Who's following the Tom Evans debacle?

I watch Mend it Mark videos on weekend mornings or as background noise when I’m house cleaning. Calm, relaxed content :slightly_smiling_face:

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There is a final irony that, based on his vids, he wasn’t seeking to unveil any great hidden truths about Tom Evans; he just saw an interesting challenge and content.

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Nope, lot of people have enjoyed his work over the years and have had no issues with the gear or him.

Call it what you will, neither you nor I know the full circumstance of the initial difficulties, the unit was certainly drop kicked somewhere along the line.

Mr repair man knew exactly what he was looking for. Could have used his heat sensor at the outset to identify the issue, quite possibly did. Would have saved an awful lot of effort

Perhaps TE was an arse, perhaps Mr repair man was just looking for a little extra Youtube income. Maybe both, can’t say I’ve any interest in tit for tats

That repair video was great, really enjoyed it.

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You think an audio repair man making YouTube videos is making money out of it? :laughing:

The more the followers of this hobby die off the more desperate the brands get. Unless obviously you are a decent brand who changes/adapts, rather than the ones selling more expensive versions of the same circuit with a few extra pounds worth of components.

I could understand if it was full of foo stuff as obviously that has its own cost being low volume hand made stuff. But not when it’s full of off the shelf parts.

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He’s making £400+ per month from his videos based on views alone and up to £4000 including advertising etc

118k subscribers, yep, expect he’s making some money from Youtube (100k subs = circa $1800pw)

Even Mr repairman acknowledged (though didn’t go into the detail of what it meant) the effort required to select and match parts that would meet the required tolerance - not foo for sure

As he said, seems overbuilt, absolutely if you’re going to use it with the basic TT he had to hand. Just hit up Amazon and buy a Project Phono Box and be done, it’ll do the job if that’s your want

I’m not justifying the value of the unit in question, don’t know, haven’t heard it, don’t know enough about it. Do know enough to know that the choices made in it’s construction weren’t all for cost saving, whether a benefit, a different argument. What’s also undeniable, customers who have demo’d it next to other similarly priced kit have bought it. Seems the owner was keen enough to have it repaired at what would have been significant expense if Mr repairman had charged for all the work undertaken

It’s a £25,000 phono stage, what was he supposed to do? Take it to the recycling centre and heave it in the WEEE bin?

What he wasn’t keen on paying was TE’s exorbitant repair prices - which is why this conversation exists at-all…

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The component costs for the full repair were in the tens of pounds, and less than a day’s labour.

Evans wanted several thousands of pounds to repair the unit. Presumably the bulk of that cost is his labour charge. He’s entirely entitled to charge what the fuck he wants for his time, but if someone who is wealthy enough to buy the thing in the first place can’t justify the cost of Evans doing the repair decides to send it to a fairly well respected repair guy instead, and if that repair guy happens to have an educational YouTube channel, then…

However much Mend it Mark earns from his YouTube is entirely immaterial, even if he used the income to abrogate his labour costs on the jobs he decides to video (and I think people don’t actually appreciate the amount of time it takes to film and edit a high quality, watchable technical YouTube video, so maybe you should take that labour cost into account when talking about their YouTube income).

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Thing is you do max revenue when doing 30 - 1hr films - It helps if you can sensationalize to really get the click bait going: “The £25,000 pre amp that went wrong”. I’m certainly not justifying, supporting or condoning poor products, work or service. I can say it’s easy to cancel people online particularly if there is finalncial gain or alterior motives to be had. There are two sides to every story

In the video posted above by Kev, the repair man says the manufacturer sent him the amp, and also told him he wouldnt be able to repair it :man_shrugging:

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Unfortunately clickbait titles are virtually compulsory.

If someone sent me a £25k piece of kit to repair, and the manufacturer told me I wouldn’t be able to fix it, I’d definitely use that information (£25k, you can’t fix it, you pleb) in my title/blurb. It’s entirely a commercial decision, to the extent that it would be negligent to my business not to do so.

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Seeking to divert attention away from TE’s shoddy workmanship and his embarrassment over being exposed by talking about MIMs channel revenue is missing the point to say the least.

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And yet you continue to tit AND tat :roll_eyes:

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Just saying there are motivations here that aren’t as pure as snow… I had an experience once with what I thought was a customer who turned out to be a very peculiar guy with a rant blog. He basically bought stuff to rant about. He damaged what I sent him ( clanged the paintwork) I paid for it’s return and rectified it even though it was clear what he’d done. Paid for its return.

This time he ranted about a non existant issue - I paid for it’s return again and filmed myself opening it with a witness to prove what he was saying was a lie. At this point I has no idea he had a blog or who he was… When that became apparent several months later the damage was already done - arguing the case just looks poor (You get cancelled on that pretty quickly) so it cost me several tens of thousands in lost custom and reputation damage instead.

“I’m certainly not justifying, supporting or condoning poor products, work or service” I am saying sometimes things aren’t so straightforward on the internet.

TE posted on the Maverick forum and it was quoted verbatim on the PF thread linked above (Beobloke post Page 11)
You can read his version on there if you want.

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Regardless of how things are on the internet, and speculation as to MiM’s motives, the central point is that Tom’s products are laughably poorly conceived and bodged together for exorbitant sums of money, and that would be the case whether or not this repair video had been made.

Having been exposed online as a charlatan (who seemingly can’t, or can’t be bothered to repair his own creations) we then see Tom’s true colours as he seeks to try to shut down something that merely provides an insight into what’s inside the box - if Tom stands behind his designs and workmanship, then why is he so upset…

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OK, I’ve not read into this one at all which means I don’t know anything about it other than a thread flaming a manufacturer - I’ve been cautious of laying the boot in but it seems this one is rather cut & dried.

I’m guessing because his livlyhood is going up the spout / becasue he’s busted or both?
I’m sure there are thousands of manufacturers who wouldn’t like their product pulled appart on camera. Many would / do litigate against it. Across the board companies don’t like raw costs divulged either: McDonalds doesn’t like it to be known a Big Mac costs $0.77 to produce.

I’ve not read into it but was the manufacturer contacted by the repair guy and told (I’m going into your product and filming it?- If he was then he’s hung himself becasue that was his last oportunity to swim in the right direction before this wave hit him)

N.B: Saying: ‘I’m going into your product for a YouTube film’ is the customers strongest leverage against a manufacturer (before legal action) should issues arrise.

OK I am not going to do all your work for you, you are either interested or not.
All the relevant info is in this thread

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" I think it’s important that this kind of stuff gets shared far and wide. Behaviour like this from manufacturers shouldn’t be tolerated or encouraged."

My interest was perked because this puts this forum as judge and jury and potentially open to anything from the wrong end of the stick to libel itself. (Was the unit second hand? / does the warranty state anything about not opening third party etc etc) I wanted to say there is often more to these scenarios than meets the eye. I’m not defending or condoning what seems very much like a terrible product and service. It is however important to have first hand information before laying the boot in or you could end up kicking the wrong cunt.