• Digitor A9734

    Alan Liefting

    This is today’s egregious failure of cheap and poor quality goods, in the case a Digitor A9734 mini stereo system.

    It came in for recycling. When tested on the bench it drew a few watts but there was no power indication.  I took it apart and look what I found!

    Inside view of a Digitor A9734 mini stereo system.

    The loose wire must have been only just hanging on underneath the blob of solder where it should have been. I soldered it back on and soldered it properly.  It then burst into life on a radio station.  The volume control was scratchy and one speaker was giving intermittent output. I spent a LOOONG time trying to fix it by inspection and by soldering but as the hours (ok tens of minutes) ticked by the fault got progressively worse.  It was awful to fault trace.  I eventually gave up and went home.

    The next morning I thought I would give the tape and CD player a test. The tape player chewed up a good tape and the CD player wouldn’t spin up the CD.

    So I grabbed the thing by its cables and frustratingly threw it into our dismantling department!

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  • It’s NZ Made Day

    Ecotech Services administration
    New Zealand Service

    Happy NZ Made Day!

    We are proud suppliers of New Zealand based services. We are locally owned and support local businesses as much as we can.

    Buying New Zealand goods and services is good for the environment and good for our economy.

  • Spam from .click addresses

    Ecotech Services administration

    We get a huge amount of spam emails even though we have spam filters and often add entries into an extensive blacklist.  Recently we have been getting spam from .click addresses.

    Given that they are all promotional spam we have decided to block the complete .click gTLD.  They are sold for as low as $1.80 making them attractive to spammers.

    The .click gTLD was launched in 2014 but they only began to appear in our email inboxes from this year.

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  • We will begin opening on Saturdays

    Ecotech Services administration

    As of the 19th of October we will be opening our shop for our full range of products and services.

    Opening hours will be from 9:00 am until 1:00 pm.

    Our weekday hours are unchanged and remain as 8:30 am to 5:00 pm.

  • Parcel tracking emails

    Alan Liefting

    We order parts from all over New Zealand and overseas to do our repairs and refurbishments. Some of the companies that we deal with just send the stuff and assume that we will get it. And I am more than happy with that. Other companies send us a whole stack of automated emails telling us the progress of the shipment.

    We ordered some electrical switches from Mitre 10. (Interestingly they are cheaper to buy from Mitre 10 than from our electrical wholesaler.  But that is a story for another day.) We got SIX emails about the parcel from three different sources!

    Mitre 10 emails

    We don’t need ANY emails about the parcel delivery!  We will just assume it will turn up and if it doesn’t we will then look up the tracking information.  It is bad enough that our email inboxes are flooded with spam and scam messages!

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  • We trust our staff

    Ecotech Services administration

    Speed monitoring of work vehicles is common and sometime stated on a back window sticker. Employers should always be able to trust their staff when using work vehicles.

    The news story mentioned can be seen here.

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  • We are now Buy New Zealand Made Service certified

    Ecotech Services administration

    New Zealand Service logo. Trademarked.
    The New Zealand Service logo. Trademarked.

    There has been a New Zealand Made campaign running since 1988.  Since it was for products only Ecotech Services would not be eligible for a licence.  Last month (July 2024) the Buy New Zealand Made Campaign launched a trademarked New Zealand Service licence.  We applied for one and since Ecotech Services met all of the criteria they issued a licence for us to use the trademark.

    As well as offering a repair and recycling service we also sell a wide range of mostly second hand and refurbished products.

    We are a socially responsible company so we make every attempt to help the New Zealand economy to help the people of New Zealand.

  • Our X, formerly known as Twitter, account

    Ecotech Services administration
    Image of the Twitter logo with the bird upside down and with the X logo as its eye
    (Image from Algorithm Watch.)

    X, formerly known as Twitter, developed a toxic nature and became rife with misinformation after it was purchased by Elon Musk.

    Because of this we have decided to close our account.   There has been a large number of account holders that decided to leave the social media service for the same reason.

  • Dishonest manufacturing

    Alan Liefting

    This no name powerbank with solar charging  came in for recycling and it is anything but powerful.  The battery is swollen and the case is bowed because of it.

    It is quite dishonest of the manufacturer to put such a small battery in a large enclosure.  Not only could the battery be taller but it could also be thicker.  There are two foam rubber spacers used to fill the empty space in the enclosure.

    The purchaser would be quite unaware of the small battery size and would assume that a physically large enclosure would equate to a larger energy capacity than a smaller one.  If I find a suitable battery I would be able to more than double the capacity of the powerbank.

    Please everybody, avoid products that are of such bad quality that the manufacturer is too scared to put their name on it!

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  • Blatant and arrogant dumping

    Alan Liefting

    We had this stuff dumped in front of our rubbish skip during broad daylight on a workday.

    Some rubbish

    It is a collection of stuff that is not at all related to what we accept for recycling.  There is some sort of cot, a paddle board, a bike pump (that might be ok), a home made toy train, and a few other things.  It is surprising that none of us noticed it being dumped given that we go in and out of the back door pretty regularly.

    Does the person that dumped it think they are doing us a favour?  Well they are not!  A similar thing happens at the charity shops.  All sorts of things get dumped there that are of little or no value.

    It seems that some people overlook a rational appraisal of the value of goods to justify dumping it for free.  In the case of this dumped stuff the value for resale is about 25 cents for the metal and the rest would unfortunately have to be sent to landfill.

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