CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Curt Palme]

I figured I'd post first, as this may hit the forum.

Had a customer (that actually posted here about the issues about a month ago) that had a dead Barco 800 and dead Barco 708. I believe the sets were new to him, he picked them up as defective units. We emailed back and forth regarding the diagnosis a few times as is standard, but he held off sending the boards up due to the shipping expense. I explained that sending to my US address wouldn't change the price, as I'd have to do customs paperwork and get charged taxes to bring them into Canada, so shipping right to Canada was the cheapest option.

About a month later, he sent me the SMPS of both sets. The 800 SMPS had a weird problem in it, so I tested one of my stock boards that was modded with all the mods that I do, and I repaired the 708 power supply, and test ran both for 24 hours before sending them back. Since he sent in two repairs, I discounted the repairs pretty heavily, since a Barco 800 really isn't worth anything. $200 incl return shipping for both repairs, and it's normally $250 per repair. (mind you, I haven't charged $250 to repair an 800 SMPS for a few years now).

So, he gets the boards back fine, and emails saying that now the 800 fires up, but it's in scan fail mode. I tell him that there was no way for me to determine that there were additional problems in the set, so he'd have to send me the H and V boards to test and repair. Repair costs would be minimal, say $75 to test and repair incl return shipping.

He then installs the 708 SMPS. He's apparently tweaking the set for 90 minutes or so, leaves the room, comes back, and the set is dead. SInce he wasn't in the room, there's not really any way of telling whether the set has an HV arc that may have taken out the SMPS, whether something was wrong with the repair I did on the SMPS or something that's taking out the SMPS ( that would be exceptionally rare).

So I tell him to send the 708 SMPS up with the H and V board out of the 800, and I'd repair it for free in case I did something wrong.

Customer is now upset, and wants me to buy the SMPS' back. I tell him that I don't need them that I have lots here. He asks why I bothered getting him to send up his supplies, if I just could have sold him new ones. I tell him that the outright purchase of parts is usually more expensive than repairing units, and a repaired board keeps any other settings (esp in the case of the 708) set as close as possible to the other boards in the set.

So, now he wants me to cover all shipping costs to return the boards, not to mention telling me that I overcharged him, and that I don't back my services. He also says that I should have told him to send in the H and V boards along with the SMPS to save on shipping costs. My counter is that there was no way of telling if those boards or other boards had issues affecting the set.

Now he wants to reverse the Paypal payment that he's done, as he doesn't want to send the boards in. I've offered to buy the two quadruplers out of the sets for $150, he doesn't seem to be interested in that.

Feel free to comment on this one.

[Curt Palme]

I figured I'd post first, as this may hit the forum.

Had a customer (that actually posted here about the issues about a month ago) that had a dead Barco 800 and dead Barco 708. I believe the sets were new to him, he picked them up as defective units. We emailed back and forth regarding the diagnosis a few times as is standard, but he held off sending the boards up due to the shipping expense. I explained that sending to my US address wouldn't change the price, as I'd have to do customs paperwork and get charged taxes to bring them into Canada, so shipping right to Canada was the cheapest option.

About a month later, he sent me the SMPS of both sets. The 800 SMPS had a weird problem in it, so I tested one of my stock boards that was modded with all the mods that I do, and I repaired the 708 power supply, and test ran both for 24 hours before sending them back. Since he sent in two repairs, I discounted the repairs pretty heavily, since a Barco 800 really isn't worth anything. $200 incl return shipping for both repairs, and it's normally $250 per repair. (mind you, I haven't charged $250 to repair an 800 SMPS for a few years now).

So, he gets the boards back fine, and emails saying that now the 800 fires up, but it's in scan fail mode. I tell him that there was no way for me to determine that there were additional problems in the set, so he'd have to send me the H and V boards to test and repair. Repair costs would be minimal, say $75 to test and repair incl return shipping.

He then installs the 708 SMPS. He's apparently tweaking the set for 90 minutes or so, leaves the room, comes back, and the set is dead. SInce he wasn't in the room, there's not really any way of telling whether the set has an HV arc that may have taken out the SMPS, whether something was wrong with the repair I did on the SMPS or something that's taking out the SMPS ( that would be exceptionally rare).

So I tell him to send the 708 SMPS up with the H and V board out of the 800, and I'd repair it for free in case I did something wrong.

Customer is now upset, and wants me to buy the SMPS' back. I tell him that I don't need them that I have lots here. He asks why I bothered getting him to send up his supplies, if I just could have sold him new ones. I tell him that the outright purchase of parts is usually more expensive than repairing units, and a repaired board keeps any other settings (esp in the case of the 708) set as close as possible to the other boards in the set.

So, now he wants me to cover all shipping costs to return the boards, not to mention telling me that I overcharged him, and that I don't back my services. He also says that I should have told him to send in the H and V boards along with the SMPS to save on shipping costs. My counter is that there was no way of telling if those boards or other boards had issues affecting the set.

Now he wants to reverse the Paypal payment that he's done, as he doesn't want to send the boards in. I've offered to buy the two quadruplers out of the sets for $150, he doesn't seem to be interested in that.

Feel free to comment on this one.

[CIR Engineering]

Well, some people just don't get it... Your client bought defective projectors and didn't know what was wrong with them. I don't know how you could possibly know everything that is wrong with said projectors without ever having seen them. Curt, you can only go by the data you have.

I don't get the argument that you should have known to have had him also send the H and V boards. If that were the idea, than he should have sent you every board in each projector to test and repair. It just doesn't make sense.

When I do board repair I give a one year warrantee on most of my work. The warrantee covers parts I replaced and labor on the specific repair I performed. My warrantee never covers shipping in either direction. I cannot foresee everything that may go wrong in a projector and neither can anyone else.

Personally if I were you I wouldn't even bother with petty low dollar repairs like these. IMHO the reward for you is not worth this sort of trouble. A lot of labor, trouble, and energy for $250. Just let the old 7” and most 8” projectors die.

craigr

[CxTurbo]

Curt,

Shipping IMHO for your expertise/service is the nature of the beast. So your offer to repair the SMPS for free is standing behind your repair/work (Especially since you have no clue what happened or caused the problem now). I agree that there was no way to know of additional problems until the biggest issue was repaired. These things happen all the time.

So just to recap. You are IMO sanding behind your work and shipping is just a formality that can not be avoided period. I can understand that the customer may be upset that the repairs did not fix all the issues. It is something to be expected with these aging electronics with assumed/unknown histories. Hopefully there was just a venting that was needed on their part and cooler heads/time will prevail to get the issue resolved.

James

[Tinman]

[CIR Engineering]

[gjaky]

The guy bought two dead barcos... what was he expecting?

[dkap]

I hadn't planned on airing dirty laundry on the forum... A few corrections need to be made, however:

One of the units (800) was bought dead, the other (708s) was fully functional before the power supply died on me. I bought the 800 as a gamble, figuring I could spread the shipping costs across two items needing repair, thus helping justify the cost of the first one. The tubes in the 800 appeared to be near-mint, so I figured the rest of the set might be in good shape once the power supply was repaired.

Because of the high shipping costs ($75 round trip), I asked Curt twice if there was anything else I ought to send in at the same time for him to look at. The first time got overlooked, so I asked again. He quite confidently said no the second time. I get that unforeseen things came into play, but he never mentioned the possibility of there being anything else that needed to be checked. I believe I did all I could have done there.

I did not ask him to buy back the repaired power supplies, per se. The debate is over him telling me they have no value when I said I was leaning toward parting out the sets (and asked what various parts would be worth to him) instead of paying the high shipping fees for another attempt at repairing them. Surely, the repaired parts would have value to a future customer. But no, Curt has too many of them. I asked why then are they not much cheaper as replacements? Simple supply and demand. He claimed it's best not to mix and match parts from different sets, but that's exactly what he did with the 800 in sending back a replacement. I understand where he's coming from, but many aspects of the story have been contradictory and his post here does not come close to fairly explaining the situation or some less than professional details of his communication.

Dan

[Curt Palme]

Then let me rephrase again Dan:

Yes, I have at least 10 of each supply in stock. Most of the 708 supplies in stock need some sort of repair, ditto for the 800s that have been sitting on the shelf for 5+ years. Since zero CRT parts are available from Barco for any machine at this point, there are select parts between Barco sets, like transformers, that can be swapped, which is why I'm keeping the ones I have. Yes, you could have outright purchased two replacement power supplies, but they are more expensive than the repairs I did to yours, because at that point I am actually reducing stock. Time spent to test the power supplies before I send them out is about the same as if I were to repair yours, so there's no savings to me there.

Generally yes, it's a good idea to keep a set as stock as possible, so I always try to maintain that. In the case of your 800 supply, it had an issue that I couldn't easily solve in the time allotted for the repair, so I chose to replace it.

I repeat for the third time: There is NO WAY that I could have predicted that there were other problems in the BArco 800. None whatsoever. The set is 22+ years old, and sure, you could have sent me every board in the set for testing. That would have tripled your shipping costs, and maybe I would have found another issue, or maybe they would have all worked fine here, and a part could have decided to fail when you got all of them back.

Bottom line is, I offer a repair service. You cover shipping. That's the way all repair depots work, ditto for eBay sales, and the purchase of new electronics for that matter. If you live in Timbuktu and your brand new Sony BluRay player packs it in, you send it to the repair shop prepaid. Go check with Sony, I just had to do that with them. If it's not repaired correctly, you're responsible for sending it back.

I do stand behind my repairs, you just need to send them in. In the case of the 800, the power supply works fine, you have other issues. With your 708, I suspect HV lead arcing that took out the power supply, but since you weren't in the room when it happened, that's only a guess. HV leads are $50 each now, VDC just jacked the price way up. On a guess, you could replace all three, that's the most likely thing to take out the power supply a second time, but I'm guessing.

Sorry you're not happy, but for the reasons I gave you, plus the reasons that others posted on this thread, that's the way I'll do business here, and the way I will continue to do business, the same way I have been online since 1999.

[Curt Palme]

Then let me rephrase again Dan:

Yes, I have at least 10 of each supply in stock. Most of the 708 supplies in stock need some sort of repair, ditto for the 800s that have been sitting on the shelf for 5+ years. Since zero CRT parts are available from Barco for any machine at this point, there are select parts between Barco sets, like transformers, that can be swapped, which is why I'm keeping the ones I have. Yes, you could have outright purchased two replacement power supplies, but they are more expensive than the repairs I did to yours, because at that point I am actually reducing stock. Time spent to test the power supplies before I send them out is about the same as if I were to repair yours, so there's no savings to me there.

Generally yes, it's a good idea to keep a set as stock as possible, so I always try to maintain that. In the case of your 800 supply, it had an issue that I couldn't easily solve in the time allotted for the repair, so I chose to replace it.

I repeat for the third time: There is NO WAY that I could have predicted that there were other problems in the BArco 800. None whatsoever. The set is 22+ years old, and sure, you could have sent me every board in the set for testing. That would have tripled your shipping costs, and maybe I would have found another issue, or maybe they would have all worked fine here, and a part could have decided to fail when you got all of them back.

Bottom line is, I offer a repair service. You cover shipping. That's the way all repair depots work, ditto for eBay sales, and the purchase of new electronics for that matter. If you live in Timbuktu and your brand new Sony BluRay player packs it in, you send it to the repair shop prepaid. Go check with Sony, I just had to do that with them. If it's not repaired correctly, you're responsible for sending it back.

I do stand behind my repairs, you just need to send them in. In the case of the 800, the power supply works fine, you have other issues. With your 708, I suspect HV lead arcing that took out the power supply, but since you weren't in the room when it happened, that's only a guess. HV leads are $50 each now, VDC just jacked the price way up. On a guess, you could replace all three, that's the most likely thing to take out the power supply a second time, but I'm guessing.

Sorry you're not happy, but for the reasons I gave you, plus the reasons that others posted on this thread, that's the way I'll do business here, and the way I will continue to do business, the same way I have been online since 1999.

[dkap]

Wouldn't having my power supplies back increase stock and have value to you? You never explained that swapping parts between units was bad, so it can't have been that big of a deal to you at the time... It's not like I gave you a deadline when I needed it back by.

The whole point of sending the parts in to you for repair was to do all your mods to eliminate the typical Barco power supply failures. If there are other things that could affect it, such as arcing causing the failure, then that should have been mentioned as something I needed to consider. Send in more parts or do some preventative work before firing it back up. You're the expert in these matters, not me.

Combining the 800's power supply raised the shipping total from $48 to $53, so adding another board or two for $5-10 more would have made a heck of a lot more sense then spending another $75 for a second shipment.

[Curt Palme]

Seriously Dan, I give up. I guess you've never ever sent anything in for repair? You expect me to have 100% successful diagnosis from 1000s of miles away without seeing the set? I was 100% right on both counts- both power supplies WERE bad. Who knows, maybe you got a 708 that was used as a parts mule, that had a number of suspect or defective parts stuffed into it from other sets that were in service. I've seen that before, but there's no way I can predict that.

Maybe I did indeed repair the 708 power supply incorrectly, that is indeed a possibility. I'd still need you to send me back the board.

I did indeed do all the mods I normally do to both power supplies as I'd emailed up front. HOWEVER.. if I received a bad part from China (which has happened due to Chinese counterfeiters), or IF you have additional problems in the set, I can't predict that.

Now, on the 800, tell you what. It's also possible for the H shift, or the convergence board to also cause a scan fail condition. In fact, I've also had one RGB board and one quad decoder board cause a scan fail. That's one time in literally 100s of Barcos that it's happened. Did you want me to tell you to send those boards up as well, in the tiniest chance that they might be defective? If so, your shipping costs would more than double of what you paid, because the convergence board is about 24" X 24".

As I said, I used my 20ish years of experience servicing 1000s of projectors to diagnose your projectors. I can't be 100% accurate, but I did the best I could. I also have answered 30+ emails before and after the repair at no charge.

[Curt Palme]

Seriously Dan, I give up. I guess you've never ever sent anything in for repair? You expect me to have 100% successful diagnosis from 1000s of miles away without seeing the set? I was 100% right on both counts- both power supplies WERE bad. Who knows, maybe you got a 708 that was used as a parts mule, that had a number of suspect or defective parts stuffed into it from other sets that were in service. I've seen that before, but there's no way I can predict that.

Maybe I did indeed repair the 708 power supply incorrectly, that is indeed a possibility. I'd still need you to send me back the board.

I did indeed do all the mods I normally do to both power supplies as I'd emailed up front. HOWEVER.. if I received a bad part from China (which has happened due to Chinese counterfeiters), or IF you have additional problems in the set, I can't predict that.

Now, on the 800, tell you what. It's also possible for the H shift, or the convergence board to also cause a scan fail condition. In fact, I've also had one RGB board and one quad decoder board cause a scan fail. That's one time in literally 100s of Barcos that it's happened. Did you want me to tell you to send those boards up as well, in the tiniest chance that they might be defective? If so, your shipping costs would more than double of what you paid, because the convergence board is about 24" X 24".

As I said, I used my 20ish years of experience servicing 1000s of projectors to diagnose your projectors. I can't be 100% accurate, but I did the best I could. I also have answered 30+ emails before and after the repair at no charge.

[draganm]

Dan you should go a bunch more broken Barco's, and then eventually, by swapping parts, you'll have enough spares to fix pretty much anything.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Ive bought quite alot of items from Curt, has has never once told me it is a garranteed fix to my issues and always said there is no way to know for sure that there is no further issues.

Ive never felt misled in any way, ive never felt as though Curt was anything but very fair. He ALWAYS goes miles out of his way to make certain people are happy. There is no question about this, it is a plain and simple fact.

If you have felt this way, then i dont see this as Curt's fault. It looks to me, even from reading your side, that he did everything you asked of him within reason.

Incase it's not obvious, Curt has my full support.

[CIR Engineering]

Have you ever had a car repaired at the shop and the first repair didn't fix the problem. What happened next?

craigr

[CIR Engineering]

[dkap]

[CasetheCorvetteman]

[Curt Palme]

Hey guys, it doesn't have to degrade into a pissing match. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't out of line, and it appears that I wasn't.

It's now up to Dan if he wants to send up other boards that are an issue, or whether he wants to part the sets out. His call completely.

[Curt Palme]

Hey guys, it doesn't have to degrade into a pissing match. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't out of line, and it appears that I wasn't.

It's now up to Dan if he wants to send up other boards that are an issue, or whether he wants to part the sets out. His call completely.

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Oh its no pissing match Curt, i cant piss as high as i once could anyway

[Zebu Fellenz]

[Curt Palme]

That's 'cause you're way down under.

[Curt Palme]

That's 'cause you're way down under.