[tda]

This is also my observation. The cheaper I sell stuff on the local version of craigslist, the lower the quality of the buyers. No shows, non responsive to messages, whatever. I gave up on putting up stuff for free.

The reason I put it up for free is that I value not having the item more than having it, so much more that I don't care about the 10 or maybe 100 euro that I could theoretically get for it. The idea is putting it up for free will let me quickly get rid of it, and instead of throwing something useful away, maybe someone will be happy with it. In practice this rarely works, I now much better understand why some people with limited time just toss out whatever they don't need. Getting it into someone else's hands is just too much work. The environmental impact is horrible though

Another insight: whenever i donate my time fro free (volunteer work), my time is not valued at all. We start with a 30min coffee break with strangers I have no real interest in. Then a speech thanking so and so, and then someone starts preparing and finally after over an hour I can start contributing with whatever is the cause I want to help with. What a waste...

If I charged my normal rate everyone would be prepared and make sure they make the most effective use of my hours.

So this is such a paradox: people under value what is free, so giving something for free is not appreciated enough for me to do it.

Final observation: I run a repair-cafe, and a very significant portion of appliances people come by with are cheap, ireppairable junk (often nespresso and senseo coffee machines, but also toasters etc). Im am suspecting that the people that buy more expensive coffee machines (the ones that are serviceable) are less inclined to actually take the time to repair it and just discard and buy new

[dolmen]

> I run a repair-cafe, and a very significant portion of appliances people come by with are cheap, ireppairable junk (often nespresso and senseo coffee machines, but also toasters etc). Im am suspecting that the people that buy more expensive coffee machines (the ones that are serviceable) are less inclined to actually take the time to repair it and just discard and buy new

Or the machines that are serviceable already have professionnal services that owner can reach and they will provide both repair and parts. The repair café is a last chance before junkyard.

[tda]

That may aso be a factor, but in general machines under 500 euro cannot be repaired economically as it easily costs 100-200 before the manufacturer even has a look. And this usually results in replacing a subassembly like the entire PCB at a very inflated price of say 200. I wouldn't be surprised if the economical-to-repair threshold is well over 1000 for a lot of product categories. Third party professional repairers are all but extinct. Only for certain specific product categories (e.g. washing machines) you still have them. But as most washing machines cost around 500 euro, and are expected to last only 5 years, I would think the number of repairers are declining (why repair a 3 year old 400 euro machine for 250, for at most another 2 years of utility if a new one can be had for 400?).

I would love to know if there are professional shops where one can get e.g. a capacitor on a PCB replaced, but as far as I am aware all these kinds of repairs are done by amateurs in garages like myself.

The other day someone even gave me a broken 750 euro Jura coffee machine. The owner was not interested in getting it back, they had happily switched to nespresso. Still haven't figured out why the pcb will not power on the heater though

[latexr]

Or maybe they last longer, on account of not being junk, to the point that when they finally break they are so outdated the people decide to upgrade instead of repairing.