Crt fading away

[rulerboyz]

The current career for fixing consumer electronics involves driving around in a dump truck and helping people get rid of their disposable electronics.

[JCFitz]

Originally Posted by rulerboyz

The current career for fixing consumer electronics involves driving around in a dump truck and helping people get rid of their disposable electronics.

Hahaha.
I am one of the few working in consumer electronics repair.I love what I do but sadly it's no way to make a decent living.Most surviving tv shops like ours have to take on warranty work to survive.Believe me plenty of this new stuff breaks under warranty and service contract.But we still get regular stuff in for repair.People even bring in and have repaired as small as a 19" regular tv or 13" tv/vcr or tv/dvd combo.They won't spend much of course.

I don't own the shop so i have to take what I get paid and it ain't a lot.Let's just say I rent my trailer out in the country much cheaper than the average apartment around here at around $400 a month.But if I had to move and pay more my budget would get pretty tight.Of course the boss has his own home but he's still paying the mortgage and he's 60 years old so he ain't rich either.He does own the building the shop is in outright so he doesn't have to rent.
There's a tech on a tv repair forum I belong to that has a big shop in
Phonenix,Arizona that's looking for an experienced tech that claims he's willing to pay $60,000 a year w/benefits so there must be money in repairing the new technology sets in the city.
I wouldn't want to move to get the higher money.That's clean across the country and all my family is here. I can barely stand the heat of summer on the eastern shore of Maryland let alone 100 plus degrees in the desert.
I'm used to living in a small town. a city of 3 million would be a shock
And the cost of living would probably make up for the difference in pay.
Plus it would be a nightmare to get my collection of probably 10,000 plus vinyl lps and 45s and 10 jukeboxes moved there.Thank goodness I gave up on collecting tvs.

I used to make more than my paycheck some weeks selling used tvs,vcrs and stereos at the flea market.But it started going downhill in the late 90s.The vcrs died around 2001 and the tv sales got pretty pitifil until I gave up in
2005 when I had to let a nice 27"tv w/a new remote go for $40 to move it
and a 19" tv w/ remote I struggled to sell for $20.If it had knobs or no remote forget it. Those sets wouldn't even bring $2 at the auction. Even the wooden Sonys that were remote wouldn't get a $2 bid.The last time I set up I struggled to make table rent.I ended up taking loads of vcrs and tvs to the dump.No tube sets were disposed of. Byan saved those.

The used market has even died for bigscreens. My boss used to not be able to keep a used bigscreen in the shop.He could sell a used one easy for 400-$500.He's got a nice modern silver Philips 55" he can't move.They always ask How much for the flatscreen? and we have to tell them that that one belongs to a customer.I have a friend that just got a Plasma and he can't use it because he can't unload the big projection tv he wants to get rid of.(no room and no storage place).The Plasma is still in the box after I warned him not to put it on top of the other tv because it would surely topple over.Nobody wants a big boxy projection tv anymore.I've exhausted everybody I thought wanted a big tv and he did too.The price dropped on the flat tvs so the demand dried up for a cheap used projection tv so they could have a bigscreen.

I don't know if I would have gotten into the consumer electronics repair business
if I knew that at almost 40 years old and with 18 years experience repairing tvs for a living and 5 more repairing them on my own as teenager I would only be making scarcely more than
someone who's been working at Circuit City on the sales floor for a while.(The one's they are firing now because they make too much...lol).

[fujifrontier]

Originally Posted by karmaman

I completely agree. I am a 15 year old freshman in high school and I'm really into electronics, started when I was 10, and it saddens me I was not around during the heyday of tubes. The way they work absolutely fascinates me, I could read about them all day. When our main TV started having trouble (vertical foldover) I ran across a very interesting read on how tubes work (google "picture tube info", it's the first link) and that really got me into tubes and how they work. The image quality and sturdiness of a quality tube blows anything else out of the water, and it is always interesting to take the back cover of a TV or crt computer monitor off and just look. I really wish I had been around 15-20 years earlier, back when LCD and Plasma were unheard of. Nowadays, when you walk into a store, all you see is crap made by Funai and Orion.

Too bad by the time I have enough money to buy stuff tubes will be a thing of the past.

*sniffle*

[peverett]

I worked in TV shops back in the 1970s while going to college. Even then, they money was not that good. None of the the TV repairman that I knew were making a fortune.

The two that were doing the best had other income. One also ran a postal route 1/2 day. The other was retired military with who also had a security officer job part time.

This is one reason why I got a BSEE and went into electrical engineering. This has been great until now with interesting work and good pay. However, with all of the work now moving to China and India, who knows how long it will last.