|
I think there are 3 left in my area.
Number one has been here the longest and is the only one I'd trust to work on anything; but, he won't work on anything old and his attitude is not the best.
Number two was around during the later CRT days; but, he made most of his money off of up-front check-out fees and he'd eventually tell the customer that parts were NLA. Now, I think all he does is warranty work on flat screens. Honestly, about all he has sense enough to do is change boards.
Number three is actually a satellite dealer who used to farm out most of his TV repair business to a friend of mine who had a shop in his backyard. Then, my friend got out of the business and the satellite shop owner was forced to fix TV's himself. His usual practice is usually to get a big estimate approved before pulling the back. If the estimate is approved, he'll look for a simple problem and/or check the online TV repair tips pages. If it takes him more than 15 minutes to do a job, he's not interested. He was giving me a lot of TV's that he claimed were junk; but, many turned out to be easy fixes. I stopped talking to him when I found out that he told someone that all I knew how to work on was that old tube shit that ought to be thrown away. He had a lot of nerve to talk about me, since I was fixing most of the solid state stuff that he was writing off as junk.
There was another shop, who's now out of business, who's owner was an arrogant, crooked jerk. He wanted me to work for him and he thought he could pay me in junk TV's. I know for a fact that he often charged customers for major parts replacement on sets that actually had minor problems.
During the '80's, there were TV shops on just about every corner and most of them stayed busy.
|