EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Spare Parts Spare parts rip off!

It's not medical equipment...

Good point ... but, on the other hand, I doubt there are many other items on that sub with "Made in China" stamped on them.

I understand the frustrations of everybody but in defence of Siemens who I used to work for, they did not cut corners on training which was in Germany or the USA and this all has to be paid for somehow. In my twenty two years of working for them, I had numerous product training courses on technologies that differed so much. They also have to show you all of the image quality calibration techniques. I used to love doing cine film image quality.

There were numerous times when we turned up for a service to find it was cancelled.

I fully appreciate how it looks when it boils down to a small part but I think those days are long gone now South Korea is spreading it's wings. I'm hearing good things about Samsung so they will be a cat among the pigeons as they say.

They knowledge in TVs is spreading to medical imaging systems.

I'm not worried about trolls either as my website is currently being bombarded by a Viagra company

I have a real cracker for you, had a company contact me to say they were willing to uplift an asset for free ..... what they really wanted was to strip it for parts as you can't get new parts now. We reckon there was a few grands worth of parts that could be reused ........

That's why old Land-Rovers get stolen ... they are worth so much more when stripped for parts.

In fact there are many such stories; like the one about the RAF retreiving parts from aircraft museums (re-fueling probes for Vulcans, if I remember correctly).

It has even been known for certain biomed techs to scoop up old junk (non-working equipment) for "spares" at medical equipment auctions! "No names, no Pack Drill", as they say.

There is a thriving market for "good used spares" (not to mention "refurbished parts") in the USA; whilst here in the UK all we have is the "Dark Side".

Thats why you dont see many old skodas around anymore, they were bought up and shipped out of Tilbury docks for some years.

At least they were "bought" first (we hope).

Most of the Land-Rovers end up some distances east of the Rhine (allegedly).

Some years ago I had a number of Bedford Rascal vans. One day when cruising around Edmonton (you know, the way you do), I became aware that I was being followed. So I turned down a side street, and sure enough, the guy kept coming after me.

I stopped, and the guy pulled in behind. Yes - you've guessed it, he was after the van. It turned out that he had a "side line" in shipping Rascals out to Lagos.

I did not take him up on his offer, mainly because I was (at that time) keen to preserve some semblance of a "Rascal market" here in the UK!

and this is on subject how exactly?