While this problem has given birth to businesses such as my own, I'd rather not see the American people getting scammed like this. There is absolutely no accountability to the manufacturers after the 1 year warranty. I warranty the units that I sell for 1 year, and that's after they've been used for a couple years, died, and ended up in my shop!
And what's more is that it's very common for most of these dead consumer electronics to be stock piled by recycling centers and then sold to the highest bidder. Guess who that is? Yes, many of these are sold to anonymous overseas businesses and exported out of the US to be repaired and resold. So here's a breakdown of what we have:
- ACME ELECTRONICS in Singapore manufactures TV's.
- BETA and CAPPA make electronic components in Taiwan and sell to customers like ACME.
- ACME is provided with complete specifications of the parts that BETA and CAPPA have for sale, including the expected life span of the particular parts.
- BETA's capacitors will last for 10 years.
- CAPPA's capacitors will last for 1.5 to 3 years.
- REGARDLESS OF WHICH COSTS MORE, WOULDN'T IT BE TO ACME's BENEFIT TO USE ONLY CAPPA'S CAPACITORS???
- ACME chooses to pay more for the capacitors that will not last as long. (hypothetically)
- Now ACME has some guarantee that their TV sales will remain strong every year.
- And sometimes these CAPPA caps will even fail prematurely to the anticipated 1-3 years, but it's worth it to pay for a few warranty repairs if most others will fail shortly after the warranty.
- And so that there's no question about why the issue continues to happen, ACME refuses to acknowledge the problem. They even instruct their India based support reps to run through an extensive list of dumb-dumb troubleshooting steps until finally the customer gets so upset and frustrated that they just go away.
- Left with few other options but to shell out more money to have it fixed, the customer often chooses to just go buy a new one.
- And when Walmart has the same size TV, but brand new, for only $600; why pay $200-$500 to fix the old one?
- Hence...
- More US dollars go to ACME.
- Old ACME TV goes to the trash, then to recycler.
- Recyclers sell them to the ACME subsidiary "ACME-SALVAGE" for a small fraction of what they were sold to the American consumer for.
- ACME-SALVAGE dumps them in the Pacific Ocean somewhere after they are exported. Why? So they're not repaired/resold to the American consumer, which would hinder the sale of new TV's.
But that's all just speculation on my part.
That could never happen, right?
That could never happen, right?
REGARDING BAD COMPONENTS USED IN TODAYS ELECTRONICS...
FROM http://www.badcaps.net/pages.php?vid=4
| W h a t C a u s e s T h i s D i s a s t e r ? |
How did this happen? The reason this problem exists is because of a large-scale industrial espionage foul-up. Some companies decided to steal an electrolyte formula from another competitor. Little be known to them, the stolen formula was incomplete and flawed. They didn't discover this until it was too late and they had manufactured and distributed literally MILLIONS of these flawed capacitors. It was way too late for any kind of recall, and even today, these crappy components are being used in new boards. As I mentioned before, I believe this problem runs much deeper than simply an industrial espionage screw-up, as that incident was exposed years ago, and the problem still exists today. Nowadays, it just boils down to corporate bean counters cutting corners to save money by using shoddy components. The cause... This inferior and flawed electrolyte formula was used by a number of component manufacturers that sold to many different, reputable, and well known motherboard manufacturers. This problem isn't isolated to one particular brand of motherboard, and not even isolated to motherboards alone. I won't mention brands, but a VERY popular monitor manufacturer has been plagued with RMA's on some of their monitors that were built using these inferior capacitors. This problem has been reported in computer motherboards, monitors, televisions, radios, and stereo equipment. Through my experiences owning a service center, I've personally seen and serviced a large number of 'high-end' equipment that had prematurely failed capacitors. More detailed information... In more technical terms, this is is what actually happens to the capacitor...in the simplest of terms. Think of an electrolytic capacitors as a battery. They are designed to store a charge and release that charge depending on the specific requirements of the circuit. Inside the capacitor there are two metal plates with dielectric material between them, wrapped in paper, filled with acid (electrolyte), and sealed in its housing or 'canister'. What happens is the flawed electrolyte prematurely deteriorates and dries up. When this happens the capacitance value changes, becomes erratic, and can even short completely, which obviously causes the circuit to malfunction. On your motherboard, this results in system instabilities or complete failure of your board. From a physical standpoint, the capacitor can display a number of symptoms and even have catastrophic failures. Catastrophic failure is a rare phenomenon, but it does happen. The reason is this... A capacitor canister is completely sealed and air tight. When the electrolyte dries it turns from a liquid state into a gas. This gas expands with heat and builds great pressure inside the canister, the theory is the same as a pressure cooker. Of course the obvious happens when that pressure builds too much, and the capacitor will vent. This is what causes the capacitor to 'bulge' or swell up. In a catastrophic failure, the capacitor may actually burst or explode. It can sound like a firecracker going off or sound similar to air escaping from a car tire, depending on how high the pressure has built. A physically failing capacitor has an ammonia-like odor (at least that what I thought it smelled like)... Capacitors that has swollen up are easy to detect, but one that has burst are even more noticeable. It will usually blow from the top and spew its innards throughout your computer case. The innards are mostly paper and any remaining electrolyte, but it sure can leave a mess... Once again, catastrophic failure is a rare phenomenon... It's not dangerous either, as long as you practice common sense safety precautions! If you suspect bad caps, don't put your face near them while the system is powered up, and don't eat the paper or electrolyte that they blow out! |
