A lucky escape

Yesterday, I very nearly cancelled the appointment to have the Sky Guy come back. Fortunately I didn't, because late in the evening my system suddenly stopped working.

Based on the nature of the failure, I'm actually reasonably sure that the problem isn't in the actual connections, but rather in the box itself. As mentioned before, there are two TV inputs, and when I made the appointment one of the two wasn't working right, but switching the connections over seemed to fix the problem. It is now that same input that isn't working again, despite now being connected to the other wire. This suggests its the input, rather than the wire. New box.

Which rather neatly brings me to another topic.

As we know, extended warranties on appliances are generally a con. They're a means by which stores can first sell you appliances, and then sell you insurance, so that if they turn out to be defective, they might actually replace them. When, in fact, a three or even five-year warranty should be standard on these things - anything less shows sloppy build quality. (Bear in mind - if the appliances are sufficiently well-built, a three-year warranty will be a net zero cost to the supplier, since nobody will have to actually use it.)

However, somehow, I managed to let myself be talked into an extended warranty for my Sky+ box. It is the only extended warranty I have on anything (except my bed - the salesman threw the warranty in as a 'sweetener' to help seal the deal). And, somehow, I've managed to actually come out ahead on the deal - assuming I'm right that it is the box, I will now have had to have two boxes replaced thanks to the extended warranty.

The truth is, though, that this isn't surprising. As far as consumer electronics go, the Sky+ box is quite obviously an example of cheap rubbish (albeit actually quite expensive cheap rubbish - the benefit of being exclusively supplied). It seems to be designed to do a job, just barely, with lots of glitches, and regular breakdowns.

By contrast, my DVD player has survived nine years, heavy usage, three house moves, several weeks in storage, and being dropped rather spectacularly by my father. My previous (rather expensive) TV lasted eight years of very heavy use before it finally failed.

And that's the cruel reality of consumerism. Quality is expensive, but does count. And, paradoxically, this means that the rich (who can afford the immediate expense of buying quality) end up paying less for things than do the poor (who much go for cheaper options, and replace more often).

Unfortunately, as I noted, Sky boxes appear to be supplied exclusively through Sky, there doesn't seem to be a choice, and even if there were there seem to be only a few variants, each as bad as the others. I guess it really is just a matter of enduring near-annual failures to get these boxes replaced, and continuing to pay the fees for the extended warranty (since it works out cheaper - just - to pay that than to pay for a new box each time). Yay.