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Q. (by householder): My set seems to require more service than my neighbor's. Did I buy a lemon?
A.: Madam, we have never yet found a television set we could not repair and put in perfect working condition. Note: When answering questions, be sincere and convincing, but be very careful not to overdo it. It may make the customer suspicious.
Q.: Five men have been here. Why couldn't the first man fix it?
A.: Do not knock other servicemen. Answer as follows: You must realize, madam, that a television receiver is a very complicated mechanism.
Special Situation: You call at the house and find the customer in her negligee.
Solution: Under these circumstances, do not enter the house. This momentary embarrassment may save you a lot of trouble.
To this practiced repairmanship, the homeowner has developed his own countergambits. The wise antirepairman knows, for example, that he must never, never deal with underlings; he must always go straight to the top—write the company president. One St. Louis man gets super service by calling the repair-shop owner, threatening to come down and "punch the first person I see in the nose." Others try the food gambit, laying on sandwiches, beer or liquor for the repairman. And when all else fails, a wife can call the repairman's wife. Says one Milwaukeean: "I asked her how she'd like to keep house without any kitchen water: Did she have some influence on her husband? Did she? Boy, he was out the next day and fixed things fast."
Prices & Revenues. Beset on all sides, the indispensable man everyone would like to dispense with naturally takes a somewhat sour view of his own profession. "This is a stinking business," says Mike Venanzio. proprietor of a small repair shop in Ambridge, Pa. "Every drugstore and five & ten, I don't care where, can sell radios and TVs at cut-rate prices. They don't have to worry about service. If something breaks down, they don't fix it. The people come to me. If I charge a decent price because I can do a good job, they get sore."
Repairmen also complain that U.S. industry's soaring production schedules are the bane of their business. "Never in the history of the appliance industry have we had a time when so much faulty merchandise was being received," says Al Bernsohn, vice president of the 5,000-member National Appliance and Radio-TV Dealers Association. In a recent sampling, 70% of the members polled reported an increase in broken appliances from the factory. Railroad-salvage salesmen bucked them on to cut-rate retailers, and the discounters in turn passed them on to the public, leaving the independent repairman to handle any troubles.
Actually, as shown by a 1956 survey by the National Appliance and Radio-TV Dealers Association, the average U.S. appliance dealer probably loses money on his service operation; gross profits (not including extra rent, power, clerical help, etc.) amounted to only .6% of service revenue despite all the public griping about exorbitant repair prices. Independent repair shops do better—they must to stay in business—yet even their profits are so slim that more repair shops fail than any other kind of private commercial (laundries, undertakers, etc.) service.