Rip off Britain?

[Vulcan]

I was told many years ago, and I admit I’m not sure of the validity, but the £600 circuit boards required for Gas Boiler repairs were made in China for about 65p?
A mate has just told me the Garage has repaired his Toyota’s faulty cruise control. They replaced a camera near the rear view mirror. Camera cost £1000, fitting cost £1000. Luckily the car is still under warranty!

No wonder some stuff isn’t repaired as much these days.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

A complete new gas boiler can be bought for less than £600. The cost is no doubt somewhat less as the supplier will want to make a profit.

I can only assume the cost of a PCB is much less than £600 - I have no idea whether PCBs are generic and fit across a range of boilers or are product specific. At a guess, allowing for the costs of storage and shipping etc something under £20!!

Perhaps there is a real future in becoming a geek who can actually test and fix these things - a little like folk who repair car ECUs etc rather than replace at main dealer prices.

 

[sammy.se]

Spares and repairs always costs more than OEM new products, that's just the business model.
You can buy refurbished/repaired boiler PCBs on ebay for a few quid relatively. I've done it before.

 

[John Brown]

I repaired a dozen or so PCBs for a particular model of combi boiler about 30 years ago. Bridge rectifiers had burnt out, replaced with higher rated part, and good as new.
Admittedly today's boilers are far more complex, but in my experience of electronics, it's rarely the microcontroller that fails, more likely I/O or power supply(including electrolytic caps).

 

[Richard_C]

If you are running a car company or a gas boiler manufacturer or almost anything, the performance of you and the business is judged by how much new stuff you sell or how many new customers you get. Your bonus and the share price won't be one penny higher because of the stuff you service and fix. That being so, why make it economic to repair things when selling new makes you and the shareholders better off?

It's a rotten business model but it's driven by 1980s market analyst metrics which should have been thrown out when it was clear that more doesn't equal better. Repair only ever matters to a.manufacturer if their reputation is at risk.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

I used to work for a packaging machinery manufacturer - typical sale value £50k-£1m which may last 25-40 years..

In the industry it was common to make little or no profit on the sale of new machine but over the following decades make money out of spares and, in particular, change parts required as packaging materials and product sizes changed.

 

[niemeyjt]

I heard many garages had an allocated number of minutes/hours per task. That is the chargeable amount - not necessarily the actual time required ( a Renault rip-off on this springs to mind) - so maybe the second figure is somewhat higher than a realistic labour cost

 

[Vulcan]

I heard many garages had an allocated number of minutes/hours per task. That is the chargeable amount - not necessarily the actual time required ( a Renault rip-off on this springs to mind) - so maybe the second figure is somewhat higher than a realistic labour cost

There are “book” times for car repairs. Main dealers have their own book of times for each job but there are also independent volumes for other garages. When I was a Mechanic we were paid a basic hourly rate plus the book time for any jobs done. If you could quickly you could earn more money. The customer paid a set amount whether it took the mechanic 30 minutes or an hour.

 

[paulrbarnard]

I was told many years ago, and I admit I’m not sure of the validity, but the £600 circuit boards required for Gas Boiler repairs were made in China for about 65p?
A mate has just told me the Garage has repaired his Toyota’s faulty cruise control. They replaced a camera near the rear view mirror. Camera cost £1000, fitting cost £1000. Luckily the car is still under warranty!

No wonder some stuff isn’t repaired as much these days.

The cost of those cameras to the OEM is probably $300 upwards depending on the functions it supports. 200% markup on cost as it goes through the system is pretty normal. £1000 for the part is certainly plausible. The fitting sounds a bit steep though

 

[Southdownswolf]

Deleted

 

[Stevebod]

The company I worked for used to make outboard motor propellors. We designed and made all the tooling, melted the metal, cast the parts, pressed them, machined them, assembled them, e-coated them, powder coated them, purchased the additional parts / adaptors to fit to the outboard, and packed them in nice boxes ready to just go onto the shelf at the shop. All the customer had to do was collect them, send them to a distribution centre and then sell them to the retailers.

Total money we got paid for all this work was around £17 per prop.

The actuall selling price to the end customer was £170......and the customer then wanted a "cost down" as they said our manufacturing price was too high.. ????

 

[worn thumbs]

I've often thought that it ought to be a mandated feature of car advertising that as well as fuel consumption and VED bracket,they ought to be compelled to state what it would cost to buy the complete car in bits at the parts counter.It first occurred to me when I heard a mechanic relate that the last of the Cortinas would cost at least £50,000 that way and only £5,000 or so off the showroom floor.

Earlier this evening I watched the programme on Channel 4 regarding supermarket loyalty cards and it confirmed my suspicions that the price of the item without the "loyalty discount" was utterly ridiculous.the small sample group even thought the price of some items with the "discount" was excessive.They all possessed loyalty cards though.

 

[Bingy man]

When I was repairing boilers the pcb was an average cost of £150 -£200 but some were a lot more and also some boilers had 2 boards . You could repair some ( dry joints or damaged tracks but it wasn’t cost effective . You needed specialist equipment to find the faulty component . The faulty board would go back to parts centre and would be reconditioned . Then we had the problem that some manufacturers would not allow reconditioned parts so back to square one .. the most expensive pcb,s are on the older boilers that are on a reduced list meaning some parts are obselete -the maker will want you to buy a new boiler from them so they make the remaining parts really expensive . I recently sold a gas valve for 5 times the original cost as it’s a common part to hundreds of boilers 20 + years old and is obsolete .

 

[Samkilby]

Are pcbs suffering from the same inflated pricing as the electronics required by the automotive and technology companies, I.e. that some mined or harder to manufacture elements have basically had supply chain issues since covid ? Therefore the ones you can buy are aggressively over charged ?

In theory a batch of pcbs or whatever part are cheapish to produce. But for example if the boiler is no longer on production run, you must set up tooling (or run the programme) at intervals to produce batches, then as identified these need to be stored for long periods.

I’m also thinking along the lines of research and development, and intellectual property. If I design a thing (admittedly not often the case with boilers) someone may buy it on the secondhand market for example. That customer has never paid a penny to me, so should the parts also be heavily marked up to reflect original design and r and d investment of the boiler as a whole ?

I’ve started lecturing at a college, and inherited a lot of old, good quality but in many cases run down kit.

I’m talking to altendorf to get spares for loads of broken bits on an old c45 saw. They (as you might imagine !) are also ferociously expensive, but what option do I have ?

Boilers are mass market, and I can’t imagine a buzzing very small hobbyist network with significant interest and knowledge (for example, vs renovating a 50 + yr old wadkin..) my thinking is that because there is no one interested in producing the pcbs competitively because the only people fitting them are businesses and trades, not end users, the plumbers just accept the pricing because they can hand it on to customers and feel no distinct need to complain to their suppliers about it ?

 

[the great waldo]

I've got a Vaillant boiler the last repair from Vaillant cost about €300 for a circuit board. There was a popped electrolytic cap with a bulging top (chinese?) Unfortunatly I wasn't home when the service guy came I would have fixed it myself. But by law here in Austria they are not allowed to put in repaired components. Although the Austrian Government started a scheme that if you got household electronic items repaired they would subsidize the repair. Cockeyed or what??
Cheers
Andrew

Ps If anyone is interested i've just installed one of those Chinese diesel heaters in my cactus greenhouse, it's -7 c outside at the moment and the heater works great to keep the frost away +7c runs for 36 hours on a low setting on 5 litres of diesel (Kerosene is even cheaper but hard to find here) If you want to get one get it with an auto start /stop controller.

 

[Terrytpot]

Are pcbs suffering from the same inflated pricing as the electronics required by the automotive and technology ….

In theory a batch of pcbs or whatever part are cheapish to produce. But for example if the boiler is no longer on production run, you must set up tooling…

Risking overspill to another current thread , I own an ev..to be specific , a Skoda enyaq which I’m perfectly content with. If one peruses groups of like minded owners you inevitably come across individuals who have , what appear to be common failings with their vehicles. The most prolific fault for my model is melting of the overlay that beams a Skoda logo onto the ground with the puddle lights although,countrywide, there are quite a few folks who’ve also had issues with the software reporting an error with a battery cell which neccesitates testing, and then removal of the battery to address whatever the issue is. This is where it gets awkward as there are only a few “Battery centres” qualified and equipped to carry out the repair but this is all compounded further by the bolts that are used need to attach the battery that are serviceable items , in that they need replacing and mustn’t be reused. Unfortunately, said bolts were manufactured in the Ukraine with a specific grade of steel obtained from Russia…go figure!