I Bought ARGOS CUSTOMER RETURNS to FIX - Can I Make ££$$€€
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ค. 2023
- Hi, in this video I bought an Argos customer returns box to attempt to fix the broken items.
So what will be inside, will anything be fixable or will it all be broken beyond repair.
Let's find out.
If you would like to support these videos, please click here / mymatevince
Remember that this is just for entertainment and I am not an expert in these repairs. The processes in the video may not be the best way, the correct way or the safest way to fix these things. I do love fault finding and trying to fix broken things, so I hope that comes across in this 'Trying to FIX' series. Many thanks, Vince. - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
So nice to see these things being fixed instead of being sent to landfill
The same i think - thank you ! BTW the glue gun (by hot-air) was great - i hope one time in a wholesale you would find the real glue gun :) but it wastes more glue than your method. Like a toothpaste tube wastes more toothpaste than needed :)
what would have been nicer is if these ultra cheap low quality items were never produced in the first place
Low-cost, bulk buys by big chains order these substandard items for big profits
Yepper!
Don't worry, Amazon still throws lots of good things to landfill 😢
I love watching you bring these broken items back to life. Thank you from a bedridden old man. I find it entertaining and educational.
I am an electronics engineer, I have a bachelors and a masters and spent most of my career as a design engineer and watching these videos make me realise how much of a prima Donna I am. I would want schematics and a direct line to the designer, a rider and an assistant. Well done guys for doing this, believe it or not most engineers are happy you exist, the companies we work for probably not so much! You patience as well is astounding, I would have bailed in the first I don’t know… 2 minutes. The reason it is not printed on the silk is the BOM.. I think there does not need to be a schematic available but the BoM would be helpful
Old devices often had block/part diagrams glued somewhere inside their cases. And it was a norm to get the schematic sheet distributed as an insert in the user's manual.
I remember that too.
Those were not that complex back then, nowadays everything is in one chip with billions of transistors and proprietary circuitry, but without what we have these days we wont be on the internet or we would still use computers the size of rooms
@@309electronics5 Things like color tube TVs were quite complex. Certainly more complex than 90s highly integrated devices. Also, there are schematics of things like PC and laptop motherboards available to download (not always legally, but still). Usually it's just a couple of sheets. Would be easy to print and put into a manual. No one expects internal chip diagrams. Even just a part list would be enough.
I think companies have come to two conclusions here. Most people will not even think of repairing something and of those that do, few will try. Add in the desire of companies for customers to buy again, though why one would if the thing broke, and why would printing a schematic be anything but a useless cost to a company?
Doesn't happen much these days with these cheap Chinese products. Except some microwaves, maybe... edit: however, it doesn't take that much more time to add the part number of the ICs to the silkscreen... I loath seeing "U1", "R1".. ok, cool, that refers to a reference number on the schematic, we don't have one... just print the part number.
I like these random fixes. Honest faults indeed!
Excellent, thanks devtty 😎
The 2nd clock was definitely tampered with. There's no way it would have left the factory in that state. Someone messed with it, and then returned it as faulty. My #1 reason for never buying open box or returned goods, even if they work, is that you never know who had them before, and what they did to them.
Or maybe someone sabotaged someone else's alarm clock for some devious motive. Then the owner rightfully thought it had just broken and returned it as faulty.
That's far far less likely, often times you cannot get a full refund for a working product, it's easier to just open it and snip a wire, then when the company receives the item and verifies that it doesn't work, you get your money back.@@Toca_waffle843
Buy a clock and change your mind there is no refund. Take the back off and cut random wires gets your money back.
@@mbak7801 Exactly that!
Then the seller's loss gets put into the overall price of their products, so the rest of the customers pay for a select few to enjoy free products.
I've got a cheap scale to use in making espresso and it's inaccurate, so I decided to return it. Had to contact Amazon because I couldn't print a return label and spoke with two different agents, got the label issue sorted, all without even asking me what was wrong with the product...
Could simply be terrible QC.... never know.
The AM radio has been purposely damaged/disabled so that it could be returned as not working.
In case the staff plugged it in not only does the Tuner not work there is no sound. No-one opens the equipment up to check for physical internal damage so they get their money back. And they then go back and purchase another one which they will also return within the year of purchase.
Thanks @Mymatevince for another cracking video, you really are awesome!
yeah what i think happened with the second clock is that someone didnt like it so cut the wires and returned it as faulty - they also asked for a refund.
I don't know why you'd do that. It's a cheap clock radio, clearly, but a cheap clock radio is better than no clock radio in my view.
i did that with a cheap cellphone. intentionally overdischarged the battery and tampered with the charger so I can return it. Some stores just don't accept a "change of mind/item no longer needed" as a valid reason to return a product.
@@RealEpikCartfrenYT What country do you live in? I think here in Australia we generally have the right to return something if we decide we don't like or want it, but it has to go back within 14 or 30 days or something. I could be wrong though, I can't remember exactly, but you do have rights as a consumer.
@@Lachlant1984 Bosnia and Herzegovina is my country's name.
There _are_ stores which do accept returns normally but in this case I needed to tamper with it as they only accept if it's faulty.
Argos has 14 day money back no questions so seems a bit silly but people be crazy :)
Love these random faults. Great job Vince
Thank you Phil😎
The 'wire with fabric' will be Litz wire, where wire and thread are spun together to reduce 'skin effect' where radio frequencies are present. It also is used on loudspeakers to reduce metal fatigue where the link wires are flexing...
Absolutely right. :)
Great video 🍻
20:09 The polarity of the speaker does matter. As soon as you get near another speaker with the correct polarity, playing exactly the same, you may hear some weird sound cancellation effects 😉
Starting at 26:30 , you talk about "Right to repair", how it would be better to have access to documentation of circuitry in some way. Somebody already mentioned, how it's been normal, that schematics and parts lists of a product were included in delivery...they stopped doing this decades ago, bit by bit, time flies 😳
Louis Rossmann is heavily lobbying for RtR and I think its a good thing to make people aware of these bad practices.
34:54 Measure it. Your Multimeter has mA uA and A connections. To use them, plug the red probe into the A. Break the circuit and use the probes to bridge the supply output to the circuit input through the multimeter. If the measurement is below 0.2 A (200 mA) use the mA mode and connection. And MAKE SURE you are not using the amp measurement connections for modes they are not intended for, as it MIGHT DESTROY your multimeter, or the circuit, or both, you can even pop a circuit breaker by accident. Never measure how many amps a supply can provide, if you don't know its regulation capabilities...done it on a german 3.5 kw breaker 🙈 nice pop
39:22 list of features says it, Power Supply Ripple Rejection. This is kind of what you want for the application "radio". Both were a good choice, but the first may have had a hard time coming up from shutdown with its max 0.5 watt rating 😅 the second one delivers roundabout 1 W max. and might pop just like the factory one, if 1W is not enough (measure it 😆).
EN and SHDN with the line above means NOT in binary logic. So like, not shutdown when true (voltage).
The second clock, with the cut wires, looks like someone has a "smart kid" wanting to repair items and opened their new clock radio and cut some wires to "repair" the clock. Parents noticed no sound and returned the item.
Love your patience / ingenuity, and ability to apply what you know to fix these things. Excellent video presentation as well.
I suspect that the Bush DAB Radio had the wrong power supply plugged into it that took out the regulator and audio amp IC.
Great fixes as always, Vince. 😊
Yep, very often these audio things have centre negative and most supplies are centre positive. I bet they didn't check first.
@@englishrupe01 Japanise products tend to use centre negative. i.e. Casio, Brother, Epson etc.
@@chrisg6597 Yep, and a lot of guitar stuff does, too.
@@chrisg6597 And several '80s home computers too. If you're lucky the device will have a reverse diode on the input that will blow dead short in the event of reverse polarity and only kill the power supply not the whole device. If you're REALLY lucky it might also have a fuse which will blow when the diode shorts to protect the power supply as well
Could the problem be the cells were fitted arse about face
28:00 Absolutely well put my friend. The problem is that they want you to buy a new one when it breaks 😑
With those dome switches, you could turn on the radio when it apart and press the button with your finger to test. More often than not the switch is not the fault, but looks like you got lucky with that one and it wasn't aligned correctly :) Good to have a success on the first one. The speaker fault looks deliberate. Customer didn't like it and wanted a return. Looking closely at the speaker, looks like it was deliberately cut. There is a band switch on the radio, someone cut out the AM Loop Antenna also. Speaker polarity with a single speaker is not important as a speaker uses AC, so you can connect them either way. On a device like this phasing is not important. The battery polarity, I've seen it often with Chinese made devices having the colours wrong
The FM antenna is usually a single wire and the AM antenna is a coil around a ferrite rod. Good work, man
I repair a lot. Love to see broken things brought back to life! Always new things to learn from watching others. Many thanks for your excellent channel. 👌
a great pity that not more High Street, Catalogue and Retail Returns Centres aren't employing apprentices, repairers, restorers and technicians to repair and fix stuff to restock as 'refurbished' etc. - Would make such a difference especially for Electron waste such as these from entering landfill.
It really is such a shame that people are so quick to throw things away and buy new things. There are pretty much no consumer products you can buy that are made to last like they used to be!
BER - Beyond Economical Repair.
A technician being paid £8 per hour takes two hours to fix a £10 radio. Which probably cost £4 to manufacture before the markup.
I know this because I worked at an eFab firm where they were fixated on the length of time to repair something. Their margins were very low which was on them.
@@kjamison5951 Exactly my thoughts. Only practical as a hobby. It's a shame stuff has been cheapened so much as to become disposable.
@@kjamison5951 spot on, not economically viable.
You don't know how Argos returns work or where they Go So why comment
just came across your channel last night, brings back lots old memories of taking stuff apart to diagnose and fix and sell on, its so satisfying seeing some many of these products with such minor issues fixed to find a new home and giving it a chance to do what its designed for, save so much junk in landfill that doesnt to be. i always salvage batteries out of disposable vapes and build portable power banks or LED portable torch or lanterns for camping with them or repurpose them for other electronic projects in future. Subbed by the way cos im sure alot of your contents will help myself others out there to fix their goods before even considering dumping it.
Excellent video. I like the way you go through your thought process while doing the repair. Subbed.
Thank you for the enjoying content as always. Loving watching it when i chill on weekends. :)
Hi Vince, I enjoyed every minute, love the way you go about fault finding, ok it may or may not be financially worthwhile but you are keeping these out of landfill which is superb, I will certainly be watching future vids. as they really make my day, pity there isn't a channel on free view it would be so much better than the mindless crap they have showing right now, keep going you're a star mate.
Such a great video Vince, It was a pleasure to watch with insight and knowledge. Takes me back when I used too repair Mum's Boot-sale items.
She always said, that, it makes good practice for me. Until, I spent nearly an hour repairing a radio to working order. When finished, she said that she nicked it from a stool after an argument with a seller... I felt like tossing it in the bin.
I did see the funny side after a time. Sadly we lost her 23yrs ago. Sad, but good times...
Fun series, love the multiple random repairs.
Awesome video! Its so satisfying fixing stuff. The cool thing about this is if monetised this video has probably made about £400 so it was worth him doing it but also it has likely inspired many to try and repair broken stuff too 😊 everyone's a winner!
Great work, Vince. Very interesting troubleshooting video, thanks.
Nice to see items being fixed instead of going to landfill. It is particularly good to see when some of the fixes are minor. Minor glitch in the rolling text? Chas Newport is listed twice in the club member section.
🎵Newport, Newport, so good they named him twice 🎵
when I was a kid there was a paper in side radios and stuf that had schismatics in there
Brilliant watching you work through these faults. Well worth watching. 👍👏🏴👍👏🏴
The ENABLE pin, is high to enable. The SHDN pin had a line above it, so it was an inverted signal, so that's low to shut down. They are the same thing.
Yeah probably just inadequate current on the first one.
If your worried by the current draw in battery mode of your radio (or any battery device) simply put your meter into Milliamp mode and pull out a battery and remake the connections but with your meter in series, basically let the current flow through the meter as wall as the radio and read of the current when on and then measure when off. Probably next to zero when off maybe a few milliamps, dunno...cheers.
You need microamp resolution to measure this, but his multimeter has that setting.
A really good fault finding video please keep them coming
I’ve always backed away from electronics... you sir are educating a old folk that will take on any repair as long as it’s challenging
hi vince you make fixing things look easy ..... and brighten my day as i am disabled a bit ! i have been watching you for a long time kind regards paul h
modern Argos stuff just oooozes build quality
who needs all that vintage Hifi from the 70s and 80s.
Hi Vince. Unless they are heavily shielded, switch mode power supplies cause too much interference, especially on AM bands, to be used inside radios.
Thank you Terry👍👍
Hi Vince your videos are good and helpful
Many thanks, your videos are always educational and inspiring 👍
Honestly, this could've gone on for 3-4 hours, and I'd still be here. Great video! Liked, Subscribed, Bell'ed, and Commenting for the algorithm. Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge and process.
Nice fixes as always :) Looking forward to the next part.
At 3:03 there is a tiny little piece of black (possibly plastic?) visible on the centre of the affected cap, moving the switches around probably disturbed it. Nice troubleshooting though!
noticed that also, a very small speck rendered it useless! great fixes Vince!
Love these types of fix it videos
very interesting ..... jealous of your electics knowledge and ability
Thank you for all the content..... you are a Legend!!! 😁👍
Astonishing detective work. Such great logic. Sherlock Ohms. I couldn't do this. I haven't the temperament (yet). But I carry these thoughts with me when I get frustrated working on something. It's like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Thank you for that.
Great work I love watching your videos I find them really interesting and learn a thing or two and wanna thank you as well
Pretty easy fixes, Nice job.
iron transformers are used in clock radios because the time is mains referenced, over a year the clock will be almost dead acurate in most areas
Glad I watched this video as I have a USB power socket to replace, I hadn't realise the milky white blob was just hot glue holding it in situ!
The words I'm looking for here are Deft and Skill. So enviable to see such confidence and slick work by someone who really knows what they're doing all the time and knows how to do it. And 80% of that skill is diagnosis of what's the source of the problem. I'm really impressed with this.
glub glub glub glub
Great video. Extremely peaceful. Therapeutic ❤
That one with cut wires will be a change of mind return that they have sabotaged to look like it was faulty.
I loved these fixes.
Excellent video. Thanks
I remember when I bought broken PC Speakers from Conrad Electronics für under 5 Bucks, it had the Ground trace missing on the Audio Input. I soldered a Jumper wire and fixed it, It's unbelievable that some Manufacture skip the quality control, at least for some people it's an advantage to get a Cheap Device which are sometimes easy fixable, but for regular customers it's annoying to have the rassle to return it, or even fail after a short period of time.
Nice job on all the repairs!
Nice fixes Vince!
That was such a great watch. 👍
Great perseverance on the Bush!
Hi Vince, what a fixer MARATHON! BTW I think that the regulator on the radio blew because someone connected a 12V or a laptop adapter to it. Regarding the power draw, you can always disconnect one of the battery leads and put the multimeter in between to measure it. ;-)
Cheers Marcel👍
For the second bush radio: looks like someone needed the JST connector which is why it is missing and also the wires to the speaker.
Either this or it was a QC Unit, which was intentionally manipulated, that got through.
Great and interesting video, well done getting them working. Regards mark
Wow! I love those ebay returns and you got four out of four so far. Really really good.
I have been finding random stuff people had thrown away and repairing them for years, but until I seen your video it never occurred to me to buying them online. 🤔🤔
Brilliant video, gotta love pulling something apart to figure out how it works. 👍👊
Question. Is there any advice you can give about buying these kind of returns boxes? My research came up with a lot of scams, empty boxes etc.
Thanks 🤟 looking forward to the next video
Well done spotting the ferrite rod AM aerial.
Nicely done!
Hello from Tampa Florida! I just surfed onto your channel and enjoyed them (4). I really don't know small electronics but.....I did learn one thing. Don't buy Bush transistor radios 😅.
Great videos and I'm subscribed
More of these videos pls Vince!😀
Great video 👍
Thanks for the trip down not so good memory lane. I started in the electronic repair business as an apprentice in the 1960s when things that were sold were on the whole repairable, though since then things have gone down hill to the throw it away it is not repairable for most things we have today. I was very glad to hang up my soldering iron put the Avo 8 in a box and put it in the loft though I have kept its long time replacement Fluke in my workshop that does not have any thing to do with electronic repair. I wish you all the very best for the future but on those three radios you looked at I do not think you broke even on time and components.
Hi Vince ! Always looking ahed for all videos you putting out on Yt ! Speciell those whith the R,R !
Always fun to see the Omega make an appearance!
I love the fact that you're able to fix some sort easily. Because I quite like this brand I know they're not very good but they make items of a company's don't
Cool show . its hteat seeing things get fixed
Its great .!!
Well done Technovince!
Quite interesting obviously no one would bother to repair these the skills/knowledge involved costs a lot more.
I love the way you fixed one by rubbing a greasy finger across a connection 😂😂
vince mate u do make me happy with these vids mate i got box full of bush radios ect to fix and a amplifier might send amp to u tho
Ilove you Vince ❤ all the time fix
Blast from the past, havent seen a vince vid in years
More random return fixes Mate. Golden. More tablets and iPhones are interesting
Excellent. Perhaps you will next get the two sound bars that I took back to Argus because they didn't work.
I wondered why they were on special, special offer.
I really like the way you will have a go at fixing just about anything.
Oh my God the man of my childhood is still here
That power regulator IC on the DAB radio, didn't have any sort of feedback pin. The extra pin was to put a capacitor across to reduce output noise. Can't think why, it can't be a switcher internally without any sort of coil, or a capacitive voltage multiplier, cos they only work on whole-number multiples of the input. Usually. But whatever, that's what the data sheet said it was for, a 470pf cap to reduce noise. That, the shutdown pin, and the usual 3 for a regulator, and that's your 5 pins.
Well done on the fix btw! Nice work.
I used to have a PC repair shop and once came across a GPU that seamed fine apart from a physically mangled capacitor, being an ASUS channel partner and having access to original spares for their laptops I decided to get in touch with them to simply ask for the correct value, after a bit of fenageling and representatives the final answer I got was that it was proprietary info and they will not risk letting it out there lest someone manages to get enough info to copy it.
Bit of a change from when all HiFi and radio equipment would come with the schematics inside the cover.
Many manufacturers nowadays even grind off the labels from key components.
And this is why we need Right-to-repair laws in place everywhere, who include the requirement for public access to technical schematics.
And fines that actually matter for breaking them. (None of this, "we'll fine you 2 million for this" when they *Made* 2 billion on it).
I'd say .1% of the annual earnings for the first infraction, and every time they are proven to intentionally break it, we move the decimal point one spot to the right.
Bet you no one of them will ever go beyond 3 times.
Heh, Apple would be funding half the world in 2 years...
Could you imagine if you fixed these items while at a remote location outside? Bush Bush fixes :) Great video as always!
A hundred Thumbs Down? WT? Great as always Vince, I thoroughly enjoyed your repairs!
Got me really excited for a roller video
Good job 👏 👍
That radio was indeed interesting! Well done as always Vince 👍
Thanks Garth, that was the best one for me too 👍
😂 worked in a Alba Bush TV refurbish place when i left school this is a common fault .. they all either dont align or brake off. and normally can be fixed with a soldering iron . RADIO/TV fix.. keep up the good work ..😍
Hi mate totally unrelated to the vid, but i had hay fever since i was young, if it's any help. Try avoiding lager and wholemeal wheat based products. ( e.g Brown bread) try avoiding during the summer months, and also put vaseline under the nose and under the eyes (not too near) this will also stop pollen from getting in. I did for a year and didn't suffer once. Hope it helps. Have a great day 👍🏻🙂
good trying to fix video Vince funny I was going to buy one of these Argos return but decided not to bother as I didn't think there would be any resale value
22:00
Deductive reasoning is your friend.
You've traced the power input to the 5-pin IC.
You assume the 5pin sot23-5 is an LDO, because it has two filtering caps (one for input, and one for output)
Since you know 5pin sot-23-5 based LDO's pretty much have only a few pinout configurations, you can further narrow it down based on a few criteria
1) Where is the VCC, GND inputs?
2) Which way around is the output?
3) Is there a current sense resistor / divider attached, if so, to where?
Once you've run these questions down, you can pretty easily narrow down the IC type you'll need
From what i can see (and you should probably verify the connection points) it looks to me to be an AP2205 or similar adjustable LDO
i feel you mate! i have hayfever too and i despise it.
Using your amplified speaker (line in) for fault finding is an excellent idea. But to protect it from input shock, add to the end of the cable, in series: a 50n capacitor and a 220k resistor.
That first clock, when you put the dome in where the original had been not responding, you didn't completely seat the dome into its little nibs. This has the effect of making it taller than spec, which points back to the idea that the button above it is a bit short or otherwise mis-formed.
no
Those cheap clock radios usually run the clock of the mains frequency so it’s much simpler to have a transformer and a lines power supply to tap into that
Nope, that was way back with synchronous motors, today a clock chip and a small crystal is way cheaper. :p
Mate Vince you did better than l did changing the 7 x 18650 cells in our stick hoover. I let the smoke out for good when a component shot out a big spark as l accidentally shorted out something or other with a wayward loose wire…!