Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil the drill
Panasonic probably have very little interest in such a small market as ours, and that must make such units very very vulnerable
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There's some truth in that in a sense, but there are good reasons for it. Over the years, most of the internal spares for the unit have not been available, and indeed some parts like the electronics are encapsulated and cannot be repaired or changed. The design philosophy is to make an extremely reliable and long lasting unit which, if it it fails, is replaced with a whole new unit.
In the past this caused a problem with the unit costing £450 plus fitting several years ago. This situation may be better for the new unit now for several reasons:
1) The known bugs have been ironed out.
2) The expensive internal drive part has been simplified reducing the unit cost.
3) The units are now being produced on a far bigger scale than formerly, again reducing the unit cost.
Therefore the new unit may well be more reliable and last longer, and cost of a replacement unit proportional to inflation may well be cheaper anyway once a replacement is eventually needed.
If you think about it, there's no alternative to this "throwaway" method. For such a small overall market, the costs of setting up and maintaining fully skilled repair and overhaul facilities in each country would be extremely high and probably result in repairs dearer than new units.
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