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As a repair café volunteer, I've found two drawbacks to being a volunteer/having repair cafés: - A small subset of people buy shitty products (1$ bicycle lamps

• keithpeter 9y ago
  I'm surprised that the decline of sturdy individualists in the UK. Perhaps some outreach to local pensioner's groups &c might broaden the range of people. You might recruit a few more volunteers out of their sheds as well.
• acover 9y ago
  That's really interesting. I always assumed it was difficult to see a difference in quality. What parts usually break in the cheap stuff?
  • briandear 9y ago
    Plastic anything. Low quality screws getting stripped. Flimsy wiring. (I'm not the OP, but I'm speaking from my experience.)
    • emodendroket 9y ago
      Those all seem like things you could fix
      • convolvatron 9y ago
        sometimes there isn't enough plastic. but for slightly higher quality goods the threaded standoffs will often have enough material to take a wider machine thread, and enough strength to keep them for several cycles.
      • mseebach 9y ago
        Yes, but there's a certain futility in spending 30 minutes repairing a $5 widget when the $8 widget wouldn't have broken in the first place.
    • acover 9y ago
      How can you spot low quality screws? I thought you'd have to stress test them. What do you mean by flimsy wiring?
      • Caprinicus 9y ago
        I design a lot of consumer electronics. You obviously notice the way they strip obviously, but you can run them against a file to see how hard they are if you’re trying to choose parts/suppliers. There are other things to look for, like how precise the slot is or how smooth the outer edges are, but that’s not as important. IMO stress (shear, stretchy) tests are almost totally irrelevant for consumer products that have plastic or soft metal enclosures which will deform far before a fastener will break.
        • petra 9y ago
          Let's say you are given a product, which you can disassemble as you like. can you give a reasonable estimate of lifetime this way ? or does it require prolonged stress tests ? And if estimation is possible, how does one learn how to do it on their own ?
          • zrobotics 9y ago
            This is more of an experience thing, but it is usually very obvious if something is poor quality. A good thing to look at is typically the plastic parts. Look for signs the mold was in poor condition or cheap such as excess flashing or surface roughness. Another thing to examine is how thin the parts are, and presence or lack of reinforcing ribs. For comparison, take apart something like a Milwaukee cordless tool vs. a cheap no-name equivalent. AvE on YouTube does these kinds of teardowns, and does a decent job of explaining design decisions, but is definitely NSFW. Stress testing screws would be pointless for what you want to achieve, but like the other commenter said you can look at them too find signs they are poor quality (irregular heads, bad plating, etc).
            • TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    • hinkley 9y ago
      In the old days the plastic bits were often sturdier and held together by long screws. You had about a 75% chance of getting them all out without stripping them, if you had a long skinny screwdriver. Thirty more years of practice with injection molding and the addition of better stabilizers means the pieces are thinner. But sometimes they glue the pieces together. Or they use snaps to simplify the assembly line and reduce the plastic further. They squirt in a bead of silicon to prevent vibration or shorting damage. And part of me suspect that in The Old Days they used to repair products at the factory. Manufacturing processed have changed substantially starting in the late 70’s to favor more and more detection of problems during the assembly process (see Toyota). If the defect rate is high you repair things to keep your boss’s boss happy. If defects drop and manual labor prices go up then it’s less of a payoff. Or none at all.
• danans 9y ago
  > A small subset of people buy shitty products (1$ bicycle lamps, lights, cheap-as-shit appliances like clocks, hoovers This is not so surprising if you consider that both the desire to repair and the tendency to buy less expensive things can be driven by the overall drive to spend less, perhaps due to personal financial circumstances. It's a well understood phenomenon that people bias the financial short term over the long term in quick decisions. EDIT: In addition, many times, the higher quality option for a given type of product is many times more expensive than the "cheap" option, due to things like market segmentation. Given the lack of higher quality middle-priced option, it's pretty rational for people to choose the cheaper one.
  • wizardforhire 9y ago
    >Sam Vimes is also renowned for his "Boots Theory of socio-economic unfairness", as posited in Men at Arms: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness. Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_socio-economic_unfairness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes#Boots_theory_of_soci...
    • taeric 9y ago
      I like this suspicion, but I don't buy into anymore. I think there is a floor to quality. However, even what we call cheap quality shoes nowdays are typically above the quality of what you used to be able to get many places, period. More, if you want shoes to last a long time, I have found nothing beats having multiple sets and not wearing the same shoes constantly. I have not empirically studies this, though. So, if anyone has, I'd be delighted to see the results. I just know that if I buy an expensive set of shoes for me, they last about 6 months if I constantly wear them. I can, of course, resole them. But they are not magically doing better than the cheaper shoes I can also buy. Rotating shoes so that I wear a different set day to day makes a huge difference in how long they last.
• userbinator 9y ago
  these cafés attract in general "alternative" people. I've got no problem with that, but I'm a bit fed up with conspirationists, anti-nuclear, really left-wing people. I've had the opposite experience from repair forums and such; most of those into repairing things tend to have agricultural/automotive/trades backgrounds, and seem to be more ring-wing libertarians. Lots of them are anti-EPA too, which is a bit surprising. Perhaps both extremes of the political spectrum oppose the throwaway culture...
  • conanbatt 9y ago
    Libertarians are the people that can show up with the hard right or the hard left to get their gas guzzler/eco-bike repaired.
    • userbinator 9y ago
      Yes, that's exactly it --- one side wants repair because they are concerned about the environment, and the other side wants repair because they want "the good old days" when things were far more repairable.
      • rootusrootus 9y ago
        I have found that many older folks who reminisce about the good old days when everything lasted forever and was repairable, have conveniently forgotten one little detail: cost. For example, a bog standard plain white washing machine in 1962 would run you about $200. An equivalent no-frills washing machine today will be about $300. So yes, of course things back then lasted longer -- you were paying about ten times more for them. If there were a market for it, a manufacturer today could easily make a $2500 basic washing machine that would last 50 years with relatively little maintenance and make it inexpensive to repair if it does break.
        • verall 9y ago
          There is a market for that - commercial washing machines intended for multiple-use like in dormatories or laundrymats.
• convolvatron 9y ago
  my go-to move is to require them to put in a little effort themselves. guy brought in a crappy little kettle grill that had rusted out, said it was a shame to throw it away. I gave him a piece of sandpaper and told him that if he sanded off the rust and paint around the holes I would fill the holes with rod and set the legs again. it turned out not to be such a shame
  • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    I think this applies in many parts of life. I have a customer right now who fired off a brief email asking for something that will take quite a lot of my time, I will push some of it back on them.
  • kaybe 9y ago
    At our local bike repair cafe the volunteers will not even touch your things, they will just stand next to you and make comments about what to do.
• tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  I used to try and avoid the shitty products and "buy it for life". The trouble is it's often difficult to know the quality until you have lived with something for a while, even price doesn't give you a good idea. Sometimes cheap will last a long time or I might buy $1 bike lights because I don't want to worry about them being stolen. So now I'll start with shitty and if that fails then next time I'll spend a bit more. By the way I think the word you were looking for is conspiratorialist: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/conspiratorialist https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/conspiratoriali...
  • bsummer4 9y ago
    I've argued with a lot of friends about the "buy it for life" meme. I think it overlooks how quickly people change what they want from their things. Maybe a more healthy meme could be: "Buy high-quality things, but never buy new". If you believe a product is durable, you should be comfortable with buying it used. If you end up not needing the thing anymore, you should be able to sell it again without any waste or loss of value.
• mc32 9y ago
  I'd like to see a day when [where it makes sense] products are sold with a "repairability index" which might take into account several axes of repairability [mandated by some regulation]: 1. Ease. Can minor parts which break down due to environmental factors be easily swapped out (things which wear or suffer from breakdown over time) 2. The parts make sense to swap-out (sometimes new items are more efficient and are better than repairing an old inefficient item) 3. Cost. The repair may not be cost-effective. 4. Environmental impact. (others) Example, I've had a washing machine break down and all it was either a plastic bit that broke, another time it was one of the switches. Those two things have extended the life over 5 years. Online forums help a great deal in figuring out what might be the issue.
  • hannasanarion 9y ago
    iFixit keeps such an index for most electronics products.
    • QasimK 9y ago
      iFixit is the only place that I’m aware of, but “most” might be an exaggeration unfortunately. They have the most popular products certainly, but for less mainstream devices you are entirely out of luck. I support the idea behind iFixit, so in the future I might prefer to buy from their store. Otherwise, I’m not sure how else to expand range of devices that you can get a repair guide and repair score for. And I know of absolutely nothing for non-computing devices, ie. washing machines, fridges, TVs. I think such information is really important, but there is no incentive for anyone to provide it.
      • Domenic_S 9y ago
        Ifixit has plenty of repair information for non-computing devices! They host the most complete set of repair manuals for the Mercedes W123 for example. Here’s washing machines: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Washing_Machine https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Washing_Machine
        • 9y ago
• gonvaled 9y ago
  I never buy expensive stuff, since I assume that all I am paying is marketing. I have no time to research better, except for things I understand well and I really care about, i.e. a laptop. And even then repairability is not on my list, since laptops have so many options that finding one which satisfies my needs is already a challenge. The problem is compounded by the fact that my criteria (big horsepower per kg and lightweight) are contrary to repairability.
  • cmrx64 9y ago
    the "buy it for life" subreddit helps a lot here, for at least narrowing down the search space.
    • gonvaled 9y ago
      I"ll try that, but I am in the EU, no idea if it applies.
  • walshemj 9y ago
    You obvisly haven't compared how high street shoes / boots compare to mid market brands like loake are in terms of comfort and longevity. Its worth paying £170 for the comfort alone
    • gonvaled 9y ago
      No I haven't. The prospect of spending 200+€ in shoes, which are going to last forever, but which I am not going to use for long because they will optically deteriorate and I will anyway get tired of, is not alluring. My criteria for shoes (except for sports) is: 1. I must be able to put them on/off in 3s, without bending. Which implies no laces (or pre-tied knots) 2. reasonably comfortable 3. light 4. cheap
      • walshemj 9y ago
        Do you not use shoe Polish?
• blhack 9y ago
  >these cafés attract in general "alternative" people. I've got no problem with that, but I'm a bit fed up with conspirationists, anti-nuclear, really left-wing people. If anybody ever finds a solution to this, every hackerspace in the world would love to know what it is.
  • quickthrower2 9y ago
    Print a poster of a pyramid, an eye and "Annuit coeptis Novus ordo seclorum"
    • enraged_camel 9y ago
      You can tell it’s legit because it’s in Latin!
  • lostlogin 9y ago
    How do views on nuclear weapons/energy even come up? What are people bringing in?
    • mulmen 9y ago
      How do you know if someone is a conspiracy theorist? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
      • gaius 9y ago
        Or a vegan, a cyclist, a crossfitter, an atheist...
        • LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
          The masses have assembled to be enligthend about my lifestyle, for im the chosen prophet of the church of me.
        • ascorbic 9y ago
          > an atheist I'd imagine this only applies where atheists are in the minority
• icantdrive55 9y ago
  "When this case happens, I explain in good term that they should buy a slightly better quality next time;" 1. I guarantee 99% of the comsumers out there don't know quality, from junk. That whole, "You get what you pay for just doesn't equate to this last two decades." I'm taking comsumer goods mainly. I could give example, after example, but just too tired. I'll give a couple examples. Vechicles--the buyer has no clue, or real way to find out which vechicles are engineered well. And that's the reason we have movie stars still pitching products. Laptops--I just happened to have a 2000 Dell Laptop brochure on my desk. I was going to recycle it, but grew melancholy when looking at the quality of the laptops. They were built to last. As opposed to what we are offered today. "these cafés attract in general "alternative" people. I've got no problem with that, but I'm a bit fed up with conspirationists, anti-nuclear, really left-wing people." Give me an "alternative" mind over a conformist, corporate stooge any day. Those quirkey people bring change. They question the status quo. Again too tired to list examples. Almost every new invention was though of by a "alternative person". The rich boys usually had the resources enough to capitalize on it though.
• agumonkey 9y ago
  How many kids ? I often wonder how they would like seeing how stuff work instead of just using them. Also linking with future physics/math education.
• BeetleB 9y ago
  >These cafés attract in general "alternative" people. I've got no problem with that, but I'm a bit fed up with conspirationists, anti-nuclear, really left-wing people. Are these cafes in libraries? As someone who has gone to them a few times, I have a complaint about the other side. Of all the volunteers, there's always at least one who will start chiding the owners that they are not taking proper care of the appliance/tool/etc - and not in a friendly way. One volunteer started lecturing me saying I'm in this mess because I did not maintain it, etc. I told him I had no idea it required maintenance. "Well you should have read the manual!" Well forgive me for buying it for $10 at a Goodwill without a manual! Annoyed, I let him know there was no way I'd pay the $50-100 a new one would cost me just so that I can get a manual. (I got several years out of that $10 tool, so I'm still happy).
  • fjsolwmv 9y ago
    You could download the manual from the internet, instead of buying cheap junk and the demanding people fix your stuff for free.
    • BeetleB 9y ago
      >You could download the manual from the internet, instead of buying cheap junk and the demanding people fix your stuff for free. 1. I did not know it came with a manual. You don't expect everything to have one. Does your non-electric toothbrush have one? Just today I bought a tool from Home Depot. No manual. The table lamp I have on my table right now? No manual. 2. I didn't demand anything. If the guy said "Sorry, this is too much of a headache to fix", I'd be fine. 3. It was not "cheap junk". It was in very good condition when I bought it, and fairly pricey brand new. In the shape it was in when I bought it, it was better than buying a cheap one brand new. 4. Buying used stuff from Goodwill is a bad idea? The whole point behind these repair cafes is that one does not waste. Buying used stuff from Goodwill is very much in the spirit of what these people are doing. If someone had said that to me in a repair cafe for this item, I would have said "You're right. Crazy idea I had to try to repair things instead of just buying another one." 5. If he had merely informed me that it had gone bad due to poor maintenance, and suggested I Google how to take care of it, I would have really appreciated it. There's a world of a difference between "I think you should learn how to take care of this tool" and "You are an irresponsible owner who refuses to read the manual. Let me guess, you threw it away as soon as you bought it, right?" 6. I know it's shocking to hear, but yes, I expect that people will not charge me when they advertise their services as being free. It's amazing how much you can assume based on a small comment. I strongly suggest you not volunteer at such a place - these types of repair people are a disservice to the spirit of these cafes.
• smadge 9y ago
  Oh no your anti-corporate organization is being visited by left wing people...
• hungerstrike 9y ago
  That's OK, the people who know that there is a general conspiracy of corruption and that there are definitely conspiracies within the political and military power structure have been quite fed up with the likes of you for a long, long time now. Just this weekend I was reading and watching about Norman Finkelstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor and author of The Holocaust Industry. He's been kicked out of his job and banned from entering certain illegitimate countries due to his work that simply tells the truth. People like you, who just don't want to look at what's going on in the world around them or have no interest in standing up to prosecute those who do wrong, are the problem in this world.
• thecrazyone 9y ago
  # Solution for issue #1 (shitty product buyers): I think you should charge (if you're not already) for the repairs. This is just to 1) make sure you get paid for your effort and keep it sustainable or grow, 2) that we're accounting for the value of your time/effort Why?: This will fix the issues of effort in fixing a bike lamp. However, it is also possible that some widget is cheap and broken but the customer is willing to pay your repair fee (i.e. rational choice) because: 1. Repair parts for this item are no more made or difficult to get 2. the next best alternative is more expensive 1. the better quality one is way too expensive or beyond their budget at least 2. this needs to be cheap because you use it roughly (eg:workout earphones) or is likely to get lost (a toy) 3. This was given by a loved one or is a gift Any which way, it makes sense to use the "invisible hand of the market" here because the preferences of your customer are difficult to find - let them decide.
• hungerstrike 9y ago
  That's OK, the people who know that there is a general conspiracy of corruption and that there are definitely conspiracies within the political and military power structure have been quite fed up with those who refer to people as "conspirationists". Just this weekend I was reading and watching about Norman Finkelstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor and author of The Holocaust Industry. He's been kicked out of his job and banned from entering certain illegitimate countries due to his work that simply tells the truth. People who don't want to look at what's going on in the world around them or have no interest in standing up to prosecute those who do wrong, are the problem in this world.