It’s Your Business
- Subject: Dealing with a customer who has unsuccessfully attempted a repair
- Essential Reading: Shop Owner, Center Manager
- Author: Terry Greenhut, Transmission Digest Business Editor
One of the great things about being a mechanic is that we usually aren’t afraid to tackle any mechanical challenges placed before us, even if they are brand new and we’ve never faced anything like them before. We tear into a job with the confidence that we will somehow be able to find the problem, fix it and put it back together. Experience gives us the nerve to try.
For the entire 25 years that I owned and operated my transmission shops I always kept my hand in on the technical side of the business. I enjoyed it but also wanted to keep abreast of any changes that would affect shop productivity. Whenever a new type of transmission came out I would build the first several before turning them over to my rebuilders, which I did only after running a little training class to make them aware of any problems or idiosyncrasies I had discovered. That practice saved a considerable number of comebacks and allowed me to give intelligent answers to rebuilders when they had problems, so it was definitely worth the trouble.
I don’t remember ever standing at a teardown bench with any apprehension about taking a transmission, transfer case or differential apart and not being able to put it back together. Some of the newer units with computers, complex valve bodies, sensors and solenoids were challenging, but not scary. I guess in the back of my mind I always knew that I could get help or, at worst, buy a unit somewhere if I really screwed up. In any event the customer was paying for the repair, so I figured that I couldn’t lose too much if I did run into problems.
Recently, I faced a situation that, I must admit, scared me silly. I just thought those of you who are mechanics might get a kick out of reading about it while at the same time being able to relate to it.
I have a 70-inch LCD rear-projection television set. It is, to my knowledge, the largest LCD TV you can buy without spending more than $20,000. I bought it new four years ago from Abe’s of Brooklyn, a New York wholesale appliance dealer. The set was selling in the “big-box” stores at the time for about $7,500. Abey let it go for $5,000 delivered. It’s been a good TV, not to mention conversation piece. I love it and must admit that I’m addicted to its size. I now have trouble watching anything smaller.
This TV uses a super-bright halogen bulb that changes its white light to colored pixels by projecting through three tiny LCD panels that are red, green and blue, the three basic colors out of which all other colors, except white, are created. It does this through a series of mirrors and lenses that eventually project the image to the back of the screen. Sounds simple enough.
In watching the TV I had noticed that lately I had to crank up the brightness setting to get a good picture. I had been told when I bought the TV that the bulb eventually would go bad and that I would have to replace it (a simple job; it plugs in through the front of the TV via an access panel). I wasn’t worried, especially because the price of those bulbs has dropped from around $400 to the $95 for which you can now buy them. I thought that the brightness problem was a result of a worn-out bulb. I did have one concern, though. There were these strange-looking blue blobs starting to develop on the screen. I could barely see them at first, but they were there. I thought that maybe when the bulb was replaced it would fix them too.
I hadn’t bought the bulb yet, because like any other mechanic I was gambling that it would last a while longer, and why spend $95 to leave it sitting on a shelf? It was Christmas Eve. I was at my brother-in-law’s house for the festivities. We were watching something on his 60 inch TV. It’s the exact same unit as mine, only a little smaller. At some point he asked whether I had ever needed to replace the bulb. You know that was the kiss of death. Two days later the bulb blew, and I mean blew. They don’t go quietly; they explode internally. You hear a loud pop, the set shuts off and you see a red blinking light, which I later found out was the indicator that the bulb was done.
I quick-ordered a bulb online and paid the extra $26 for overnight delivery (can’t be without TV for very long). When it came I plugged it in and fired up the TV. It worked, but I still noticed the blue blobs. Over the next few days the blobs grew larger and more pronounced, and any menus that had been up on the screen started to leave ghosts behind. I knew something was wrong, and I didn’t think it was the new bulb.
As has become my habit of late, when I want to know anything, I Google it. So I entered the brand name and model of the TV and the words “blue blobs.” Within a moment I had a couple of hundred answers and they were all the same. The “light engine,” otherwise known as the “optic block,” was going bad. This type of TV, especially from this manufacturer, was known for this problem. In fact, the manufacturer lost a class-action suit and extended warranties on many of its models, mine included, except that I was past the extension date by about two months so they wouldn’t take care of it.
Think about that for a moment. I was penalized because mine actually lasted a bit longer than most before it failed. One would think that a very large, world-renowned manufacturer that knew it had expensive TVs around the world with the same defective part would just go ahead and warrant them whenever they failed, but the company refused; very bad public relations.
Now that I knew what was wrong I went online to find a factory-authorized service provider to fix it. I called up and told the person who answered that I had the “blue blobs,” and he immediately said, “That’s going to run you about $1,500 if I don’t find anything else wrong when I come take a look.” His bedside manner left a lot to be desired. If he hadn’t started by giving me a price I probably would have let him come take a look and might have let him fix it. I wonder how many jobs he blows off in a day.
As a mechanic my next thoughts automatically went to, “How much can I buy the part for and can I put it in myself?” Back online I went. I found a forum in which people were discussing my specific problem, the troubles they had with the manufacturer and how they went about having the problem rectified. Some mentioned that they bought the part and installed it themselves, yet not always successfully. I was encouraged by one writer who said that if you can change a hard drive in a computer you can do this. I thought: “What the heck? I’ve changed hard drives and other computer components before; surely I can do this.”
I found one guy with exactly the same set as mine who outlined the procedure he used and another who posted pictures of an earlier model; not exactly the same, but they gave me a general idea what I’d see when I removed the back cover.
Having made up my mind that I could fix it I set out to find the part. I located a company in Indiana that makes its living strictly on rebuilding these light engines. I guess that indicates how many of them go bad. The company wanted to sell me one but didn’t have any of my particular type in stock, nor did it have a rebuildable core. So they offered to rebuild mine if I would send it in. It would take anywhere from 10 days to two weeks once they received the part from me. That would mean I would have to tear apart the TV and leave it that way for at least two weeks. All I could picture was one of my dogs picking up pieces of it and using them for chew toys, and two weeks without a big-screen TV during football playoffs was incomprehensible.
I called the manufacturer’s parts department, ordered the part for a total of $619 and a service manual for my exact model. It came in two days. I started tearing the TV apart at 11 a.m. and put the last screw back in the cover assembly at 11 that same evening. Working non-stop for 12 hours sitting on a tiny chair behind the TV with a fluorescent droplight in some really awkward positions, I persevered even though my feet sometimes fell asleep and my back hurt like crazy.
There were several times during the process when I wanted to quit, almost quit, maybe should have quit, but I wouldn’t. It became a matter of pride after a while. I took it apart and, by golly, I was going to put it back together. As I mentioned earlier I never had been afraid to take anything apart, but this thing scared me half to death. Immediately when I took off the back cover I was faced with a circuit board with 36 wires or cables connected to it. Many of the connectors were the same shape and color. That made me painstakingly mark every single wire while still having to hope that I put all the connections back together facing the right way.
One thing I learned from working on cars was to never take apart more than you have to. I figured out that if I disconnected everything from the right side of the board I could unscrew it from its frame, flip it over and hang it from the left side of the TV. Once it was out of the way I could see the light engine. It was about the size of a little TV set. I carefully disconnected all its wires, unscrewed its fasteners and slid it out the back. Quickly swapping what I needed to the new unit, I reinstalled it and proceeded to replace everything else I had removed earlier.
Every reconnection to that big circuit board scared me. I knew if I messed one up not only was it not going to work but also I wouldn’t even have known exactly why it didn’t. There was a whole lot of “Oh God, if you only let me get this right I promise I’ll be a good boy” stuff going on.
Anyway, everything did fit together the way it came apart, which in itself kind of surprised me after all that pushing and pulling on wires and connections. Once the last screw was in place on the back cover I sat down in my easy chair, shut my eyes tight ’cause I was afraid to look – and pushed the “on” button of the remote. When I heard sound, some of my fear dissipated, because I know that the sound won’t come on unless there is a picture on that TV. Sure enough, when I opened my eyes I saw a better picture than that set had ever had. It was brighter and sharper than when it was brand new. I guess that light engine was always defective to some degree, or else the replacement was far bettered engineered.
I’m still annoyed that the manufacturer wouldn’t fix it under warranty, but at the same time I feel that sense of accomplishment all mechanics do when a job goes well, especially one they’ve never tried before. And yes, I am just like some of your customers who buy the part and try to fix it themselves to save money but when it doesn’t work have to come to you for help. I can sympathize after almost giving up and going to someone myself. So the only advice I can offer is that the next time a customer does that to you, instead of saying “I told you so” just smile, take their money and fix their car. You’ll probably make a customer for life.
Visit www.TerryGreenhut.com.
