Verging on the ridiculous (Nearly diy)

Replacement radiator arrived this morning. A clip would have cost about 5p.

I suppose the argument is: how often does this problem occur? Is it cheaper to keep a supply of all the components that might conceivably be needed or just to send out a replacement unit if required? Was the radiator imported?

Is the return of the original pre-paid, or do you now have 2 radiators?

On 07 Aug 2025, Peter Johnson wrote

Did they take the original back?

If so, might it be that they supplied the replacement for the sake of speed -- happy plumber/happy client -- and can then correct the problem with the first one at their leisure, for sale to the next buyer?

This is more a reflection of the way companies work, than anything else.

In the end stocking a clip separately, giving it a part number and entering it on a computer, and having a member of staff book it out, put it in an envelope, print an invoice and ship it to you is way more expensive than simply replacing the whole shippable unit, taking the old one back into stock for 'repair' and putting it back in stock after having a clip added by *production* whose fault it was in the first place.

Shipping and customer returns don't have access to part sub-assemblies. Only complete units.

Only on a small company where Janice does the shipping, Brenda does customer service and George is the MD/Owner and knows everything, can Brenda ask George for a clip, George walks over to production , takes a clip off the line, and Janice puts it in an envelope with a note saying sorry - no charge and doesn't bother to invoice it, just takes a stamp from the unmonitored stationary cupboard and ships it to you.

Big companies don't have intelligent people, they have systems that make it difficult for morons to get it wrong or for dishonest people to steal..

(IN my apprenticeship, I worked in a large company that decided that nuts bolts washers and so on were 'free issue' ...you could ask for and receive as many as you liked. In the end even mates of mates had enough screws and so on, and the excessive requests simply dried up).

Many companies operate similar policies with respect to pens pencils and A4 paper

The point being in large companies the overhead in terms of 'paperwork'

- even it its on a computer - is so large that it cost enormous amounts to ship teeny items.

Look at RS components or Farnell, £30 handling charge for a 50p item.

Whereas Fred in his mums basement has a wall of components he buys in bulk, and an Ebay account and ships out at £1 +£2 P&P...

When I worked with a small company that was a subsidiary of a multinational, the spare parts man went around asking accounts people what they did, and worked out that sending out a spare part cost around £30 in various peoples' time. This was over 25 years ago. So he started just posting off very small orders, and only invoking the invoicing system for anyone who appeared to be abusing this.

That is often the way.

In one company I worked at the product - audio power amplifiesrs for PA systems - were always blowing up

WE took them in, removed the offending parts and put in new boards and power transistors and shipped the units back out *fast*. Then the thick as mince girls would strip the transistors off the boards and heatsinks, and some resistors that 'always went' and test them all using a custom built and fairly crude tester.

The ones that passed went into a 'good' bin rack and the ones that failed went into the waste bin.

Then they put all the transistors back using stock from the 'good' bins and placed the 'repaired' circuit bards in a rack ready for the next blown amp.

They had no idea what they were doing. All they needed to do was to be able to desolder and solder, and to use the simple test kit - red light/green light.

The guy who designed that system used to hang out here, but I haven't seen him in some years now.

He was a true production engineer.

God forbid - did he get fired? Such intelligence and initiative is anathema to the corporate mind.

Plus it's quite possible they are made by the Cosy Glow Home Heating Co Ltd of Fujian Province and shipped by the container load. The UK operation takes a container of boxes off the ship, stacks them in the warehouse and sends them out as and when customers want them. The item is 'one box' and they don't care what's inside. The resolution if something goes wrong is to send out another box.

Even if someone is paid minimum wage at say £15/hour including overheads (employers NI, pension, office facilities, etc), 5 minutes of their time costs £1.25. Anything involving multiple people rapidly adds up.

Meanwhile the returns / resend process is just a button push away.

I wonder if Fred is properly accounting for his time? Or if he's effectively paying himself under minimum wage?

Theo

Like when the stores at TVC were" computerised". Diodes, used 4 at a time in a rectifier circuit had the stock level reduced to 3 because that was the average over a month - or soemthing similar.

Sadly I have to say that that is entirely plausible...

Fred is almost certainly out of work and in receipt of benefits and pays no tax on his paypal account

If he makes £25 in a day that's a round at the pub sorted.

To Err Is Human, but to really f*ck things up takes a computer...

I did find the complete opposite of this.

When I retired my leaving present was a Sony bedside clock radio that set its time from the broadcast time signal. There was a lead from the unit that went to a pod in which was a ferrite aerial for the radio broadcasts and the circuitry for receiving the time signal. This allowed the reception to be independent of the position of the clock display. The clock radio was on my bedside cabinet and the pod hung from a nail higher up the wall.

It worked OK for years, until one day I was doing the rotate mattress bit and my elbow caught the wire to the pod and it came off its nail and landed with a crash on the metal bed frame. I put it back and the radio worked OK and it was a few weeks after that before I noticed that the symbol on the clock display wasn't appearing to show that the broadcast time signal had been used to set the clock time. I opened the pod and a small black bit fell out. It was the body of a transistor, and on the circuit board were the stubs of the three connections that it had been attached to.

There was a Sony shop in town at the time, and I went along with the expectation of buying a replacement pod. The man in the shop produced a big piece/part cross reference manual, and having found the part number for the pod, he checked stock availability and found it was obsolete and discontinued. Then he had he bright idea of looking up the PCB part number, and that too was discontinued. However there was a diagram of the board, and I could point to the place where the transistor used to be, and he looked up that part and it was in stock at the warehouse. For £5 I could have it sent to me, but I would have to fit it myself. I paid the fiver and a few days later a box arrived. In it was a lot of packing and then a smaller box which contained more packing and a single transistor. It must have cost more than the fiver I paid just to pack and post it.

I unsoldered the amputated legs, soldered the transistor back in its place on the board and it has worked perfectly ever since. I did remove the nail from the wall and use a small screw to hold the pod in place so that the pod can't now be taken off the wall without unscrewing it. I can't rely on Sony stocking everything to component level in future!

Jim

Like a mechanical goods inwards inspector at Data Tech who meggered transistors, because they wouldn't pay for an electrical inspector.