Phonoland

"Competition keeps the price down"--not really in this business-- most of the people I know who repair/rebuild jukeboxes for a living are somewhat --shall we say--"independent"--speaking for myself, I am at the point ( and have been for 25, or so, years) that I don't give a hoot--you don't like what I charge--then find someone else--who may even know more then I do, but values his time at less then I do--
Ron Rich

I wonder why repairmen have a bad rep?

That's an easy question for me to answer--but I'm old--
Because some "repairmen" either do not care about what they do/charge, or do not know what they are doing. I used to work for a Jukebox factory, and was tasked with teaching "service schools". This was to a group of "repair techs" who worked for various "operators". IMHO, SOME of these people were not qualified to fix a sam-wich ( or, izzdat "sand-wich" ?), change a light bulb, or least of all, repair a Jukebox. When I worked for the factory distributor, we would take in "trades". Most of the time these were pretty well "butchered" phono's--EVERY internal unit, was bad. We needed to start from "scratch", determine what was now wrong, what caused it to fail, and what "some one" had done in an attempt to fizzit, then and only then, we would bring it up to factory standards. As an independent today, I still follow this procedure---I probably could do it "faster/cheaper", but I want whatever I repair to last a long time--I never want to see it again-- Ron Rich

So I need to call around until I find the guy with the biggest ego and then pay him whatever he wants?

Not in my opinion--what I do is research -- find out who offers whatever you want done, and carefully check references.
Would you hire a brain surgeon for $10.00 per hour ? Ron Rich

Ron Rich wrote:Not in my opinion--what I do is research -- find out who offers whatever you want done, and carefully check references.
Would you hire a brain surgeon for $10.00 per hour ? Ron Rich

Exactly right Ronnie!
You get what you pay for - IF - the "right" tech does the job.
Same goes for doctors - reputation along with references is the key here.

I tell my customers who bring in heavy console stereos etc that I'm sure they don't want to lug the thing back in to me because of sloppy incorrect work.
It's common sense, keeps my reputation pretty, and good business sense too.