Comment by tsimionescu

7 years ago

Would you extend your experience with the food sector to your car? Say you bought a car that was made by people who loved working with it. The mechanics even love to repair it.

But now, 1 year passes and you go for a regular check-up to your mechanic and they start visibly sighing when you enter. They now hate repairing this ancient piece of tech, it barely matches any of their tools, and they caution you that the tool manufacturers are actually moving to a six-month schedule for new car repair tools getting released, and half the tools they use for your car are already deprecated and likely to be discontinued next release.

Would you be happy to just buy a new car, to prioritize the service provider's experience? Or would you seek a different service provider/car brand, that doesn't do this?

That's a thought evoking question. I don't own a car, so this is hypothetical. Use a car that your mechanic does like to work on (doesn't start to dislike it after 1 year). In your scenario the tooling sounds like a significant investment, so the mechanic probably also "sighs" that he has to get new tools often, and that he can't service older models. Is there a repair-friendly car on the market that's also good enough in other respects? From what I hear people take note of repairability when choosing a car (I do it when choosing a laptop). If the mechanic liked the "1-year car" initially, he misjudged it.

I guess what I'm talking about is looking for win-win situations. I get the feeling that when it seems like you can't get there, a more fundamental problem has been introduced earlier in the process. Your example looks a bit complicated, because it's more obvious that the relationship is actually made up of more than 2 parties. Those explicit in your example: manufacturer, mechanic, driver. You could keep adding parties: regulator, importer, suppliers to factory, trade unions, etc.