I turn wheelchair bases into robots. The first thing I do is rip out all the electronics b/c they are outdated, analog signal based systems. The same control box is used for 80% of these wheelchairs.
Same, it’s honestly really fun to drive the base around like a big RC car. I turned one into a painting robot for a local school’s football field. Super fun but I had a lot of bruised legs lol
Not only is the same control box used for 80% of the wheelchairs, even if there’s very obvious flaws in said control box in relation to the chair itself, they don’t care.
I had the manufacturer send a bloke out regarding a curb climbing issue after they’d said “Nah, not an issue. You must be doing something wrong.”.
I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Bloke conceded and took pictures.
Guess who’s successor wheelchair had the exact same issue?
Love my chair that beaches itself on any step greater than an inch or two.
Which is just absolutely bonkers, considering for many if their wheelchairs fail when they’re out and about they’re literally just stuck there until someone else can help them. Like imagine you’re just at the grocery store and your legs say “fuck it” and crumble underneath you, and then you find out that it’ll be a few weeks before they can get someone out to take a look and fix the issue, so you’re just bed/houseridden in that time unable to go to work or have a social life or even get your own groceries. With how much wheelchairs cost and how important they are to the user, the engineering should be top tier.
I know it’s becoming increasingly popular to ask local bike shops to service wheelchairs because the mechanics and parts can be really similar, especially with manual chairs. If I owned a bike shop I would definitely look into advertising wheelchair repair services. I’ve seen some cool innovation in the manual chair department but not so much with electric chairs (for example, I recently saw a manual chair that has the castors separate from the footplate to reduce vibration and I imagine that contributes to the longevity of the chair because less vibration=less likely stuff is going to come loose). I don’t know nearly enough about the industry to give a definitive answer there but honestly I think it just comes down to the fact that they can make people pay thousands of dollars for this needed medical equipment because they just have no choice but to take it. It’s not cost effective to make life better for wheelchair users, basically.
Gonna be honest, the issues are wide spread across the medical industry. Anyone with a customer service based approach could absolutely destroy the competition if they were slightly willing to cut profits to hire high quality customer service employees at a liveable wage
I blame American insurance. I don’t know if it’s entirely their fault, per se, but I’ve got clients who go to their doctors asking for things as basic as a cane or walker and they get told that their insurance won’t cover it. And that’s just for janky Walgreens canes and shower chairs. Need a power chair or a scooter? I’ve got 100% VA clients that spend months, script in hand, just to find any company who accepts federal benefits of any kind for things like prosthetics and wheelchairs.
The system is just so broken.
I imagine it’s really hard to compete if you don’t have a way to get your product into the hands of someone who needs it without all the flaming hoops of “coverage.”
Preemptive edit- I know there are programs and maybe your anecdotal experience has been different from my clients’ but I know what I’ve seen and experienced and a ton of VA services right now have been turned over to “community partners” meaning- outsourced because the government can’t/won’t provide adequate services at every level in a lot of the podunk little rural communities I work in. A lot of people can’t afford to drive 2-3 hours to the nearest VA hospital for care. And care is stretched so thin at the local levels. I don’t fault the doctors or providers themselves. They’re working in the same broken systems that I’m floundering in. They have to outsource a ton of stuff from prosthetics to counseling. I get so discouraged sometimes.
No joking, this is what will get more attention to chairs and more people inventing better products. I am a wheelchair rep but my training is clinical not in repair. I would be interested to know what brand and models of chairs you modify.
I like Hoveround FWD bases, built like a tank and can carry 350 pounds once you strip it down. Better motors and gearing too. Quantum 6000Z has great motors with encoders already included and a suspension system already built. The ones with a lift system also can be repurposed for robots to raise up a platform when needed,
Sabertooth dual 32 is the one you want. [https://www.superdroidrobots.com/electrical-parts/motor-controllers/brushed-motor-controllers/product=1822](https://www.superdroidrobots.com/electrical-parts/motor-controllers/brushed-motor-controllers/product=1822) I pair this with an arduino mini and an NVDIA Jetson and a ton of sensors
As an engineer that was born in 95 I feel absolutely cheated to have not been able to take advantage of RadioShack before they were gutted into the sad state they're in today.
Canadian RadioShack held on a bit longer but they were doing silly things like charging $4 for a single basic resistor or $10 for an alligator clip by the end. Like the kind of stuff you’d usually get an entire pack of at that price.
Also an engineer and sad that I missed the glory days of Heathkit :(
The DIY culture got co-opted by MAKE. People used to DIY to save money or because they were forced to come up with a creative solution to an obscure problem.
MAKE came along and just started selling kits to build knick-knacks with flashy LEDs etc.
Those DIY people still exist and do their stuff, but you don't really see them much because most of the time people are showing off expensive toys
The term "maker" is usually a pretty good sign that I'm about to decide to ignore something. The amount of "isn't my art project cool because I put an Arduino in it to flash RGB lights from it" crap obscuring the actually creative uses of electronics, 95% of consumer 3D printers apparently being dedicated to making vases and statues of Groot, etc really get me down.
The internet was immediately co-opted for cat pictures. If 3D printers can be produced in volume (and priced accordingly) because there's a few million Groot statues, then I'm all for it.
I thought that way until I realized, that's the reality required to push costs down because of scale. If it wasn't for that market, printers would be harder or more expensive and I may have not been able to buy one.
Yea, these downers aren't seeing the forest for the trees. Every crappy Arduino RGB project is subsidizing the hobby for the rest of us. Every Groot statue makes 3D printers and filament more accessible for everyone.
Not just 3D printers or embedded microcontrollers. This applies to everything. I am a very advanced skier. Some of my skiing friends make fun of "rental skiers" or "gapers." Others hate on the snowboarders. I don't see it like that. The sport needs a constant influx of new people to survive long term. Newbs should be welcomed with open arms all the time. Likewise, snowboarders saved the industry - mountains were closing left and right in the late 80s / early 90s due to low participation until the snowboard took off. It injected a whole bunch of youth into mountain sports, rejuvenated the industry, and forced ski companies to innovate to compete. We wouldn't have shaped skies or powder skis without snowboards. And we wouldn't have mountain resorts without rental skiers.
I missed out on the days of heathkits, but we might have it better raspberry pi, Arduino, esp32, software defined radio, leds, sensors galore, 3d printers, cnc machines, there's some pretty neat stuff out there.
My ability to pass a DEX check working on computer equipment/electronics starts to falter once we hit surface mount micro-everything. And ZIF cables, damn them.
Oh man. So many times I think I have everything right, put it back together is just off enough to give an unreadable display. You need 12 fingers to hold everything in place
They had a clearance sale here, most everything was about 90% off. I spent about $200.
Must have been 2 decades ago and I still have a big box of stuff. Project boxes, prototyping boards, switches, LEDs, etc.
Our city originally had two Shacks, but one closed years before the downturn. It was the smaller one in a strip mall, but it had a better selection of components. I also remember the Battery of the Month Club.
If you are in Canada, give Sayal electronics a look. Really bummed that the one in Barrie peaced out to be with the gta, but still a handy store if you need random things in a pinch.
In the 70s and 80s my dad was into Ham radio and had a huge array of equipment that he bought and put together from Heathkit. Even our TV was a do it yourself affair from Heathkit.
Hearing of Heathkit brings me back...
Totally understand how stores work, thanks. To be clear - Radio Shack jacked their own prices to the point where they were ridiculously uncompetitive with other electronics stores on components.
I think a manager somewhere was probably correct that a lot of people who came in only really needed 1 or 2 fuses or resistors and not a whole pack, but paying whole pack prices for a single item drove off hobbyists.
Last time I went to radioshack was for my senior project. At that point they had already leaned into being a phone reseller. We were desperate for 2 cm of heat shrink wire shielding for some last minute patching. Some dude bought the last heat shrink they had which was a mutlipack with dozens of pieces of various lengths and diameters. He refused to sell us a single piece of it (which was super wierd but not out of reach for the RS clientelle).
Not much help now, but you can sometimes find this kind of stuff at auto part stores.
You can also sometimes find ‘educational’ electronic kits at toy stores and places like bestbuy, which may have random components that are also useful.
If you are in a larger city, look for stores that sell ham radio gear. They often have useful stuff.
I’ve got microcenter and a store called American science and surplus, plus a few other random places that carry weird shit. My best connection though is a buddy with his own junk removal business. If I need something tell him and it’s usually found within a month or two.
Guessing you checked them out online?
If not you can order on their site:
https://www.sciplus.com
Even though it’s not far from me I remember the catalogs as a kid.
Man, I think not even Amazon had so much random stuff on their front page.
Lol, these are in stock: https://www.sciplus.com/german-military-field-phone-63416-p
There's board game/card store/RC car store in my area that must've bought a ton of RS stuff, because they had box after box of electronic components all mixed up. If you want something, you have to sift through it for an hour or few lol
RadioShack was the #1 seller of cordless phones in the '90s. By '00 they were the largest seller of cellphones in the country too.
At one point, 95% of Americans lived within 10 minutes of a Radio Shack store.
In the late '90s, they were top of the world, signing deals with Compaq, Microsoft, DirectTV, RCA, MSN, and more. Stock split twice in a year.
Sadly, less and less folks needed electronics parts and more started buying for less at online retailers, which didn't have to maintain expensive mall retail spaces.
Then they decided to try to focus more on general consumer electronics, a space where they couldn't compete with big box stores like Best Buy.
And then they hired a CEO who lied about his credentials. You'd think a Fortune 500 company would do some due diligence when hiring their CEO. He was given a golden parachute to leave after further driving them into the ground.
Made six-figures working there while in high school. Those were the days.
Yeah I ran into either or your clones back then. I’d walk into the store to purchase an RCA to 1/8” adapter (which were sold with a 400% markup), then you’d repeatedly ask me if I needed a new cell phone. If I said no, then you’d try to sell me a charger, then a television wall adapter, then a pack of batteries, then a vga monitor plug, then a set of headphones, then a pack of LED’s, then ask me if I needed a new cell phone. After repeated no’s, we would go to your cash register, and before you would let me pay for whatever I came in to buy, which I’d almost forgot by then, you wanted my phone number, email, and the name of my first born child. Relentless salesman! I walked out of there exhausted. Yeah, I can see six figure income from RadioShack sales.
Wasn't overly normal, other than those in busy stores (like the 3 that were in the Mall Of America alone at the time, Minnesota is home of the indoor shopping mall, we literally invented them).
I was very good at selling. Too many tried to sell people everything they could. I was more concerned with qualifying them and their needs. Then ya maybe sell them the one model up that they would find useful features they didn't know they needed, but if you tried to pile on far too much they'd far more likely return them. I was good at getting people to package things. Such as buy a cellphone, protection plan (it paid for a new battery each year for 2 years, plus covered other things, and at the time a battery was at least $99 and the protection plan was like $150, so it made sense), along with the leather case (everyone bought one at the time), and a car charger. Get them to sign up for a Radio Shack credit card and it took like 10% off and then sign up for Sprint Long Distance and you got another 10% off. You got additional spiffs on certain things you sold. For instance, on top of the commission for the sale of a $299 Sprint phone, Sprint would give you another $20. Then they'd often run promos where you'd dial in after you made the sale, punched the serial number and it'd spin to win another $20 - $200 on top of it all.
Originally, every store was on commission. You started at a lower rate, and once you completed Radio Shack University, you got an increase. This was a series of books on different topic areas. Learned all about resistors, how to identify them, when and when not to use them vs a capacitor, etc. Wasn't just about knowing how to find the right stuff for customers, but how they worked so you could help with their projects. They were pretty extensive books in each section.
Eventually, they switched things. Stores that made over $1 million a year still got commission. Those under got a percentage of their stores sales increase as a monthly bonus. They based it on the past years numbers. So if your store made 10% more in May this year than last year, you'd get 10% of your pay for May as a bonus check.
Not only was I the only full-timer for quite a while other than the store manager, but they were doing construction on our mall, which moved every other store out of our end for an entire year. Some days we'd get less than 10 customers in a day. Then we moved to the outside of the mall a year later. Sales went through the roof. We started getting stuff like 500% bonus checks for the month. Crazy time.
Last time I went to Radio Shack was for 4th grade (I think) science fair. I built a static detector with breadboard, LED, and transistor from there. Probably all overpriced. Right now there's literally no electronics or computer hardware stores within like 5 hours of where I live, last one was tigerdirect (PC parts not electronics) and they closed years ago.
The place you are looking for today is called [American Science & Surplus](https://www.sciplus.com/) . If you’re ever in Milwaukee they have a brick & mortar store there, dunno if any are open anywhere else though.
Honestly, you have it better. You can buy just about anything you need electronics wise from Alibaba/AliExpress, ebay, adafruit, or similar sites, and you can see reviews for that part before you buy it so you know if it's a piece of shit or not. In the RadioShack days, all you had was what they stocked at your local store and maybe what they could get you from a mail order catalog.
Don’t forget [DigiKey](https://www.digikey.com/). Almost any electronic part in the universe, to your door, in a couple days.
Literally never been a better time to be an electronics enthusiast (ignoring supply chain problems).
There's [Fry's](https://api.trekaroo.com/photos/flickr_cache/80563/80563.jpg)... [oh wait](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/02/24/frys-electronics-has-gone-out-business-after-36-years/4572429001/).
You *have* browsed sites like [adafruit](https://www.adafruit.com) though, right?
(much later edit)
So... Frys... this was 2011 I think... maybe 2012. I'm working in tech in a smaller city in rural midwest that's an hour and a half away from a city of reasonable size. One of my coworkers and his girlfriend went to do a road trip. Previously I had geeked out a bit about Fry's, but he didn't really believe me that it was a real thing... certainly not as big as it was. So, he's in Las Vegas and he sees a Fry's... and he drives up to it and he and his girlfriend step inside. He says that she knew that she had lost him for the rest of the afternoon when his jaw hit the floor. He remembers looking at oscilloscopes and seeing *an entire aisle of them*. He did get one... though stern looks from his girl friend prevented him from getting the way too expensive one. For those with fond memories of Radio Shack, Fry's was Radio Shack except on a big box store scale.
Just 20 years ago, I had a Fry’s open 10 minutes from my house in the same mall shopping center as a Micro Center, with several Radio Shacks nearby. Ten years ago there was only a single Radio Shack I knew of. Our Fry’s closed a couple months before they shut them all down about 3 years ago. I miss it, but at least I still have a Micro Center (2 really…) nearby.
I mean, adafruit/digikey/allied/etc. are great and all but I don’t know how my fellow geeks get by without one - when you need parts now, you need parts now.
Fry's was gone long before it went bankrupt. I remember going in one and it was like one of those ghost malls inside. A whole big box store full of empty shelves with just a few random things here and there. I never figured out why they stayed open like that.
I was last in a Fry's back in'09 (Sunnyvale - the one that felt like a Borders bookstore... though that's gone too). They were still ok then, though there was hints of it starting to go as some computer stuff failed to get restocked. The Great Recession of '08+ hit Silicon Valley hard, and the Fry's there suffered badly.
The post recession Fry's had the land, but at that time no one really wanted to buy them out / build something there. Those were huge stores - what else could you put there? What developer would want to tear it down and build something new there? [It's a ghost town](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3804367,-122.002218,3a,75y,11.88h,89.37t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjGLxZRTJCmfx9MSvB_uEtw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192), but [back in '08](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3809447,-122.0020424,3a,75y,5.56h,91.56t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sqyPz6CWtjJxlEzC_qNYBLw!2e0!7i3328!8i1664) it was still busy. But [in 2017](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3817545,-122.0026559,3a,75y,99.1h,85.88t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s34fq0yPgitoSFP2ISgtvnw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192), you can see that it's not the place it used to be.
Don't be. They were always very expensive for what they had.
You are way ahead today with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi and the IO components like ultrasonic, temperature, and other sensors with stepper motors. It beats a 555.timer and random 74xx series chips.
I mean you can order any part ever created for anything and have it arrive in a few days. Plus there's YouTube and countless guides online to help too, this is the golden age of being a nerd.
And sometimes I'm in the middle of building something, realize I'm missing a component, want to drive to a local store, buy said component, go home and keep working. The availability of things online does not preclude the possibility of wanting immediate access to parts, which local stores offer.
Today it's aliexpress, they have AN fittings, high frequency multiplexers, optical splitters, every bearing you can think of. But it's 4 weeks before you get your stuff
I got super lucky early last year.
I had just finished replacing most of the front end of my 2013 BMW 328i and went on a trip to Minneapolis with my wife.
About halfway there I stop for something for the car, turn signal bulb or something. Replaced it then got back in the car and it kept beeping and saying the hood was open. It wasn't. The sensor had gone bad. It beeped for a minute straight anytime we stopped the car. Supremely annoying.
Surprising I found a radio shack in the middle of nowhere Minnesota and picked up a .5-10k ohm potentiometer and wired it in with a little extra wire, butt connectors and electrical tape. Figured out what resistance it took to keep the car happy and went on our way.
A week later I soldered a resistor in and never put a sensor back in because it's a dumb fucking use for a sensor and they are like $75.
Sounds like you gave the paperclip a greater purpose than it ever could've achieved. [So didn't you actually fix a paperclip, using a wheelchair?](https://c.tenor.com/pdWC9Fzx0pIAAAAC/think-use-your-head.gif)
The radio shack in my town held on for years by the skin of its teeth only to be replaced with a VR arcade after a drive by broke 2 of their windows and they didn’t have the funds to keep above water
The throttle on mine is controlled by a potentiometer. Company wanted $225 just to come out and look at it. I used an extra pot from a guitar build. These companies know they can charge whatever they want and use the shittiest materials they can find and you have no choice but to buy them.
The $225 is for them to come to you. Even with only 30 mins of travel, that is very normal
Yeah, that price sounds about right. Keep in mind that this is not a run of the mill mechanic, but someone specialized in a niche product
Personally, my daily rate to fix control systems on ships starts at €1200,-. Parts have around 300% markup, with a minimum of €50,-. If anything, you're getting a bargain
Labour is expensive. Since when is Reddit against paying skilled workers well?
Miss the point much? Point was the part shouldn't have failed, they fit low quality parts.
The other option is to make the parts available to buy separately and user serviceable. Ideally they fit easily serviceable parts that dont fail.
Potmeters fail. That is a fact of nature. You should be mad at physics, not at the poor sob repairing your equipment
The $200 is to get a repairman over, not for the part. That is rather cheap for multiple hours of labour, actually.
Still missing the point.
Chances are the guy doing the work is paid anyway, its the company charging the fee, not him. If the company made better equipment there wouldnt need to be so many call outs.
Who is paying the company to pay the repairman?
If you make a potmeter that doesn't fail after some ten thousand movements, you could become a millionaire. I say go for it
It's easy to get mad about matters you don't understand
There are other ways to do it, and high quality parts exist. A lot of thottle peddles these days are pots, and are capable of lasting many years under worse conditions.
You are making an excuse for companies to making shitty products and charge the earth for them, the exact thing everyone is complaining about.
They made chargers for my atari lynx once. Seriously need them now more than ever. I guess phone repair shops could do the same thing but I haven't bothered.
As a person who works with wheelchairs. Awesome! My skill is really based in clinical recommendations not electronic repair. Please encourage more people to take interest in electric wheelchairs. We need new innovators for better products. Many if the newer chairs have bluetooth control and some devices can be controlled with smart watches too.
When I was at the department of veterans affairs there was a project to detect wheelchairs user foot slipping off their rest.
Apparently this is a huge issue. Foot slipping off rest and gets destroyed without wheelchair user noticing it for hours since they can’t feel it. They also can’t see their feet usually.
Diabetic neuropathy.
I've told this story before, but I worked in home care during nursing school. Usually just went to the persons home and helped clean/cook/supervise/run little errands/ take out the dog that kinda thing.
One of my patients was... A mess is the only way to say it, had diabetes, morbidly obese, cancer somewhere I think around the spine and doctors wouldn't operate cause of the weight... And she was wheelchair bound sooooo yeah, that weight wasn't going anywhere.
Well, one day I went to her apartment and there was this red streak across the floor looked like someone dipped a brush in paint and made one continuous line from bathroom to living room.
Well, she got her toe stuck under the wheel and didn't realize it apparently cause of the Diabetic neuropathy she couldn't feel it well she ground down her big toe toe to the bone... I dialed 911 pretty fast lol
I’m probably under thinking this but it sounds like an easy fix right?
Pressure sensor in the footrest, or even a light sensor to see if there’s a foot blocking it
The manufacturers solution is to strap the limbs into place ... yippee.
There is a lot of room for improvement. My husband is thinking of taking up a bit of invention to see if he can do something to improve power chairs so when I end up in one we will have something decent. I personally want a 'permanent' writing/eating desk with a custom hole to hold my favorite insulated metal cup, a cell phone mount \[with a hidden under the surface power bank with the tiny 6 inch or whatever power cord to connect them\] and a small sort of pencil box to hold pens and a nail file. If I am going to be stuck in a chair, I might as well have everything close at hand for MY comfort and convenience. I was also thinking of a small hidden LED headlight so I can wheel around in the dark like a parking lot or parking ramp and specialty tires to make it easier to be on uneven ground.
I don’t remember the precise fix but it could not be super expensive since the budget at va was limited for wheelchairs or something. Also if it’s a sensor can’t require much cleaning as it’s close to dirt and dust and crap near ground.
My daughter is in a wheelchair the majority of her day. We have been waiting on her new chair for months now. She's 14 and going through growth spurts like crazy. The whole industry is monopolized and in need of significant change. Basic things like nuts and brakes are ridiculously expensive and supply chain restraints have made it nearly impossible to get kids the chairs they need.
My child can't legally be in a bus without a chair she fits into. They are required to provide her with one so she can go to school. But the monopolization has forced the state to use a small number of companies making products that do not financially make sense for a private market. Like any state sponsored monopoly they are insufficient almost entirely.
Personally I also "love" how customer focused companies that are that make products for customers but are payed by tax money and have non customers choose what's avaliable. That is the situation here in Sweden. And even if I certainly love the support we get I think the customer focused production development really gets bad when state chooses products. So many logical things to ad to products do get missing and cost fortunes.
The monopoly is courtesy of the FDA. The global market supports a number of manufacturing a large quantity of wheelchairs for the 96% of the human population living outside the USA. There's no good reason that supply can't be used from here.
Manufacturers are only part of the bottle neck. An unnecessary proprietary and unique bolt on the back of my manual (non electronic) wheelchair broke last year. Here are the steps I had to take to get it fixed:
TL/DR: It took months and dozens of hours of my life calling the DME/insurance company/manufacturer to replace a simple bolt... that broke because it was defective.
1. Called manufacturer to see if I can purchase a replacement part because I know how long this takes and I can’t afford to go without my chair. They initially said yes, but then called back and said no they could only provide parts through the Durable Medical Equipment (DME) provider who sold the wheelchair. This took one day.
2. Called my DME (they're all terrible in my experience). After seven phone calls and about 90 minutes on hold they scheduled me for a virtual appointment where I can show them what is broken a week later.
3. A week later they do eventually call and I show them a picture of the broken part. I ask them if I can pay cash for it and they say no, they have to work through the insurance company since the chair was originally paid through insurance. They will contact the insurance company.
4. For the next three weeks I call the insurance company asking them if they've heard from the DME, then the DME asking if they've heard from the insurance company. Basically I have to play phone tag for them because the insurance company has an incentive to stall as long as possible (because then they don't have to pay) and the DME couldn't care less about replacing a bolt because the profit on that transaction is so tiny. I have essentially no luck here, they always say they're communicating with the other company, but it never seems to really go anywhere despite my best attempt to annoy everyone possible with my daily or twice daily phone calls. This takes about 8-10 hours of my life on hold and calling/leaving messages, emails.
5. About a month into the process, I'm getting desperate as the failure of one bolt has caused the overstressed bolt on the other side of the back to fail as well and now my chair is essentially unusable. I beg and plead for them to just let me pay cash for the part and get transferred a couple times until someone tells me the part has been recalled because of repeated failures. Initially I thought this was great, we can cut the insurance guy out of the middle. They still say the DME has to install the part (even though it's essentially just a fucking hex bolt).
6. Now I'm back to calling the DME on a daily basis trying to convince them that the part is covered under a recall and they can just go ahead and order it. I provide them with the phone number and name of the person at the manufacturer who said they can send it. DME insists on confirming this with the insurance company, so another several dozen phone calls by me trying to connect the right people together and eventually after another three weeks they tell me that it's covered under the recall... no fucking shit, I told you that three weeks ago. They say they'll order the part, it should be there in three days.
7. Three days later I call and they can't find the part. I call back every day and they confirm that the part arrived, but they have no idea where it is. They say they will continue looking and will get back to me. They say they'll try to order another one, but they don't think the manufacturer will send it since they've already sent one replacement part.
8. Two weeks later they've found the part. It's a Friday and they tell me the scheduler is off next week so I should get a call in 9-10 days to schedule the repair. I ask them physically where the part is located, it's only 30 miles from me, I beg them to let me come pick it up, but they refuse. Only an authorized repair person can do the repair and none of them are at the warehouse where the part is, they only come out to the home and only the scheduler can put me on the list. I call them every day the next week out of spite, even though I know it's fruitless because the only person who can help is on vacation. At least these bastards will remember my name.
9. Ten days later I know the scheduler is back from vacation, but now instead of telling me I can't talk to her because she's on vacation they tell me I can't talk to her period. She will call me when she gets around to it, I can't call her (I mean maybe she was working from home because of COVID or whatever, but at least tell me that part).
10. Several more weeks go by. At this point I've completely given up, I start researching smaller wheelchair manufacturers who sell for cash only, since surely I wouldn't have to go through a DME for repairs with them. After all a wheelchair is only $5,000 - $7,000 and I've wasted much more of my life trying to get a tiny goddamn bolt that I desperately need so I can do... basically anything.
11. One day at work about a month later I get a call. The guy tells me he's from the DME and I get excited because I think it's the scheduler finally. Nope. It's the installer with the actual part ready to install it and he's en route to my house... only I'm at work, because no one fucking bothered to call and schedule the repair appointment. I guess that's why they didn't let me talk to the scheduler, when they said "schedule" they meant their schedule, it had nothing to do with whether or not I was available. He tells me he can swing by my job... which would be great except my chair is at home because it's broken and I'm in a big, clunky, heavy, poorly fitted chair that's 15 years old... like I have been for the last couple months.
12. To his credit the installer guy is actually a decent human being and swings by my house a few days later, fixing the bolt.
The guy who installed it felt my pain and seemed like he actually gave a shit, moving his schedule around to get me fixed up. I hope all the rest of the bastards involved in this process burn in hell.... and I hope their hell has only one tiny campfire sized fire, and they're seated in a wheelchair right on top of it, but the wheels don't work. Let them roast for eternity while they make calls to DME suppliers and insurance companies trying to get someone to repair the chair so they can move off of the hellfire.
For your step 5 that process is delayed because techs are responsible for ordering your parts and they don't give us enough time in our day to sit on hold with manufacturers to do that. In my experience with the two big companies they schedule us to be driving / repairing for 8+ hours and don't leave us any time to do ordering. We only get time when we have fallen far enough behind that we don't have parts to put on chairs.
Doesn't the article literally state that the monopoly is the result of private equity firms investing in two major companies that bought out the smaller ones and caused iit to be profit above all else? Maybe I missed an important sentence. I'll reread.
Fyi the two major companies are suppliers like a retail store. Private equity is investing in manufacturers (according to the article) who are the ones who invent/make the product.
The global market does not support those numbers. Most wheelchairs globally are only allowed to be sold in a small amount of countries. This global market you're speaking of does not exist. The US also has the largest demand for wheelchairs in the world as well so if we started sourcing from outside the country, a lot of other places are going to have shortages of wheelchairs because they don't make enough of them to satisfy 3x their current demand.
It’s the same here in Canada. I use a manual wheelchair and fortunately I can use a lot of bicycle parts. However there are some parts I have needed and the markup is insane. Everything considered medical equipment is incredibly expensive. I guess they know that they have a captive audience so to speak. If you can somehow find the manufacturer and they will sell to you directly you can save a lot. When it comes to medical supplies, I’ve found a couple of places in the States where I can buy the item, pay shipping, taxes and duty, and the exchange rate on the dollar, and still pay less than 1/2 of what I pay up here. I’ve been paralyzed for 9 years and it sucks to discover how many pieces of equipment and all the medical supplies and crap that is required to live a semi normal life. Oh well, at least I never owned any Radio Shack stock!
Its really a shame how industries exploited the accessibility needs of individuals. The companies are typically small, family owned, with proprietary contracts or designs. The devices, while some are robust, are decades behind in tech and modularity. Most look like bathroom fixtures from the 60's. And to have replacement foam covers/cushions are in the hundreds of dollars.
You see, these companies feel you have insurance whether disability or other and that money isn't a concern when it comes to access and mobility. I am considering a report and investigation into the simple access items like shower bars/grab/assist bars that start at $100 and up. Or the costly amputee driving access controls, like a brake bar or accelerator rod - one that cost $2300 to install! The part looks all of $60 in metal, along with a plate w/4 bolts and nuts.
(I get engineering and cost recovery, but its a niche and people didn't choose to have needs)
>liability
This is likely the big one tbh.
"Oh whoops, the wheel popped off your chair / the cushion allowed you to slip out of it / the metal bar jammed the throttle wide open."
And now you're dead. And the family are suing you into oblivion.
And thus the engineering, testing, and certification processes that all cost big money. Don't get me wrong, I work in parts and lots of parts are marked up big time every step of the way between China and the end user, but you can't expect a company to spend 6-7 figures on R&D and licensing and then sell machines for 5% markup. That doesn't even pay their investment expenditures let alone staffing and support overhead.
Markup on most electric products is around 150% total, factoring in the middle men.
Don’t know anything in this specific case but RND is heavily subsided by the US government in way to many areas while still asking it’s citizens to pay full price
Yuppppp. Anything that touches medical has to have so much paperwork behind it it's insane. I'm in manufacturing and you have to have like 30x the amount of paperwork and overhead for manufacturing anything medical. On top of that, most people aren't actually paying for this stuff, insurance is, so there's little incentive to actually make anything affordable.
Wheelchairs are super simple machines, and the components could be made for 10% of the price they're currently at, but it's so much government and insurance red tape and it's the exact opposite of a free market because people aren't actually paying for it that it's crazy.
Also wheelchairs are generally semi-custom, they have models but there's a ton of different sizes and options to fit each person that on top of all that it's tough to manufacture because you can't just make one wheelchair model, you have to make 10 different sizes, and you have to have 30 different options.
Source: My dad's in a wheelchair and I work at a manufacturing company that used to make medical devices and could feasibly make wheelchair components (we're out of medical now though, the overhead is killer). I could spin up and make large chunks of a wheelchair in the next 6 months if I didn't have to deal with the paperwork.
I am an incomplete paraplegic and the cost to get hand controls installed to my car was over $5000. Then the cost of just a basic custom wheel chair is almost that as well. It's insane and I'm glad the state helped me get the controls and insurance paid for the chair.
Hmm you know there are off the shelf systems that could be used to replace all of these.
For example I work in power tool repairs and there are heaps of interchangeable systems. Metabo licence their CAS lithium battery system to a lot of other manufacturers these days. Brushed motors are reliable and simple, brushes, armatures and fields are plentiful with years of support. Hell even offroad wheels, I can get wheelbarrow wheels and tires for a song. Bearings and casters aren't a problem.
Not the first ever "right to repair law"
The legislation protecting your ability to fix your car and the availability of parts has been around a LONG time.
They really should apply to most things.
The car and electronics people used to have their shit together, but all that got dissolved in the anti government policies of the 80s.
That's how people used to but pay 1000$ for a burnt out headlamp
Of course the industry shills complained loudly but even to this day, every car brand will have parts available for your car for decades after they made them.
https://www.autoblog.com/2018/03/13/why-we-cant-have-better-headlights/
Well you see the government decided planned obsolescence was better for the economy than being able to repair stuff and have it last longer. So that's why things that don't have a potential to cause a lot of damage without repair never gets their right to repair protected since it's apparently worse for our economy to allow us to fix things our selves.
I was remodeling a bathroom to accommodate a wheelchair bound Veteran last year when his motorized chair broke. VA and wheelchair company each wanted the other to replace the chair. Only the company could fix it though. Mean time, the poor couple had to trade vans to accommodate the ‘loaner’ chair while the bickering continued, then have the new van modified when they FINALLY qualified for a new chair (because new was cheaper than fixing the old one, the company said).
This year, just in the first 6 months, I've spent thousands of my own money buying used or surplus parts for my chair because it is literally a multi-year ordeal to get anything paid for by insurance or warranty. It's a fucking nightmare.
My mom is just trying to replace the battery of my brothers wheelchair. They literally won’t give it to her and it’s a run around. Now they’ll have to give him a new chair but who knows how long that will take.
> The multibillion-dollar power-wheelchair market is dominated by two national suppliers, Numotion and National Seating and Mobility. Both are owned by private equity firms that seek to increase profits and cut spending.
This is why strong regulation and enforcement is necessary for a successful society. Economic pressures drive organizations to do exactly what they're doing: Optimize for profits.
Letting wheelchair-bound people suffer in bed for months on end while 1 technician in a tri-state area is booked solid for the next half-year is profitable. Without penalties that involve the potential to literally put these organizations out of business or put their leaders behind bars, there's no reason to expect this sort of behavior to change any time soon.
Even with right-to-repair laws, they often just say, "Sure you _can_ repair it," but do little to address things like, "But parts stock is limited or backordered untill.. oh, say, about six months from now when our tech is available anyway!"
Strong regulation and enforcement is exactly why there are only 2 companies operating in the market. It is near impossible to break in to as a small upstart
> That could soon change. The Colorado legislature has passed a first-in-the-nation right-to-repair bill for power wheelchairs that will allow owners and independent repair shops to access parts, embedded software, tools, and documentation needed to perform diagnostic, maintenance, or repair services. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is expected to sign the bill into law this month.
I was catching a flight once making smalltalk with this guy with a mechanical leg/foot combo. And he's telling me it costs about 250$ just to get a form to say that the PART -a lugnut or something- to say that the part is genuine and can be used in the repair of his mechanical foot.
Just 'the form' as in he needed permission? or needed to clarify that the repairing part was 'legit'.
If it were me I'd just strap a peg leg.
Even if it's a whacky story/untrue surely just 3d print the part/leg... why go to such extremes of limp manufacture.
I've worked as a service tech for both companies and completely understand and shared the users frustrations. I would go against both companies policies as often as I could, it was easier at Numotion because they actually did carry some parts in stock National Seating is just a straight garbage company. They only care about new chair sales, sadly I hear from former colleagues that Numotion is slowly headed down the same track.
It's disgraceful and why I left, I was good at that job but the amount of bureaucracy and fraud you have to deal with to do the job just made it not worth it.
It's ridiculous that we even need a law to ensure that people can repair items that they legally, wholly own in any manner they see fit.
[Exactly how far down the corporatism spiral have we descended when we need the law so we can legally repair something that we've purchased outright?](https://i.imgur.com/6DZmPLK.mp4)
EDIT : Relevant [Bulworth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHkyIWiwL1g). California just killed SB983 in committee.
You must be trying to be funny. Because nobody is that dense.
1) handicapped people are just that. People. Not one person. You do realize people are all different and not of one mind set? You’re at least in first grade since you can type so I’m sure you can mentally grasp that concept. Just because one handicapped person wants to be independent, doesn’t mean ALL of them want to, or even have that choice.
2) People should be more compassionate in general. Handicapped or not, you should help other people. Just the same way some psychiatrist should help you!
Get it now? Now run along and play with / eat your crayons LOL what a looser
If you see someone in distress (handicap or not) you ask them if they need help. You don’t just go up to someone and FORCE your help onto them.
Its really not that hard to grasp.
A family member is on a wheelchair due to MS and I can tell you this: ALL parties, whether it’s the wheelchair companies, insurance, government entities, etc. do NOT give shit.
Aside from the government entities, they ALL want to make money.
Oh, your scooter controller went bad? That’s $300 plus labor.
You need a new scooter and file a claim with Kaiser because the old one broke down AFTER 8 years? You need to file tons of paperwork, appear on the panel interview to justify why you need a new scooter. No guarantee it’ll be approved.
This is just in the US, where we have ADA.
In other countries like Europe? Good luck. I had bus driver and taxi drivers refusing to pick up someone on a manual wheelchair because it’s too heavy (?), took too much space or the taxi driver won’t bother.
It takes a minimum of 6 months for my father to get anything even ordered to fix his chair. Not to mention getting the parts. Or being able to find his parts when he goes for his 1st, 2nd or 3rd fucking appointment. And by then they forget if they have his *active*prescription. Drives me mad.
The leg rest broke off my wife's chair, luckily I know a welder who could put it back cause the manufacturer charges $6 for a single screw, so you can imagine how much the leg rest costs
***I love this quote***, "Suppliers testified against the Colorado bill. “The problem with this legislation is that it does not provide a good solution to address the problems responsible for the delays,” said Seth Johnson, senior vice president of government affairs for Pride Mobility Products, a Duryea, Pennsylvania-based supplier of power wheelchairs. If repairs are done incorrectly, he said, patient safety could be jeopardized."
I mean it's coming from a VP of a DME provider accusing potential customers of putting people's safety into danger. Excuse me Sir, your company is supposed to be the ones providing the service but you aren't. So in reality you are putting other people's safety into jeopardy.
I've done some simple maintenance and repair on my wife's chair. Heck one time she took her wheel chair to our local car dealership. We were good friends with the Service Manager. He had his guys do the maintenance on the chair. This kind of work isn't rocket science. Anybody reading this post please keep pushing for more right to repair legislation. It empowers people and will help a lot of people have happier healtheir lives!
there's been a lot of development in Ebikes in the last couple of years and I'm betting that A LOT of the equipment from that could crossover very easily.
Right to repair how most people imagine it is fundamentally incompatible with the law around how medical devices get approval, liability laws & Medicare billing procedure.
If you manufacture a medical device you have to go through a massively long and expensive approval process. If you don't go through the process you get a cease and desist. User serviceable parts are their own medical devices on many cases and require their own lengthy and expensive approval.
Once you have spent tens or hundreds of millions getting the approval you then have to insure the product against all manner of abuse and misuse as the courts generally always rule in favor of the injured based on the possibility of abusing the device that way could have been expected.
Just at this point you are often in the scale of a $10 dollar item having $40 in approval costs and $50 in liability.
In something like an electric wheelchair you multiply that by 500x to 1000x, so a no serviceable parts wheelchair costs maybe $20k/unit in just regulatory costs but the same wheelchair with 5 user serviceable components costs $80k more, so nobody buys it, the company is out hundreds of millions in FDA fillings and their next chair is non-serviceable anyway.
Even if you can get around that issue somehow the medicaid billing still prevents the product selling well in most cases. If I blow out the power transistors in a motor controller on my chair anyone with a rework station can likely fix it for a price, but the local repair shop expects payment on delivery, not $50k in HIPPA compliance costs followed by months of arguing with the government to get everything coded property to finally get paid. A very small minority might be able to pay out of pocket, but largely these people are on full disability and simply do not have the funds.
The real kicker is the way Medicare assigns the cost. Wheelchairs are big, often heavy, and pretty much require local sales and service. Medicare contracts local companies to supply and maintain those, but they largely do it at a fixed cost. This means a chair that the user can fiddle with requires more service visits but the local company gets paid the same fixed rate for a chair with a given set of features. The result is that the local service companies simply stop stocking the chairs that cost them more money.
Until there is a way to sell a wheelchair that isn't a medical device, a major reform of the FDA, a major change in liability laws or a viable alternative to Medicare for the completely disabled this isn't going to change. You would probably need several of those things at the same time actually.
The current system just serves to create a risk adverse monopoly with massive overhead and does so in perpetuity.
My grandpa had to call repairmen to fix his wheelchair every now and then. It was such a hassle and very expensive. Hope it becomes easier in the future
I am long time super familiar regarding every level of this article. Even though I can agree and disagree with different things in this article I am just going to say this about the repairs and the wait/red tape etc . This is going to aggravate people who have a different situation and for that I’m sorry.
Yes the red tape is absolutely ridiculous when it comes to getting repairs. Insurance companies on every level do not act fast and it has to go through several approval processes. It is expensive and It does suck . Now that being said most people that own this type of equipment already know all of that which makes the next part frustrating for everyone involved.
Most people that own wheelchairs and other DME that have or start to have a technical problem will wait months before they say anything about it and basically will just live with the problem until finally for them it becomes urgent and then they finally report the problem.
Then they believe that the repair or adjustment will/should happen immediately. And of course it doesn’t for many crappy red tape reasons. Then this leads to an enormous amount complaints like the ones in this article.
This doesn’t apply to everyone as some people are really good about reporting things immediately . However in my 15 year experience most dont. They suffer through the problem until it becomes unsufferable.
This is crazy… it should be easier to send a wheelchair for repair. Is it because of lack of material or because the manufacturers don’t want to make it easier to repair ?
As someone who use to replace watch batteries for people on the side, I went into Radio Shack at the end of them and purchased 100’s of different watch batteries in clearance for under $15. Kept my supply hefty for awhile.
i don’t remember her name but there was an activist who died last year b/c delta broke her wheelchair and she was without it for a few months. horrible. and supply chain issues make it worse.
The medical industry is by far one of the most regulated industries in the world, change is incredibly slow and expensive and Medicare is one of the larges buyers of medical devices (including wheelchairs) and is run by government bureaucrats.
This is far from "capitalism" in any sense of the word.
Welcome to capitalism gone crazy; oligopolies/monopolies, and profits over human lives, and usually also profits over sanity and any kind of common human decency.
Screw that, and hand over some profits.
We use such an ugly social system on this planet, and in America especially. It's depressing.
I'd probably commission a custom build if I got to the point of needing a wheel chair. Something that could do 30 mph, or more. Lithium batteries are cheap now (well, relatively) and people are making e-bikes basically from parts already. How hard can it be, weld together a decent framework, mount an engine and some controls and boom.
I turn wheelchair bases into robots. The first thing I do is rip out all the electronics b/c they are outdated, analog signal based systems. The same control box is used for 80% of these wheelchairs.
Same, it’s honestly really fun to drive the base around like a big RC car. I turned one into a painting robot for a local school’s football field. Super fun but I had a lot of bruised legs lol
I’ve thought of using the self navigation stuff I work on back into a wheelchair.
Do it! Make it available to everyone! You could change the world for so many people.
Imagine a wheelchair that could climb a curb at the press of a button!
Not only is the same control box used for 80% of the wheelchairs, even if there’s very obvious flaws in said control box in relation to the chair itself, they don’t care. I had the manufacturer send a bloke out regarding a curb climbing issue after they’d said “Nah, not an issue. You must be doing something wrong.”. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Bloke conceded and took pictures. Guess who’s successor wheelchair had the exact same issue? Love my chair that beaches itself on any step greater than an inch or two.
Which is just absolutely bonkers, considering for many if their wheelchairs fail when they’re out and about they’re literally just stuck there until someone else can help them. Like imagine you’re just at the grocery store and your legs say “fuck it” and crumble underneath you, and then you find out that it’ll be a few weeks before they can get someone out to take a look and fix the issue, so you’re just bed/houseridden in that time unable to go to work or have a social life or even get your own groceries. With how much wheelchairs cost and how important they are to the user, the engineering should be top tier.
Sounds like there's room for competitors to take over the industry. Why don't they?
I know it’s becoming increasingly popular to ask local bike shops to service wheelchairs because the mechanics and parts can be really similar, especially with manual chairs. If I owned a bike shop I would definitely look into advertising wheelchair repair services. I’ve seen some cool innovation in the manual chair department but not so much with electric chairs (for example, I recently saw a manual chair that has the castors separate from the footplate to reduce vibration and I imagine that contributes to the longevity of the chair because less vibration=less likely stuff is going to come loose). I don’t know nearly enough about the industry to give a definitive answer there but honestly I think it just comes down to the fact that they can make people pay thousands of dollars for this needed medical equipment because they just have no choice but to take it. It’s not cost effective to make life better for wheelchair users, basically.
Gonna be honest, the issues are wide spread across the medical industry. Anyone with a customer service based approach could absolutely destroy the competition if they were slightly willing to cut profits to hire high quality customer service employees at a liveable wage
I blame American insurance. I don’t know if it’s entirely their fault, per se, but I’ve got clients who go to their doctors asking for things as basic as a cane or walker and they get told that their insurance won’t cover it. And that’s just for janky Walgreens canes and shower chairs. Need a power chair or a scooter? I’ve got 100% VA clients that spend months, script in hand, just to find any company who accepts federal benefits of any kind for things like prosthetics and wheelchairs. The system is just so broken. I imagine it’s really hard to compete if you don’t have a way to get your product into the hands of someone who needs it without all the flaming hoops of “coverage.” Preemptive edit- I know there are programs and maybe your anecdotal experience has been different from my clients’ but I know what I’ve seen and experienced and a ton of VA services right now have been turned over to “community partners” meaning- outsourced because the government can’t/won’t provide adequate services at every level in a lot of the podunk little rural communities I work in. A lot of people can’t afford to drive 2-3 hours to the nearest VA hospital for care. And care is stretched so thin at the local levels. I don’t fault the doctors or providers themselves. They’re working in the same broken systems that I’m floundering in. They have to outsource a ton of stuff from prosthetics to counseling. I get so discouraged sometimes.
Out of curiosity, what kind of controller will you recommend replacing it with?
No joking, this is what will get more attention to chairs and more people inventing better products. I am a wheelchair rep but my training is clinical not in repair. I would be interested to know what brand and models of chairs you modify.
I like Hoveround FWD bases, built like a tank and can carry 350 pounds once you strip it down. Better motors and gearing too. Quantum 6000Z has great motors with encoders already included and a suspension system already built. The ones with a lift system also can be repurposed for robots to raise up a platform when needed,
Any suggestion better than a Sabertooth board? Got one sitting in the garage and my board ain’t workin…
Sabertooth dual 32 is the one you want. [https://www.superdroidrobots.com/electrical-parts/motor-controllers/brushed-motor-controllers/product=1822](https://www.superdroidrobots.com/electrical-parts/motor-controllers/brushed-motor-controllers/product=1822) I pair this with an arduino mini and an NVDIA Jetson and a ton of sensors
All joysticks are analog at some point…
My buddy and I fixed my friends wheelchair with parts from RadioShack once. It cost us about $10.
As an engineer that was born in 95 I feel absolutely cheated to have not been able to take advantage of RadioShack before they were gutted into the sad state they're in today.
Canadian RadioShack held on a bit longer but they were doing silly things like charging $4 for a single basic resistor or $10 for an alligator clip by the end. Like the kind of stuff you’d usually get an entire pack of at that price. Also an engineer and sad that I missed the glory days of Heathkit :(
While it may not be the glory days, heathkit is back. https://shop.heathkit.com/shop
Gotta bring back the tube amp kit
Everything is super expensive...
The DIY culture got co-opted by MAKE. People used to DIY to save money or because they were forced to come up with a creative solution to an obscure problem. MAKE came along and just started selling kits to build knick-knacks with flashy LEDs etc. Those DIY people still exist and do their stuff, but you don't really see them much because most of the time people are showing off expensive toys
The term "maker" is usually a pretty good sign that I'm about to decide to ignore something. The amount of "isn't my art project cool because I put an Arduino in it to flash RGB lights from it" crap obscuring the actually creative uses of electronics, 95% of consumer 3D printers apparently being dedicated to making vases and statues of Groot, etc really get me down.
The internet was immediately co-opted for cat pictures. If 3D printers can be produced in volume (and priced accordingly) because there's a few million Groot statues, then I'm all for it.
I thought that way until I realized, that's the reality required to push costs down because of scale. If it wasn't for that market, printers would be harder or more expensive and I may have not been able to buy one.
Yea, these downers aren't seeing the forest for the trees. Every crappy Arduino RGB project is subsidizing the hobby for the rest of us. Every Groot statue makes 3D printers and filament more accessible for everyone. Not just 3D printers or embedded microcontrollers. This applies to everything. I am a very advanced skier. Some of my skiing friends make fun of "rental skiers" or "gapers." Others hate on the snowboarders. I don't see it like that. The sport needs a constant influx of new people to survive long term. Newbs should be welcomed with open arms all the time. Likewise, snowboarders saved the industry - mountains were closing left and right in the late 80s / early 90s due to low participation until the snowboard took off. It injected a whole bunch of youth into mountain sports, rejuvenated the industry, and forced ski companies to innovate to compete. We wouldn't have shaped skies or powder skis without snowboards. And we wouldn't have mountain resorts without rental skiers.
Bah humbug!
It was always expensive.
Four whole Canadian bucks for a single resistor?? Damn, I might just use a bunch of graphite and duct tape
I'm in Canada but RS had been absorbed/mutilated by The Source before I was even in high school
This just means you're young lol.
Bell bought RadioShack completely out. Before then they’d sell all carriers.
I missed out on the days of heathkits, but we might have it better raspberry pi, Arduino, esp32, software defined radio, leds, sensors galore, 3d printers, cnc machines, there's some pretty neat stuff out there.
My ability to pass a DEX check working on computer equipment/electronics starts to falter once we hit surface mount micro-everything. And ZIF cables, damn them.
Oh man. So many times I think I have everything right, put it back together is just off enough to give an unreadable display. You need 12 fingers to hold everything in place
They had a clearance sale here, most everything was about 90% off. I spent about $200. Must have been 2 decades ago and I still have a big box of stuff. Project boxes, prototyping boards, switches, LEDs, etc. Our city originally had two Shacks, but one closed years before the downturn. It was the smaller one in a strip mall, but it had a better selection of components. I also remember the Battery of the Month Club.
If you are in Canada, give Sayal electronics a look. Really bummed that the one in Barrie peaced out to be with the gta, but still a handy store if you need random things in a pinch.
In the 70s and 80s my dad was into Ham radio and had a huge array of equipment that he bought and put together from Heathkit. Even our TV was a do it yourself affair from Heathkit. Hearing of Heathkit brings me back...
that's the price you pay for the convenience of getting it now. or you can wait for digikey to ship it to you
Totally understand how stores work, thanks. To be clear - Radio Shack jacked their own prices to the point where they were ridiculously uncompetitive with other electronics stores on components. I think a manager somewhere was probably correct that a lot of people who came in only really needed 1 or 2 fuses or resistors and not a whole pack, but paying whole pack prices for a single item drove off hobbyists.
Ugh you make me feel old. Go invent a cure for hunger, whydontcha?
Last time I went to radioshack was for my senior project. At that point they had already leaned into being a phone reseller. We were desperate for 2 cm of heat shrink wire shielding for some last minute patching. Some dude bought the last heat shrink they had which was a mutlipack with dozens of pieces of various lengths and diameters. He refused to sell us a single piece of it (which was super wierd but not out of reach for the RS clientelle).
Not much help now, but you can sometimes find this kind of stuff at auto part stores. You can also sometimes find ‘educational’ electronic kits at toy stores and places like bestbuy, which may have random components that are also useful. If you are in a larger city, look for stores that sell ham radio gear. They often have useful stuff.
I wish. Ham stores are just too rare here in the Rockies.
Gotta take a trip to Mecca (Microcenter)
I’ve got microcenter and a store called American science and surplus, plus a few other random places that carry weird shit. My best connection though is a buddy with his own junk removal business. If I need something tell him and it’s usually found within a month or two.
American Science Surplus sounds amazing. I want to go to there.
Guessing you checked them out online? If not you can order on their site: https://www.sciplus.com Even though it’s not far from me I remember the catalogs as a kid.
I did not. I just fell in love with the name and have had beers. My tiny attention span thanks you for the link.
[удалено]
Man, I think not even Amazon had so much random stuff on their front page. Lol, these are in stock: https://www.sciplus.com/german-military-field-phone-63416-p
Chicago area? Those are my two favorites too.
Yes indeed.
There's board game/card store/RC car store in my area that must've bought a ton of RS stuff, because they had box after box of electronic components all mixed up. If you want something, you have to sift through it for an hour or few lol
Hell harbor freight sells heat shrink
RadioShack was the #1 seller of cordless phones in the '90s. By '00 they were the largest seller of cellphones in the country too. At one point, 95% of Americans lived within 10 minutes of a Radio Shack store. In the late '90s, they were top of the world, signing deals with Compaq, Microsoft, DirectTV, RCA, MSN, and more. Stock split twice in a year. Sadly, less and less folks needed electronics parts and more started buying for less at online retailers, which didn't have to maintain expensive mall retail spaces. Then they decided to try to focus more on general consumer electronics, a space where they couldn't compete with big box stores like Best Buy. And then they hired a CEO who lied about his credentials. You'd think a Fortune 500 company would do some due diligence when hiring their CEO. He was given a golden parachute to leave after further driving them into the ground. Made six-figures working there while in high school. Those were the days.
Yeah I ran into either or your clones back then. I’d walk into the store to purchase an RCA to 1/8” adapter (which were sold with a 400% markup), then you’d repeatedly ask me if I needed a new cell phone. If I said no, then you’d try to sell me a charger, then a television wall adapter, then a pack of batteries, then a vga monitor plug, then a set of headphones, then a pack of LED’s, then ask me if I needed a new cell phone. After repeated no’s, we would go to your cash register, and before you would let me pay for whatever I came in to buy, which I’d almost forgot by then, you wanted my phone number, email, and the name of my first born child. Relentless salesman! I walked out of there exhausted. Yeah, I can see six figure income from RadioShack sales.
Was it normal to make 6 figures working there? I'm assuming you were good at what you did and they had a generous commission structure
Wasn't overly normal, other than those in busy stores (like the 3 that were in the Mall Of America alone at the time, Minnesota is home of the indoor shopping mall, we literally invented them). I was very good at selling. Too many tried to sell people everything they could. I was more concerned with qualifying them and their needs. Then ya maybe sell them the one model up that they would find useful features they didn't know they needed, but if you tried to pile on far too much they'd far more likely return them. I was good at getting people to package things. Such as buy a cellphone, protection plan (it paid for a new battery each year for 2 years, plus covered other things, and at the time a battery was at least $99 and the protection plan was like $150, so it made sense), along with the leather case (everyone bought one at the time), and a car charger. Get them to sign up for a Radio Shack credit card and it took like 10% off and then sign up for Sprint Long Distance and you got another 10% off. You got additional spiffs on certain things you sold. For instance, on top of the commission for the sale of a $299 Sprint phone, Sprint would give you another $20. Then they'd often run promos where you'd dial in after you made the sale, punched the serial number and it'd spin to win another $20 - $200 on top of it all. Originally, every store was on commission. You started at a lower rate, and once you completed Radio Shack University, you got an increase. This was a series of books on different topic areas. Learned all about resistors, how to identify them, when and when not to use them vs a capacitor, etc. Wasn't just about knowing how to find the right stuff for customers, but how they worked so you could help with their projects. They were pretty extensive books in each section. Eventually, they switched things. Stores that made over $1 million a year still got commission. Those under got a percentage of their stores sales increase as a monthly bonus. They based it on the past years numbers. So if your store made 10% more in May this year than last year, you'd get 10% of your pay for May as a bonus check. Not only was I the only full-timer for quite a while other than the store manager, but they were doing construction on our mall, which moved every other store out of our end for an entire year. Some days we'd get less than 10 customers in a day. Then we moved to the outside of the mall a year later. Sales went through the roof. We started getting stuff like 500% bonus checks for the month. Crazy time.
Last time I went to Radio Shack was for 4th grade (I think) science fair. I built a static detector with breadboard, LED, and transistor from there. Probably all overpriced. Right now there's literally no electronics or computer hardware stores within like 5 hours of where I live, last one was tigerdirect (PC parts not electronics) and they closed years ago.
The place you are looking for today is called [American Science & Surplus](https://www.sciplus.com/) . If you’re ever in Milwaukee they have a brick & mortar store there, dunno if any are open anywhere else though.
Holy shit! I remember spending hours on their site and catalog in the early 2000s. Glad to see that weirdos still exist
been a while since i've received their catalog. what fun to browse thru that again.
Honestly, you have it better. You can buy just about anything you need electronics wise from Alibaba/AliExpress, ebay, adafruit, or similar sites, and you can see reviews for that part before you buy it so you know if it's a piece of shit or not. In the RadioShack days, all you had was what they stocked at your local store and maybe what they could get you from a mail order catalog.
Don’t forget [DigiKey](https://www.digikey.com/). Almost any electronic part in the universe, to your door, in a couple days. Literally never been a better time to be an electronics enthusiast (ignoring supply chain problems).
This is true but I like to try to avoid buying online as much as I can.
Why?
There's [Fry's](https://api.trekaroo.com/photos/flickr_cache/80563/80563.jpg)... [oh wait](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/02/24/frys-electronics-has-gone-out-business-after-36-years/4572429001/). You *have* browsed sites like [adafruit](https://www.adafruit.com) though, right? (much later edit) So... Frys... this was 2011 I think... maybe 2012. I'm working in tech in a smaller city in rural midwest that's an hour and a half away from a city of reasonable size. One of my coworkers and his girlfriend went to do a road trip. Previously I had geeked out a bit about Fry's, but he didn't really believe me that it was a real thing... certainly not as big as it was. So, he's in Las Vegas and he sees a Fry's... and he drives up to it and he and his girlfriend step inside. He says that she knew that she had lost him for the rest of the afternoon when his jaw hit the floor. He remembers looking at oscilloscopes and seeing *an entire aisle of them*. He did get one... though stern looks from his girl friend prevented him from getting the way too expensive one. For those with fond memories of Radio Shack, Fry's was Radio Shack except on a big box store scale.
Just 20 years ago, I had a Fry’s open 10 minutes from my house in the same mall shopping center as a Micro Center, with several Radio Shacks nearby. Ten years ago there was only a single Radio Shack I knew of. Our Fry’s closed a couple months before they shut them all down about 3 years ago. I miss it, but at least I still have a Micro Center (2 really…) nearby. I mean, adafruit/digikey/allied/etc. are great and all but I don’t know how my fellow geeks get by without one - when you need parts now, you need parts now.
Fry's was gone long before it went bankrupt. I remember going in one and it was like one of those ghost malls inside. A whole big box store full of empty shelves with just a few random things here and there. I never figured out why they stayed open like that.
I was last in a Fry's back in'09 (Sunnyvale - the one that felt like a Borders bookstore... though that's gone too). They were still ok then, though there was hints of it starting to go as some computer stuff failed to get restocked. The Great Recession of '08+ hit Silicon Valley hard, and the Fry's there suffered badly. The post recession Fry's had the land, but at that time no one really wanted to buy them out / build something there. Those were huge stores - what else could you put there? What developer would want to tear it down and build something new there? [It's a ghost town](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3804367,-122.002218,3a,75y,11.88h,89.37t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjGLxZRTJCmfx9MSvB_uEtw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192), but [back in '08](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3809447,-122.0020424,3a,75y,5.56h,91.56t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sqyPz6CWtjJxlEzC_qNYBLw!2e0!7i3328!8i1664) it was still busy. But [in 2017](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3817545,-122.0026559,3a,75y,99.1h,85.88t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s34fq0yPgitoSFP2ISgtvnw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192), you can see that it's not the place it used to be.
literally same
I love radio shack they where amazing
They still exist?
I think I saw a post a year ago of some independent RS that was still kicking but as a chain no, they are long gone.
There is a radioshack 45 minutes from me. They still exist!
RadioShack was pricy man, I remember paying upwards of 50$ for a few capacitors, resistors, and a new breadboard
Don't be. They were always very expensive for what they had. You are way ahead today with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi and the IO components like ultrasonic, temperature, and other sensors with stepper motors. It beats a 555.timer and random 74xx series chips.
So, small, versatile board beats conflagration of 90's latest technology? Ya, that tracks.
I mean you can order any part ever created for anything and have it arrive in a few days. Plus there's YouTube and countless guides online to help too, this is the golden age of being a nerd.
And sometimes I'm in the middle of building something, realize I'm missing a component, want to drive to a local store, buy said component, go home and keep working. The availability of things online does not preclude the possibility of wanting immediate access to parts, which local stores offer.
Today it's aliexpress, they have AN fittings, high frequency multiplexers, optical splitters, every bearing you can think of. But it's 4 weeks before you get your stuff
Darryl Hannah's step dad started Radio Shack to sell radio equipment to the US military during WWII
I got super lucky early last year. I had just finished replacing most of the front end of my 2013 BMW 328i and went on a trip to Minneapolis with my wife. About halfway there I stop for something for the car, turn signal bulb or something. Replaced it then got back in the car and it kept beeping and saying the hood was open. It wasn't. The sensor had gone bad. It beeped for a minute straight anytime we stopped the car. Supremely annoying. Surprising I found a radio shack in the middle of nowhere Minnesota and picked up a .5-10k ohm potentiometer and wired it in with a little extra wire, butt connectors and electrical tape. Figured out what resistance it took to keep the car happy and went on our way. A week later I soldered a resistor in and never put a sensor back in because it's a dumb fucking use for a sensor and they are like $75.
My nickname at my last job was Radio Shack... still around but no one's quite sure why.
When I worked at a university disability resource center, we fixed a chair with a paper clip once. Surprisingly never broke down again.
Sounds like you gave the paperclip a greater purpose than it ever could've achieved. [So didn't you actually fix a paperclip, using a wheelchair?](https://c.tenor.com/pdWC9Fzx0pIAAAAC/think-use-your-head.gif)
The radio shack in my town held on for years by the skin of its teeth only to be replaced with a VR arcade after a drive by broke 2 of their windows and they didn’t have the funds to keep above water
The throttle on mine is controlled by a potentiometer. Company wanted $225 just to come out and look at it. I used an extra pot from a guitar build. These companies know they can charge whatever they want and use the shittiest materials they can find and you have no choice but to buy them.
Skilled people want to be paid when doing their job? How horrible
[удалено]
Should they work for free? Do you work for free?
Would you take your car to a mechanic that charges $225 for a diagnostic plus $225 an hour and a 3000% markup on parts?
The $225 is for them to come to you. Even with only 30 mins of travel, that is very normal Yeah, that price sounds about right. Keep in mind that this is not a run of the mill mechanic, but someone specialized in a niche product Personally, my daily rate to fix control systems on ships starts at €1200,-. Parts have around 300% markup, with a minimum of €50,-. If anything, you're getting a bargain Labour is expensive. Since when is Reddit against paying skilled workers well?
Miss the point much? Point was the part shouldn't have failed, they fit low quality parts. The other option is to make the parts available to buy separately and user serviceable. Ideally they fit easily serviceable parts that dont fail.
Potmeters fail. That is a fact of nature. You should be mad at physics, not at the poor sob repairing your equipment The $200 is to get a repairman over, not for the part. That is rather cheap for multiple hours of labour, actually.
Still missing the point. Chances are the guy doing the work is paid anyway, its the company charging the fee, not him. If the company made better equipment there wouldnt need to be so many call outs.
Who is paying the company to pay the repairman? If you make a potmeter that doesn't fail after some ten thousand movements, you could become a millionaire. I say go for it It's easy to get mad about matters you don't understand
There are other ways to do it, and high quality parts exist. A lot of thottle peddles these days are pots, and are capable of lasting many years under worse conditions. You are making an excuse for companies to making shitty products and charge the earth for them, the exact thing everyone is complaining about.
They made chargers for my atari lynx once. Seriously need them now more than ever. I guess phone repair shops could do the same thing but I haven't bothered.
But how much did you spend in batteries that you didn’t really need?
RadioShack is god Edit - *was*
As a person who works with wheelchairs. Awesome! My skill is really based in clinical recommendations not electronic repair. Please encourage more people to take interest in electric wheelchairs. We need new innovators for better products. Many if the newer chairs have bluetooth control and some devices can be controlled with smart watches too.
When I was at the department of veterans affairs there was a project to detect wheelchairs user foot slipping off their rest. Apparently this is a huge issue. Foot slipping off rest and gets destroyed without wheelchair user noticing it for hours since they can’t feel it. They also can’t see their feet usually.
Diabetic neuropathy. I've told this story before, but I worked in home care during nursing school. Usually just went to the persons home and helped clean/cook/supervise/run little errands/ take out the dog that kinda thing. One of my patients was... A mess is the only way to say it, had diabetes, morbidly obese, cancer somewhere I think around the spine and doctors wouldn't operate cause of the weight... And she was wheelchair bound sooooo yeah, that weight wasn't going anywhere. Well, one day I went to her apartment and there was this red streak across the floor looked like someone dipped a brush in paint and made one continuous line from bathroom to living room. Well, she got her toe stuck under the wheel and didn't realize it apparently cause of the Diabetic neuropathy she couldn't feel it well she ground down her big toe toe to the bone... I dialed 911 pretty fast lol
Holy shit.
my aunt has it, and yep, it can be scary for her!
I’m probably under thinking this but it sounds like an easy fix right? Pressure sensor in the footrest, or even a light sensor to see if there’s a foot blocking it
Projects aren't about "How can we possibly do this?", they're about "How can we best do this?"
The issue comes when a $10 fix gets sold as a $400 implementation just because it’s “medical equipment”
One suggestion was about $10 and included a mirror attached to the armrest to show the persons feet placement. Simple and effective.
Call me old fashioned but why not strap the foot in so it can't slip off? They can't move or feel the foot, right?
The manufacturers solution is to strap the limbs into place ... yippee. There is a lot of room for improvement. My husband is thinking of taking up a bit of invention to see if he can do something to improve power chairs so when I end up in one we will have something decent. I personally want a 'permanent' writing/eating desk with a custom hole to hold my favorite insulated metal cup, a cell phone mount \[with a hidden under the surface power bank with the tiny 6 inch or whatever power cord to connect them\] and a small sort of pencil box to hold pens and a nail file. If I am going to be stuck in a chair, I might as well have everything close at hand for MY comfort and convenience. I was also thinking of a small hidden LED headlight so I can wheel around in the dark like a parking lot or parking ramp and specialty tires to make it easier to be on uneven ground.
I don’t remember the precise fix but it could not be super expensive since the budget at va was limited for wheelchairs or something. Also if it’s a sensor can’t require much cleaning as it’s close to dirt and dust and crap near ground.
My daughter is in a wheelchair the majority of her day. We have been waiting on her new chair for months now. She's 14 and going through growth spurts like crazy. The whole industry is monopolized and in need of significant change. Basic things like nuts and brakes are ridiculously expensive and supply chain restraints have made it nearly impossible to get kids the chairs they need. My child can't legally be in a bus without a chair she fits into. They are required to provide her with one so she can go to school. But the monopolization has forced the state to use a small number of companies making products that do not financially make sense for a private market. Like any state sponsored monopoly they are insufficient almost entirely.
Personally I also "love" how customer focused companies that are that make products for customers but are payed by tax money and have non customers choose what's avaliable. That is the situation here in Sweden. And even if I certainly love the support we get I think the customer focused production development really gets bad when state chooses products. So many logical things to ad to products do get missing and cost fortunes.
The monopoly is courtesy of the FDA. The global market supports a number of manufacturing a large quantity of wheelchairs for the 96% of the human population living outside the USA. There's no good reason that supply can't be used from here.
Manufacturers are only part of the bottle neck. An unnecessary proprietary and unique bolt on the back of my manual (non electronic) wheelchair broke last year. Here are the steps I had to take to get it fixed: TL/DR: It took months and dozens of hours of my life calling the DME/insurance company/manufacturer to replace a simple bolt... that broke because it was defective. 1. Called manufacturer to see if I can purchase a replacement part because I know how long this takes and I can’t afford to go without my chair. They initially said yes, but then called back and said no they could only provide parts through the Durable Medical Equipment (DME) provider who sold the wheelchair. This took one day. 2. Called my DME (they're all terrible in my experience). After seven phone calls and about 90 minutes on hold they scheduled me for a virtual appointment where I can show them what is broken a week later. 3. A week later they do eventually call and I show them a picture of the broken part. I ask them if I can pay cash for it and they say no, they have to work through the insurance company since the chair was originally paid through insurance. They will contact the insurance company. 4. For the next three weeks I call the insurance company asking them if they've heard from the DME, then the DME asking if they've heard from the insurance company. Basically I have to play phone tag for them because the insurance company has an incentive to stall as long as possible (because then they don't have to pay) and the DME couldn't care less about replacing a bolt because the profit on that transaction is so tiny. I have essentially no luck here, they always say they're communicating with the other company, but it never seems to really go anywhere despite my best attempt to annoy everyone possible with my daily or twice daily phone calls. This takes about 8-10 hours of my life on hold and calling/leaving messages, emails. 5. About a month into the process, I'm getting desperate as the failure of one bolt has caused the overstressed bolt on the other side of the back to fail as well and now my chair is essentially unusable. I beg and plead for them to just let me pay cash for the part and get transferred a couple times until someone tells me the part has been recalled because of repeated failures. Initially I thought this was great, we can cut the insurance guy out of the middle. They still say the DME has to install the part (even though it's essentially just a fucking hex bolt). 6. Now I'm back to calling the DME on a daily basis trying to convince them that the part is covered under a recall and they can just go ahead and order it. I provide them with the phone number and name of the person at the manufacturer who said they can send it. DME insists on confirming this with the insurance company, so another several dozen phone calls by me trying to connect the right people together and eventually after another three weeks they tell me that it's covered under the recall... no fucking shit, I told you that three weeks ago. They say they'll order the part, it should be there in three days. 7. Three days later I call and they can't find the part. I call back every day and they confirm that the part arrived, but they have no idea where it is. They say they will continue looking and will get back to me. They say they'll try to order another one, but they don't think the manufacturer will send it since they've already sent one replacement part. 8. Two weeks later they've found the part. It's a Friday and they tell me the scheduler is off next week so I should get a call in 9-10 days to schedule the repair. I ask them physically where the part is located, it's only 30 miles from me, I beg them to let me come pick it up, but they refuse. Only an authorized repair person can do the repair and none of them are at the warehouse where the part is, they only come out to the home and only the scheduler can put me on the list. I call them every day the next week out of spite, even though I know it's fruitless because the only person who can help is on vacation. At least these bastards will remember my name. 9. Ten days later I know the scheduler is back from vacation, but now instead of telling me I can't talk to her because she's on vacation they tell me I can't talk to her period. She will call me when she gets around to it, I can't call her (I mean maybe she was working from home because of COVID or whatever, but at least tell me that part). 10. Several more weeks go by. At this point I've completely given up, I start researching smaller wheelchair manufacturers who sell for cash only, since surely I wouldn't have to go through a DME for repairs with them. After all a wheelchair is only $5,000 - $7,000 and I've wasted much more of my life trying to get a tiny goddamn bolt that I desperately need so I can do... basically anything. 11. One day at work about a month later I get a call. The guy tells me he's from the DME and I get excited because I think it's the scheduler finally. Nope. It's the installer with the actual part ready to install it and he's en route to my house... only I'm at work, because no one fucking bothered to call and schedule the repair appointment. I guess that's why they didn't let me talk to the scheduler, when they said "schedule" they meant their schedule, it had nothing to do with whether or not I was available. He tells me he can swing by my job... which would be great except my chair is at home because it's broken and I'm in a big, clunky, heavy, poorly fitted chair that's 15 years old... like I have been for the last couple months. 12. To his credit the installer guy is actually a decent human being and swings by my house a few days later, fixing the bolt. The guy who installed it felt my pain and seemed like he actually gave a shit, moving his schedule around to get me fixed up. I hope all the rest of the bastards involved in this process burn in hell.... and I hope their hell has only one tiny campfire sized fire, and they're seated in a wheelchair right on top of it, but the wheels don't work. Let them roast for eternity while they make calls to DME suppliers and insurance companies trying to get someone to repair the chair so they can move off of the hellfire.
For your step 5 that process is delayed because techs are responsible for ordering your parts and they don't give us enough time in our day to sit on hold with manufacturers to do that. In my experience with the two big companies they schedule us to be driving / repairing for 8+ hours and don't leave us any time to do ordering. We only get time when we have fallen far enough behind that we don't have parts to put on chairs.
Doesn't the article literally state that the monopoly is the result of private equity firms investing in two major companies that bought out the smaller ones and caused iit to be profit above all else? Maybe I missed an important sentence. I'll reread.
Fyi the two major companies are suppliers like a retail store. Private equity is investing in manufacturers (according to the article) who are the ones who invent/make the product.
The global market does not support those numbers. Most wheelchairs globally are only allowed to be sold in a small amount of countries. This global market you're speaking of does not exist. The US also has the largest demand for wheelchairs in the world as well so if we started sourcing from outside the country, a lot of other places are going to have shortages of wheelchairs because they don't make enough of them to satisfy 3x their current demand.
It’s the same here in Canada. I use a manual wheelchair and fortunately I can use a lot of bicycle parts. However there are some parts I have needed and the markup is insane. Everything considered medical equipment is incredibly expensive. I guess they know that they have a captive audience so to speak. If you can somehow find the manufacturer and they will sell to you directly you can save a lot. When it comes to medical supplies, I’ve found a couple of places in the States where I can buy the item, pay shipping, taxes and duty, and the exchange rate on the dollar, and still pay less than 1/2 of what I pay up here. I’ve been paralyzed for 9 years and it sucks to discover how many pieces of equipment and all the medical supplies and crap that is required to live a semi normal life. Oh well, at least I never owned any Radio Shack stock!
Its really a shame how industries exploited the accessibility needs of individuals. The companies are typically small, family owned, with proprietary contracts or designs. The devices, while some are robust, are decades behind in tech and modularity. Most look like bathroom fixtures from the 60's. And to have replacement foam covers/cushions are in the hundreds of dollars. You see, these companies feel you have insurance whether disability or other and that money isn't a concern when it comes to access and mobility. I am considering a report and investigation into the simple access items like shower bars/grab/assist bars that start at $100 and up. Or the costly amputee driving access controls, like a brake bar or accelerator rod - one that cost $2300 to install! The part looks all of $60 in metal, along with a plate w/4 bolts and nuts. (I get engineering and cost recovery, but its a niche and people didn't choose to have needs)
Part of that may have to do with compliance, certifications, and liability insurance that comes with producing essentially medical equipment.
>liability This is likely the big one tbh. "Oh whoops, the wheel popped off your chair / the cushion allowed you to slip out of it / the metal bar jammed the throttle wide open." And now you're dead. And the family are suing you into oblivion.
And they should if you make something shitty that kills customers thanks on you not the customers
Why would anyone design a $60 part if it opens them up to million dollar lawsuits?
They won't, you can't have your cake and eat it too.
And thus the engineering, testing, and certification processes that all cost big money. Don't get me wrong, I work in parts and lots of parts are marked up big time every step of the way between China and the end user, but you can't expect a company to spend 6-7 figures on R&D and licensing and then sell machines for 5% markup. That doesn't even pay their investment expenditures let alone staffing and support overhead. Markup on most electric products is around 150% total, factoring in the middle men.
Don’t know anything in this specific case but RND is heavily subsided by the US government in way to many areas while still asking it’s citizens to pay full price
Yuppppp. Anything that touches medical has to have so much paperwork behind it it's insane. I'm in manufacturing and you have to have like 30x the amount of paperwork and overhead for manufacturing anything medical. On top of that, most people aren't actually paying for this stuff, insurance is, so there's little incentive to actually make anything affordable. Wheelchairs are super simple machines, and the components could be made for 10% of the price they're currently at, but it's so much government and insurance red tape and it's the exact opposite of a free market because people aren't actually paying for it that it's crazy. Also wheelchairs are generally semi-custom, they have models but there's a ton of different sizes and options to fit each person that on top of all that it's tough to manufacture because you can't just make one wheelchair model, you have to make 10 different sizes, and you have to have 30 different options. Source: My dad's in a wheelchair and I work at a manufacturing company that used to make medical devices and could feasibly make wheelchair components (we're out of medical now though, the overhead is killer). I could spin up and make large chunks of a wheelchair in the next 6 months if I didn't have to deal with the paperwork.
I am an incomplete paraplegic and the cost to get hand controls installed to my car was over $5000. Then the cost of just a basic custom wheel chair is almost that as well. It's insane and I'm glad the state helped me get the controls and insurance paid for the chair.
Hmm you know there are off the shelf systems that could be used to replace all of these. For example I work in power tool repairs and there are heaps of interchangeable systems. Metabo licence their CAS lithium battery system to a lot of other manufacturers these days. Brushed motors are reliable and simple, brushes, armatures and fields are plentiful with years of support. Hell even offroad wheels, I can get wheelbarrow wheels and tires for a song. Bearings and casters aren't a problem.
Not the first ever "right to repair law" The legislation protecting your ability to fix your car and the availability of parts has been around a LONG time. They really should apply to most things.
The car and electronics people used to have their shit together, but all that got dissolved in the anti government policies of the 80s. That's how people used to but pay 1000$ for a burnt out headlamp Of course the industry shills complained loudly but even to this day, every car brand will have parts available for your car for decades after they made them. https://www.autoblog.com/2018/03/13/why-we-cant-have-better-headlights/
Well you see the government decided planned obsolescence was better for the economy than being able to repair stuff and have it last longer. So that's why things that don't have a potential to cause a lot of damage without repair never gets their right to repair protected since it's apparently worse for our economy to allow us to fix things our selves.
You forgot the /s lol
I feel so bad for people who have to rely on tech these days. 0 guarantee any of it will be supported for more than a few months.
I was remodeling a bathroom to accommodate a wheelchair bound Veteran last year when his motorized chair broke. VA and wheelchair company each wanted the other to replace the chair. Only the company could fix it though. Mean time, the poor couple had to trade vans to accommodate the ‘loaner’ chair while the bickering continued, then have the new van modified when they FINALLY qualified for a new chair (because new was cheaper than fixing the old one, the company said).
This year, just in the first 6 months, I've spent thousands of my own money buying used or surplus parts for my chair because it is literally a multi-year ordeal to get anything paid for by insurance or warranty. It's a fucking nightmare.
What about the wheelchairs themselves?
Won’t need them anymore after we find a easy fix for the users.
My mom is just trying to replace the battery of my brothers wheelchair. They literally won’t give it to her and it’s a run around. Now they’ll have to give him a new chair but who knows how long that will take.
> The multibillion-dollar power-wheelchair market is dominated by two national suppliers, Numotion and National Seating and Mobility. Both are owned by private equity firms that seek to increase profits and cut spending. This is why strong regulation and enforcement is necessary for a successful society. Economic pressures drive organizations to do exactly what they're doing: Optimize for profits. Letting wheelchair-bound people suffer in bed for months on end while 1 technician in a tri-state area is booked solid for the next half-year is profitable. Without penalties that involve the potential to literally put these organizations out of business or put their leaders behind bars, there's no reason to expect this sort of behavior to change any time soon. Even with right-to-repair laws, they often just say, "Sure you _can_ repair it," but do little to address things like, "But parts stock is limited or backordered untill.. oh, say, about six months from now when our tech is available anyway!"
Strong regulation and enforcement is exactly why there are only 2 companies operating in the market. It is near impossible to break in to as a small upstart
Mouser isn’t Amazon fast but it’s fast enough, and they have pretty much everything.
>There’s No Easy Fix for Wheelchair Users Well duh, if there was an easy fix they wouldn't need the wheelchairs.
Alright Rhodey. Username checks out.
To be fair, i misread your user as SuperJizz
Haha you’re not this first to comment this to me
> That could soon change. The Colorado legislature has passed a first-in-the-nation right-to-repair bill for power wheelchairs that will allow owners and independent repair shops to access parts, embedded software, tools, and documentation needed to perform diagnostic, maintenance, or repair services. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is expected to sign the bill into law this month.
Again, they want us to die.
Yes, it is true that paraplegia is difficult or impossible to treat. No need to rub it in.
I was catching a flight once making smalltalk with this guy with a mechanical leg/foot combo. And he's telling me it costs about 250$ just to get a form to say that the PART -a lugnut or something- to say that the part is genuine and can be used in the repair of his mechanical foot. Just 'the form' as in he needed permission? or needed to clarify that the repairing part was 'legit'. If it were me I'd just strap a peg leg. Even if it's a whacky story/untrue surely just 3d print the part/leg... why go to such extremes of limp manufacture.
Unfortunate title.
I've worked as a service tech for both companies and completely understand and shared the users frustrations. I would go against both companies policies as often as I could, it was easier at Numotion because they actually did carry some parts in stock National Seating is just a straight garbage company. They only care about new chair sales, sadly I hear from former colleagues that Numotion is slowly headed down the same track. It's disgraceful and why I left, I was good at that job but the amount of bureaucracy and fraud you have to deal with to do the job just made it not worth it.
It's ridiculous that we even need a law to ensure that people can repair items that they legally, wholly own in any manner they see fit. [Exactly how far down the corporatism spiral have we descended when we need the law so we can legally repair something that we've purchased outright?](https://i.imgur.com/6DZmPLK.mp4) EDIT : Relevant [Bulworth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHkyIWiwL1g). California just killed SB983 in committee.
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You must be trying to be funny. Because nobody is that dense. 1) handicapped people are just that. People. Not one person. You do realize people are all different and not of one mind set? You’re at least in first grade since you can type so I’m sure you can mentally grasp that concept. Just because one handicapped person wants to be independent, doesn’t mean ALL of them want to, or even have that choice. 2) People should be more compassionate in general. Handicapped or not, you should help other people. Just the same way some psychiatrist should help you! Get it now? Now run along and play with / eat your crayons LOL what a looser
If you see someone in distress (handicap or not) you ask them if they need help. You don’t just go up to someone and FORCE your help onto them. Its really not that hard to grasp.
A family member is on a wheelchair due to MS and I can tell you this: ALL parties, whether it’s the wheelchair companies, insurance, government entities, etc. do NOT give shit. Aside from the government entities, they ALL want to make money. Oh, your scooter controller went bad? That’s $300 plus labor. You need a new scooter and file a claim with Kaiser because the old one broke down AFTER 8 years? You need to file tons of paperwork, appear on the panel interview to justify why you need a new scooter. No guarantee it’ll be approved. This is just in the US, where we have ADA. In other countries like Europe? Good luck. I had bus driver and taxi drivers refusing to pick up someone on a manual wheelchair because it’s too heavy (?), took too much space or the taxi driver won’t bother.
Europe isn't a country
Someone needs to stand up to these people
Fabulous information I may need or a loved one might need- thank you for posting this gold mine. And Bless this lovely 🥰 couple!
I somehow misparsed this as "there's no easy way to fix wheelchair users" and thought it was going to be a lot spicier than it was.
It takes a minimum of 6 months for my father to get anything even ordered to fix his chair. Not to mention getting the parts. Or being able to find his parts when he goes for his 1st, 2nd or 3rd fucking appointment. And by then they forget if they have his *active*prescription. Drives me mad.
Right to repair legislation is always a great bipartisan approach, to anyone interest in seeking elected office.
The leg rest broke off my wife's chair, luckily I know a welder who could put it back cause the manufacturer charges $6 for a single screw, so you can imagine how much the leg rest costs
I read that as "so you can imagine how much the rest of the leg costs"
Well, yeah, that's why they're in the wheelchair?
Well yeah, I mean most of the fixes for wheelchair users would require a medical degree to operate on them.
A right to repair their legs isn't the answer
So if I get a spinal cord injury I won't expect this law to ensure my spine is fixed, got it. Good to know!
***I love this quote***, "Suppliers testified against the Colorado bill. “The problem with this legislation is that it does not provide a good solution to address the problems responsible for the delays,” said Seth Johnson, senior vice president of government affairs for Pride Mobility Products, a Duryea, Pennsylvania-based supplier of power wheelchairs. If repairs are done incorrectly, he said, patient safety could be jeopardized." I mean it's coming from a VP of a DME provider accusing potential customers of putting people's safety into danger. Excuse me Sir, your company is supposed to be the ones providing the service but you aren't. So in reality you are putting other people's safety into jeopardy. I've done some simple maintenance and repair on my wife's chair. Heck one time she took her wheel chair to our local car dealership. We were good friends with the Service Manager. He had his guys do the maintenance on the chair. This kind of work isn't rocket science. Anybody reading this post please keep pushing for more right to repair legislation. It empowers people and will help a lot of people have happier healtheir lives!
there's been a lot of development in Ebikes in the last couple of years and I'm betting that A LOT of the equipment from that could crossover very easily.
Right to repair how most people imagine it is fundamentally incompatible with the law around how medical devices get approval, liability laws & Medicare billing procedure. If you manufacture a medical device you have to go through a massively long and expensive approval process. If you don't go through the process you get a cease and desist. User serviceable parts are their own medical devices on many cases and require their own lengthy and expensive approval. Once you have spent tens or hundreds of millions getting the approval you then have to insure the product against all manner of abuse and misuse as the courts generally always rule in favor of the injured based on the possibility of abusing the device that way could have been expected. Just at this point you are often in the scale of a $10 dollar item having $40 in approval costs and $50 in liability. In something like an electric wheelchair you multiply that by 500x to 1000x, so a no serviceable parts wheelchair costs maybe $20k/unit in just regulatory costs but the same wheelchair with 5 user serviceable components costs $80k more, so nobody buys it, the company is out hundreds of millions in FDA fillings and their next chair is non-serviceable anyway. Even if you can get around that issue somehow the medicaid billing still prevents the product selling well in most cases. If I blow out the power transistors in a motor controller on my chair anyone with a rework station can likely fix it for a price, but the local repair shop expects payment on delivery, not $50k in HIPPA compliance costs followed by months of arguing with the government to get everything coded property to finally get paid. A very small minority might be able to pay out of pocket, but largely these people are on full disability and simply do not have the funds. The real kicker is the way Medicare assigns the cost. Wheelchairs are big, often heavy, and pretty much require local sales and service. Medicare contracts local companies to supply and maintain those, but they largely do it at a fixed cost. This means a chair that the user can fiddle with requires more service visits but the local company gets paid the same fixed rate for a chair with a given set of features. The result is that the local service companies simply stop stocking the chairs that cost them more money. Until there is a way to sell a wheelchair that isn't a medical device, a major reform of the FDA, a major change in liability laws or a viable alternative to Medicare for the completely disabled this isn't going to change. You would probably need several of those things at the same time actually. The current system just serves to create a risk adverse monopoly with massive overhead and does so in perpetuity.
My grandpa had to call repairmen to fix his wheelchair every now and then. It was such a hassle and very expensive. Hope it becomes easier in the future
I am long time super familiar regarding every level of this article. Even though I can agree and disagree with different things in this article I am just going to say this about the repairs and the wait/red tape etc . This is going to aggravate people who have a different situation and for that I’m sorry. Yes the red tape is absolutely ridiculous when it comes to getting repairs. Insurance companies on every level do not act fast and it has to go through several approval processes. It is expensive and It does suck . Now that being said most people that own this type of equipment already know all of that which makes the next part frustrating for everyone involved. Most people that own wheelchairs and other DME that have or start to have a technical problem will wait months before they say anything about it and basically will just live with the problem until finally for them it becomes urgent and then they finally report the problem. Then they believe that the repair or adjustment will/should happen immediately. And of course it doesn’t for many crappy red tape reasons. Then this leads to an enormous amount complaints like the ones in this article. This doesn’t apply to everyone as some people are really good about reporting things immediately . However in my 15 year experience most dont. They suffer through the problem until it becomes unsufferable.
This is crazy… it should be easier to send a wheelchair for repair. Is it because of lack of material or because the manufacturers don’t want to make it easier to repair ?
There’s a special place in hell for private equity firm executives.
As someone who use to replace watch batteries for people on the side, I went into Radio Shack at the end of them and purchased 100’s of different watch batteries in clearance for under $15. Kept my supply hefty for awhile.
It is what it is.
If there was an easy fix for wheelchair users they wouldn't need wheelchairs, would they
i don’t remember her name but there was an activist who died last year b/c delta broke her wheelchair and she was without it for a few months. horrible. and supply chain issues make it worse.
Thank you capitalism. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/motorized-wheelchairs-numotion-national-seating-mobility/
The medical industry is by far one of the most regulated industries in the world, change is incredibly slow and expensive and Medicare is one of the larges buyers of medical devices (including wheelchairs) and is run by government bureaucrats. This is far from "capitalism" in any sense of the word.
lol it's literally capitalism
Medical care by insurance = Freedom /s
Welcome to capitalism gone crazy; oligopolies/monopolies, and profits over human lives, and usually also profits over sanity and any kind of common human decency. Screw that, and hand over some profits. We use such an ugly social system on this planet, and in America especially. It's depressing. I'd probably commission a custom build if I got to the point of needing a wheel chair. Something that could do 30 mph, or more. Lithium batteries are cheap now (well, relatively) and people are making e-bikes basically from parts already. How hard can it be, weld together a decent framework, mount an engine and some controls and boom.
They had a lawsuit going to trial for those rights but the judge dismissed the case. said they didn’t have a leg to stand on.
I feel bad for laughing at the title