Tuesday, June 18, 2013

A Theoretical Question

I have this friend...

Say a couple of guys were looking at taking something apart... because that is what guys do. Just to keep this on topic, let's pretend it was two hams and they were taking apart an inexpensive Chinese mobile radio.

The first guy, who bought the radio, took a few screws out and couldn't easily pull the cover off, so he hands it to the second guy and says, "Can you get this apart?"

The second guy messes with it for a second and then hands back the radio with the cover off. Ta da! Slice of pie, piece of cake!

A little while later, the first guy notices this:



Which leads to this:



And this (sorry - not a great picture, but you get the idea):



So, apparently, it is important to take off the knob first before pulling on the face plate as the plastic that holds the rotary encoder together isn't designed to take much force. Go figure. Oops.

The radio still works - you can use the controls on the microphone. The display is messed up (see image). It is unknown when that happened - during the opening of the case or during subsequent "trouble-shooting." Transmit and receive both seem fine.


The first guy feels like he setup the second guy for failure by just handing him the radio and asking for help. He doesn't think the second guy owes him anything at all.

The second guy feels extremely guilty and wants to pay for the broken radio.

So, theoretically, do you think the second guy owes the first guy anything? I'd like the internet to be the final arbiter in this as we can't keep passing cash back and forth.

7 comments:

  1. I think it is very important for people to follow the "You break, you bought it" rule. TAKE HIS MONEY!

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  2. For the record, "Some Ramdom Guy" and "Elmer J. Hamm" were posts by the second guy.

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  3. If this happened to me it would be my fault not the others. Brick contact me via my blog and send me the radio i will repair if you no charge.

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  4. If he's really wanting to pay for it then let him do it. I say let him pay for the radio and then give him the broken radio to tinker with, assuming he's into radios.

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  5. If I were the "breaker" I would buy a new one and keep the old one for my use and experimentation

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