty with anything bought new these days.

I stated up front, I gave you a significant discount on the repairs, and I tested both boards for 24 hours before sending back. As for quality control, that's about all I can do to ensure the work is done correctly. SHort of you sending up the whole projectors for a 100% workover (in which case it would have been significantly over $200 for the pair), I gave you no better or worse service than anyone else.

I do think it's unreasonable for you to expect me to cover shipping both ways, or to tell me that I should have diagnosed other boards as being defective, when the chance of that happening is slim to none based on 1000s of repairs I've done over the years.

I've offered you several solutions, including selling the sets as is on eBay or Craigslist or parts thereof, and have even offered to buy 2 parts back in the sets so you could recoup most of your investment. If that's unacceptable to you, then I'm sorry, I don't think I can offer you a good solution.

[Spanky Ham]

I have stayed out of this, but can we get a break down of the costs involved here? I am not understanding the shipping costs in this matter.

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[draganm]

[dkap]

draganm, thank you for your continued attempts to keep things light.

BTW, I should have added this to my previous post: I recently sold a computer part on eBay. The buyer sent me a note saying he had left positive feedback for the item being as advertised, but that it didn't work upon arrival. He didn't ask for anything, and I was under no obligation to do so at that point, but I sent him a replacement free of charge. It was the right thing to do in that case.

Dan

[CIR Engineering]

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