Appliance Heaven (or hell)

George Carlin has a funny routine.  He suggests that heaven has a pile uf stuff that you have lost in the present.  You lose a pencil, it winds up on the pile in heaven.  Pens, keys, memos, etc. all that stuff winds up on a pile in heaven.  You find it  in this life -- WHAM -- it comes back to this dimension.  So -- when you get to heaven, there is a big pile of all the stuff you lost.  (unfortunately, it does include all the rubber bands, paperclips and clothes hangers that you misplaced, but what the heck.)  Well, we have discovered "appliance heaven" in that same sense.  

When you have a bad appliance (by bad, I mean-- it doesn't work) in the US you take it back.  Outfits like Walmart, K-mart, Target, they don't ask -- they just take it back, and give you a new one or a credit on something else.  Did you ever think about what happens to those appliances that you turn in??

Well -- they come to Belize!!  Here, if you buy an appliance, it's "buyer beware" and there are no refunds or exchanges.  It has been discounted (hopefully) and you buy it, and you got it!!

Of course, you can bring it to Sr. Rix Fix-it, but I may not be able to fix it. (there's only so much you can do with a bogus product.)

The most common appliance I see is a mixer -- I have three of these in the shop with grunged-up plastic gears inside.  These gears hold the beaters, and they seem to be the same inside every cheap mixer.  They get so worn that they can't be adjusted or fixed and I'm still looking for a source. 

I have a pile of broken blenders.  Blenders, it seems, are built to break, and not to be fixed.  You can buy a new jar, of course, altho the jars they sell in Chetumal are all plastic!  (Well, you can throw them across the floor and they survive.  When all the floors are tile, how long do you think a glass blender jar will last?)  The little rubber coupling that couples the blender to the jar is replaceable -- everything else is welded, or stamped, or pressed into place, and is not replaceable. 

Toasters should be repairable, but the heater filament is so fine and fragile that you can't mend it if it burns out.  I keep thinking that maybe, I could buy heater wire and rewire the thing.  For a $14 toaster?  Are you kidding?  

Curling irons??  All made in China.  They buy a carload lot of discontinued transistors and use them in the heat control circuit.  They burn out, and you cant replace them.  I had six curling irons (the owner thought maybe I could salvage something from one of them to fix another) and the transistor in each and every one of them had burnt out!!   Basically, they are built to break, and replace, and you just hope that they will last long enuf that you get your money's worth before they break!!  And apparently, we've lost the ability to build these things in the US -- they are ALL built in China, even tho they have a US name like Vidal Sasoon. 

I've had some luck with old-timey portable typewriters.  Unfortunately, some of the best -- like Royal -- have gone out of business, and getting a new drive belt for a royal electric portable may be impossible -- especially here in the tropics.  If it's just adjustments, I can handle it.  New ribbon, Yup!   Drive belts??  Nope.   

Sr. ric

Copyright, Sr. Ric, 2002.  All Rights Reserved. 

New:  (March 2005)  Rix Fix-it Shop is now located at 15 Eighth Avenue.  You can see pictures of the new shop here.

Newest (Nov 2005)  Well, I sold everything and made my Escape from Belize.  You can read about it here. 

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