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 am.
Our weekday hours are unchanged and remain as 8:30 am to 5:00 pm.
We will begin opening on Saturdays
Parcel tracking emails
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!
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!
We trust our staff
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.
We are now Buy New Zealand Made Service certified
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
(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
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!
Blatant and arrogant dumping
We had this stuff dumped in front of our rubbish skip during broad daylight on a workday.
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.
Torch repair
This small LED torch came in for recycling. The batteries were stuffed. Cleaned the battery contacts and put some new ones in. It worked but not very well. It would flicker especially if the case was pressed. I took it apart, squirted some contact cleaner in the switch but it would still flicker. And then I noticed something.
The tab from the battery contact was shorting out to the LED PCB. It is thin metal so it bends easily. Either it was not bent down properly in the factory or it moved when the batteries were changed.
It was easily fixed. I bent the tab down and put a little patch of adhesive foam over it. We now have yet another torch that we can use and another item is saved from being recycled.
New look website
After having the same website design for almost ten years we have decided to refresh its appearance. It still uses the excellent WordPress CMS and still has a number of plugins making a wide range of functions available to visitors.
We have checked the site for any potential bugs but if you find any or have any suggestions on improving it please let us know.
The upgrade was carried out by a small team of talented in-house staff members.
Our staff now get free public transport
The Metro card is used for paying public transport fares in Christchurch. Ecotech Services now pays for all of the public transport fares for staff members. This means that they get free transport for both commuting to work and for any other activity.
This is a small measure to help with climate change mitigation by encouraging staff to use public transport.