Of course, the time period would vary from shop-to-shop, but in about 1987, we had a 13" Japanese-built Truetone color set from the early '70s and it developed a vertical sync issue. It would work fine for a few minutes. Then, it would gradually start rolling and, at first, turning the hold control would lock the picture. Then, after a few more minutes, it got so bad that the hold control did nothing. I was in the 4th or 5th grade, at the time, and wasn't yet working on TVs.

Dad took it to several shops in town and all of them refused the job, once they saw it was a tube TV. I think one or two of them even went so far as to tell Dad to get that piece of junk out of their shop.

The final shop he took it to was in Jackson, MS (he had to be over there on business and knew the father of the guy who owned the shop). That guy told him, in no uncertain terms, "I don't work on anything with tubes in it." Dad said that by this time, he was tired of lugging the set around and when the shop offered to dispose of it for him, Dad left it there. Upon returning home, he bought a 13" knob tuned Emerson color set for $149.95 and it actually had a much better picture than the old Truetone.

By the '90s, I was working on TVs and I had a technician tell me that by the mid '80s, most tube sets were at least 10 years old and by that age, they start developing problems. He said a customer could bring one in this week for no sound and once that's fixed, it comes back next week for no picture and the customer expects a free repair (even though the second fault had nothing to do with the first). As the technician told me, "I'm not going to be married to some old worn out set, fixing it for free, when I could be working on sets with easier problems that I can actually make money on."

Then, it got to the point where some shops would not touch a TV over 10 years old, no matter rather it was tube or SS.

In the '90s, I would sometimes be asked to fix a tube TV and I would at least look at them. If I truly found that the set wasn't worth fixing, I'd tell the owner, but smarting off to the owner on the front end is a sure way to run them off and they'll never be back with anything.

I suspect a good bit of the problem was not so much reliability of tube sets but not wanting to stay proficient. I've heard plenty of tales of shops in the late 60s servicing 20 year old 40s TVs.

You are quite right about chasing customers out being bad for business...That attitude may have contributed to the downfall of TV servicing.
I've heard of some shops that had a fix it once and NO warranty policy for tube sets in that era. Seems like a smart policy...You don't chase the customer off and you aren't married to a money pit project. Hell, if they didn't screw themselves in the billing they probably made money off doing that.

I remember putting a new CRT in a CTC-16 for a customer in 1983, and we were still seeing lots of four-tube Zeniths, occasional sortacolors, and CTC-36-era RCAs (and later). To be more accurate I remember watching the guy I was a teenage flunky for putting a new CRT in the 16 chassis and holding the mirror while he did the setup.

We evolved out of it. In the early 80's we stopped most of them at the door.
We did have customers sign off on any warranty & had it running
when they picked it up. Funny thing is when SS sets took over we
were scared of them. After getting good with them we hated tube sets.
It was so easy with SS & almost never a call back.
There were exceptions. Still took in audio & TV's we sold. We took care
of elderly folks sets to. And we did have some REAL good customers
that we took care of.

Related is what happend apx 1980. Our shop was always 2 weeks behind &
8 weeks for audio. In late January we caught up. A Sylvania 13"
E08 came in & when the customer left 3 of started fighting for it !
Stayed that way till the humditity & T-storms came back in May.
Every year got got worse & we had a 2 day wait most of the year.
The results were less of us & many old shops dropping out.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

A very good question indeed and I was working my first TV shop job in 1978-80, while in high school.

"Red" was the only one left in a once-busy shop as things were winding down in the service department of a small-town GE appliance dealer that sold furniture, recently adding Magnavox. The fact that my boss was a WWII vet at retirement was both a blessing and a curse. Still, I learned a great deal from him about how a good shop is operated and the customers you can expect.

Red wanted nothing to do with a transistor unless it was a video driver to a tube (think GE KE chassis) output. All warranty work was sent to another GE dealer and oddly enough, tube Magnavox TV owners were welcomed as new customers. I did work on the last roundie, a 21" Magnavox U45 chassis pulled and connected to a 21FB suspended from the ceiling above the Sylvania Chek-a-color jig. I saw a porta-color, many cheap 19" C1s and other GE budget sets.

After Red retired, I worked for a few months doing antenna and shop work for a Navy veteran who was in Korea, my dad's age. He had a bad habit of promising to repair anything, even Korean Samsungs, Gold Stars and Teknika. Not good if you're just learning transistors. He couldn't recognize a deadbeat customer either, not good if you're in a city with high unemployment. I was very hesitant to order any parts when I was not 100% sure, knowing he'd get stuck with it.

Senior year 1981, I decided to cold-call a servicing dealer near my HS to ask for a job. The service manager and I spoke a while and he offered me a job doing antenna, bench work and deliveries of TV and appliances. They still had a decent tube stock, and the road tech used a caddy with tubes for Zenith, RCA, GE and Magnavox tube and hybrid color. I spent the summer there until tech school started THEN returned 3 years later when I moved home again to pursue an EE degree at the local branch campus.

We often saw RCA CTC22, CTC36 and CTC53 etc along with RCA/GE/Zenith's motel sets and tube portables from GE, Zenith, Mag and a few other domestics. We usually turned away Japanese and other sets that used tubes we did not stock. As time went on, fewer tube sets came in and almost no tube chassis pulled into the shop:sigh:. I would often be in shop on a Saturday when the senior owner was there (WWII vet who started selling RCA in 1949), who told customers "we dont work on tube TVs anymore", to my chagrin. Often if he was not there, I would accept tube repairs from poor souls that I knew could not afford new sets, then quickly diagnose on the downlow or call them ASAP if it was a basket case, often tearing up a ticket myself and giving the set back - no charge.

The owner himself was amenable to helping these folks as well, wisely knowing word got around that we stood behind those questionable repairs mainly because a customer bought it there. They are still in business but only appliances and old folks love them for all the attention we gave a new sale/delivery. He often would turn a callback into a new sale, refunding the original bill, to my extreme delight :D

The shop I worked at as a grunt bench technician, up to 1985 (high school Vocational experience) would repair tube sets from good, reliable repair customers, or customers who bought the set there new. Or Magnavox non-warranty. If a set was beyond sensible repair, we didn't charge a customer. I specialized in Radio, Phonographs, Tape recorders and players, console Stereo, black & white TV old and new, and older color TV chassis. (I repaired lots of Roundies, tube and hybrid rectangulars, and even antique B&W sets.

The last neighborhood shop I worked at was still doing tubes until his retirement the summer of 1996