Because without inspection, one can only speculate about equipment condition, faults, and what might be needed to get a piece running properly again.

I’m proud of our reputation and the trust people have in Liquid Audio, but it truly didn’t come about by accident. Carefully diagnosing what a piece of equipment needs is part of our process, and guesswork plays no part in it. Each piece receives the hands-on assessment, testing and diagnosis it needs. That’s how this process should be done, and despite some wanting me to guess, I won’t do it.

Guesswork

Let’s say your amplifier won’t turn on. Why not? The repair costs vary greatly, depending on the failure mode, so this isn’t something one should guess about. What if your turntable won’t play records? Is it a belt, a motor, a switch? Who knows, but know this: nobody can know without inspecting it and diagnosing the issues.

How would you feel if you threw away a perfectly repairable piece of equipment because of an incorrect guess? Well, that’s exactly what happened with this Sansui AU-317 integrated amplifier, below. The same technician deemed a Marantz CD-52 “Unrepairable and should be thrown away”. I fixed that one, too; it had only a minor fault.

Both repairs saved pieces of equipment that were otherwise being thrown away, proof that nobody knows what your equipment needs without inspecting it, and some don’t even know when they HAVE inspected it!

Estimates vs Quotes

Some customers expect what we call blind quotes, meaning a quote before a technician has assessed a piece of electronics. This is silly, just as silly as ringing a mechanic, saying, “My car won’t start, what’s wrong with it?” and expecting a quote for unknown repair work.

Delivering a ‘quote’ for work on equipment one hasn’t assessed, to customers who will go elsewhere unless you do that, is highly problematic and a driver of poor work for businesses desperate enough to take on such customers. We don’t do it, and if potential customers go somewhere else for this reason, we are better off, to be brutally honest.

Work driven by the lowest quotes will always deliver corner-cutting, poor workmanship, and poor results. Those driving this quest for the lowest price will be unhappy when such work isn’t done properly, of course, a classic catch-22. Despite this, some businesses provide blind quotes because they bring in work. I don’t need work, and I don’t cut corners.

Estimates allow for the variables that affect the cost of a job, including discovery factors like condition and service history, fault analysis, customer requests and parts required. We provide estimates, usually after having assessed the unique requirements of a piece of equipment.

Mike … you, of course, are a gem. We are so lucky to have someone as passionate, intelligent, ethical and hardworking in little ol’ Perth.

David H

More…

Find out more with these repair-related FAQs:

• How much will my repair cost?
• The six steps to fault finding and repair
• Why some equipment shouldn’t be repaired
• Why we are often fully booked