Worthwhile Repair?

Worth

The first thing to do is to work out what the item is worth to you. Worth is an entirely subjective term; my grandfather used to say something is only worth what someone is willing to pay you for it, but he was a merchant banker for whom almost everything had a £ value. My grandmother's trophy cabinet had very expensive decorative items next to a set of free pate dishes, since both had great worth to her.

Some things can't be purchased any more, and the worth to you is the utility you get from the item, which may be far greater than its market value.

For some people the knowledge that an item has been with them for a long time makes it worth more. For others an item is entirely a tool and the function it provides, and the worth is the cost to replace and dispose of the old item. Sometimes the act of repair - the time to research and sourcing the right tools, the time to complete; makes it worth more than a replacement.

We can't answer what it is worth to you, only give you a cost for our time, and parts needed to fix it. Giving you a chance to make that decision with as much information as we can provide.

To facilitate this we offer an assessment service of Free for soldering jobs and £40 for computers (this will be counted towards the repair cost if you go ahead with our quote). So if you book a job with us, we will evaluate the item and provide a quote for repair, and you can then decide whether to accept or not.

If possible, we will also try and give you a ballpark figure in advance of you sending the item to us, so you can get some idea whether the repair is likely to make sense for you before you decide to send it in.

Replacement

The most objective way to assess how worthwhile a repair is, is to compare it to the cost of a replacement if one is available. Can a working unit be sourced, either new or second hand? Or can a newer version be purchased, perhaps with additional functionality or performance that makes it worth spending more than the cost of repairing the original?

Researching this before sending your item to us, will allow you to make an informed decision once you have our quote for repair.

Timescale

If you need a working item quickly, then the relative costs of repair or replacement may be secondary.

If you need something working now and a repair would take longer than a replacement, then purchasing new may be the best option even if a repair can be done much cheaper. Then perhaps look into getting the original repaired later, to provide some redundancy.

Or it may go the other way - if a replacement will take a long time to come through, and we can repair the item quickly, then repair may be the best option even if it costs more than the replacement.

Can it actually be repaired?

Today a lot of manufacturers are actually trying to make independent repair more difficult. They will use bespoke parts which they will not allow anyone to purchase. They tie components together with serialisation to make parts not function correctly unless they have been fitted by the manufacturer. If you are unsure on this do get in touch, and we'll give you likely success rates and costs.

Our likely repair costs

Initial assessment to provide you a quote is Free for soldering jobs and £40 for computers, after which we will provide you with a quote which will be at our standard rate of £49 per hour (any assessment fee will be counted towards this, not charged separately). If we are shipping the item back to you, there will be a return shipping charge. This is typically £6 though large items will cost more.

Next Steps

Get in touch! - Either by phone or email or book a job on the booking page. You can send or drop off your device for us (see address) to look at and fix.