This and that: …and all for want of a horse-shoe nail…(well two carbon brushes actually)

As I mentioned earlier my 'big' angle grinder has died. It is around ten years old and has not been made by Black and Decker since 2000. All it needs is two new carbon brushes.

When this happened to my 'little' angle grinder (now probably twenty years old) I drove into the centre of Manchester to the Black and Decker Service Centre and after a five minute transaction in which involved me handing over a few pounds, I left with a pair of shiny new carbon brushes.

But times have changed and in a drive to 'maximise resource utilisation' and 'lower operating resource consumption' in order to 'leverage dividend value improvements' for shareholders, the local Black and Decker Service Centres are no more. The Black and Decker website did not recognise a search on KG72 until I tried again today. The carbon brushes were listed but with the status 'Discontinued'. Ho hum.

So I hared off into town as someone had suggested that the 'Handyman' (purveyor of domestic good spares etc) might have some of the same size. The gentleman showed me a set of brushes that were almost the same cross section but three times too long. Plus the connector wires were very different. I thanked him and headed up the Amsterdamsstraatweg to the machine tool specialist that I'd been to a couple of times.

Here I heard a sorry tale of how Black and Decker, Bosch et al treated small specialist shops. The shop owner said that they used to sell these big brands and order spare parts for customers. However a while ago these spare parts orders started getting a 'small order charge' of Eur 12 and also postage costs at which point he stopped ordering spare parts for customers. "The big DIY stores don't have to pay either of the extra charges" he said rather grumpily and suggested I go to one of them.

So I headed home to check the model number of my angle grinder and then cycled out to the nearest GAMMA store. Here it was indeed possible to order two carbon brushes without a small order charge or postage costs, for the very reasonable price of Eur 4-06. When I asked how long it would take the gentleman in the GAMMA said 'Two weeks'. My jaw dropped. "Two weeks? In days gone by you used to be able to walk into your local Black and Decker Service Centre and buy them then and there". The GAMMA employee gave a non-commital grunt in return as he finished processing my order. "Don't they have warehouses and stock levels any more?" I wondered. "In two weeks you could have them made in China and shipped to Europe."

The fact of the matter is that in this day and age of 'maximised resource utilisation' the unit cost of the carbon brushes has stayed the same, it's just that you have to pay with your time spent waiting for them to arrive. 'Freeconomics' they call it, you pay with your time, or personal data or something else that has no real monetary value to you. Two weeks is just a bit expensive for my liking though.

I hope those brushes I ordered from England arrive soon. I miss my big angle grinder.

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2 Responses to This and that: …and all for want of a horse-shoe nail…(well two carbon brushes actually)

  1. anonymous says:

    mama writes:

    I am a little bit behind with the reading… This is called 'built-in obsolescense'?

  2. syklist says:

    Not really as the parts are still available, even though the Black and Decker website says they are not.

    It is just the fact that you can't buy such spares over the counter any more, or at least not in the Netherlands. Maybe I should order a couple more sets of brushes whilst they are still available.

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