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PSA: I heard a guy at the parts counter say 'just replace the whole board' for a simple capacitor
I was grabbing a new soldering iron tip at the supply shop on 5th Street yesterday. The guy ahead of me had a basic TV power supply board. The clerk looked at it for two seconds and said to just buy a whole new board for $80. I could see the bad cap right there, bulging at the top. That's a $2 fix with some solder. Are we really telling people to swap entire boards for minor faults now? What happened to actually fixing things?
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stellawood3d ago
My last attempt at soldering a capacitor ended with me fixing the smoke alarm instead. It's a real skill to know what's actually broken, and that guy at the counter clearly doesn't have it. Throwing out a whole board for one bad part just feels lazy and wasteful. Makes you wonder if they even train people to spot the easy fixes anymore.
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abby_henderson3d ago
Ugh, it's all about the warranty money!
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andrewt413d ago
My local shop wanted 80 bucks to swap a whole power board. I opened it up and it was just a single swollen capacitor, maybe two dollars at most. I mean, they don't even look at the parts anymore, they just swap the whole unit. It saves them time, but it costs us a fortune and fills up landfills with stuff that could be fixed. Feels like a scam dressed up as service.
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