The insanity of Service Agreements and Warranty Parts

[dmills]

I know of a few screens that took one look at this sort of thing and said, thanks, but no thanks, we like our old Ross GC1s (Or Kaylee or Westrex or Philips FP4, or whatever) just fine, 70 years old and still getting the picture on the screen (And, yes, you can still get the parts to maintain them)....

Hell one of them is still running Carbon arc with M/G sets for the DC supply!

2000ft spools and changovers galore (Plus the care and feeding of the carbons), very much not a multiplex way of working, but at least I never have to go and bitch about presentation faults in those cinemas.

Regards, Dan.

[dave_k]

The problem will be getting copies of new releases on film now, as many studios/distributors wind back production of 35mm prints. 15 years ago I occasionally ran projectors for a drive-in in country Victoria, and even back then we had difficulty getting prints. Hell, it was hard enough getting non-cyan soundtrack prints because the sound heads were still original, and not LED.

[dmills]

Yea, everyone had to go over to Laser for the sound because of the Cyan dye thing, but actually you are between a bit of a rock and a hard place if you are not 100% mainstream release based (With corresponding MG and percentages) as LOTS of classic cinema is ONLY available as a 35mm print.....

We used to screen much from the BFI collections and quite a lot of french arthouse (The arts funders paid us to do it, no excuse I know!), cannot really do that with a digital cinema rig.

Regards, Dan.

[Galenbo]

Half the time, when these boards are replaced during a fault finding mission they don't even ask me to replace the old ones that turn out to be fully functional and send the "new" ones back.  We just get to keep whatever new parts they send us.  Sometimes they don't even ask for the old stuff back.

A new one that is "just tested 1 time" has exactly the same value of a random one that is 5 years old.
It's very steep, you can say digital. There are no intermediate values between 0 and maximum.

It is madness and I have no comprehension whatsoever how this company stays afloat let alone makes any kind of a profit.

If someone has any idea how this is even financially viable for them or the manufacturer I would love to know....

There's a lot of variables, and their definition is not clear.

Most "sales departments" have a profit when the salesmen costs are deducted, except when warranty costs are deducted.
Many "service departments" have a high profit, except when warranty costs are accounted on that department.
Some sales and service departments always turn with a loss, but it's a necessity to sell the consumables, often with vendor lock-in.

Some company's pay the fabricant for the sales exclusivity, and get a percentage of the sold devices. Sometimes warranty is for the fabricant, sometimes for the seller.
But some fabricants pay the sellers for their exposure and marketing efforts, and no percentage is for the seller. And many other formulas.

If the name is big enough, the main goal is to get devices into the market, mostly with an all-in de-facto loss.
Wanting this, you also need distributors/service so they get payed in whatever formula.

Every time Bosch sells a drill, it makes a loss (if you count warranty, marketing, wages,...) but the moment you walk out and use it you make free publicity for their consumables division.

What is the amount of euro's your organisation pays/year, and what is the amount of time (incl travel, telephone) they spend for your organisation ?

[g.lewarne]

Yea, everyone had to go over to Laser for the sound because of the Cyan dye thing, but actually you are between a bit of a rock and a hard place if you are not 100% mainstream release based (With corresponding MG and percentages) as LOTS of classic cinema is ONLY available as a 35mm print.....

We used to screen much from the BFI collections and quite a lot of french arthouse (The arts funders paid us to do it, no excuse I know!), cannot really do that with a digital cinema rig.

Regards, Dan.

We kept our Vic5 so can play 35mm, but unfortunately most of the print we have received in the last few years have been so-far-gone (even from archives) as to be unplayable. a BluRay was a better choice for our customers.  However, we are now getting a lot of older classics remastered on DCP and most of the time they do a cracking job on the transfer and cleanup.

[g.lewarne]

What is the amount of euro's your organisation pays/year, and what is the amount of time (incl travel, telephone) they spend for your organisation ?

We pay them only a few hundred euros a year.  That has easily been used on just a few of the international shipping both ways on spares just this year alone.