Is sending Camcorder off to repair good idea?
 

Anybody got any recommended mail in repair places? I found one on Ebay and their ratings are good. They say in their ad to look at their ratings. However, only about 5% are for repairs. The rest are for selling stuff like batteries or car parts. Also very few ratings at all in the last months. So it seems like a gamble. The camcorder works on all levels except the s-video port is on again off again but right now it's off and won't come back after giving the camera several whacks (which brought it back before). It's the one that made most of the tapes I'm archiving so if the head has idiosyncrasies I'd like to keep using it it. It's a PAL camcorder so buying one in the USA is expensive and no telling how the head aligns. On a budget so I'm looking for the best course. Thanks.

Sounds a bit like a cold solder joint at the socket. Does the composite video output work?
What make/model is it?

Before trusting a ebay repair service that also sells auto parts and no recent verifiable ratings I would do additional research including BBB data. Finding reliable repair service and parts for analog consumer camcorder gear will be a hunt since the gear is perhaps ~20+ years past manufacturing.

If you mention the name some folks here might have heard of it.

Yes, the composite outputs still work fine. Never had a problem with them. It's a Sony TR2200E/PAL. The only other problem, that also responds to bumping the camcorder, is the lights behind the forward, backward, play etc. controls. They go on and off with a bump. Right now they're on. I had the nerve to take the front part (with the lens) off because I saw a guy do it on Youtube. Going further into the camera seems like much more chance of messing it up as far as the little I know about taking camcorders apart. I don't know if I should bring the Ebay place's name up here just now as I might still decide to send it. As I think about it, if people were sending cams in and feeling like they got ripped off it would seem like that would show up in the Ebay ratings? Thanks.

If it's just a PAL Hi8 camcorder you're after I'll have a look in the office during the week.

We've got boxes of them - we get a lot "abandoned" on us - I'll see if we have any suitable if you want. Yours for postage - would be good to see some of them get used. Guess you're after something with an S-Video output?

Looking in our waste log we recycled 90 camcorders during 2020! They generally have switch-mode supplies so just supply your own 'figure of 8' plug.

A simple neutral question without comment one way or another should be OK.

As I understand it ebay has procedures that allow sellers to dispute negative feedback.

Does feedback speak to specifically to camcorder repair, or is it general to the reseller?

Alright! Yes, I'm archiving via S-video into an ATI-600 to XP Laptop. Thanks!

All the reviews are lumped together. I'd say 5-10% max deal with repair. The rest just selling stuff. Thanks.

I'll have a look, no doubt there's something on the racks - often we get handed them DOA with a tape jammed in them, usually, they just need power....

Alright. Thanks!

This reminds me of shops that existed around the lake in the 80s. "VHS rental, tanning salon, and bait & tackle" or "locksmith, haircuts, and bait & tackle". The scariest one was "BBQ, fresh produce, and bait & tackle". We never bought anything other than bait at those places, as the proprietors looks like hillbillies, complete with barefeet kids running around. About as sanitary as a litter box.

What you're seeing is the eBay storefront of a pawn shop (or similar). They sell random crap, in random conditions, and know nothing about any of it.

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Correct, and in fact it's being gamed now. I've left negative feedback for things, and then it disappears. Valid complaints, like "new" items that are opened and smell like an ash tray.

They allow sellers to remove feedback if they've sold lots of stuff within a period of time. So if a bad company gets 50,000 feedback for selling dollar widgets, and then gets bad feedback for sell 50 expensive lemons, the 50 feedback can disappear.

There are also blogs on how to game feedback, how to exploit the system. For example, irate buyers are likely to write things like "WTF?" Well, eBay has a "no abbreviations" language rule, so they'll often remove feedback that breaks those obscure rules. They're supposed to edit/scrub the feedback, but the CS are frequently lazy, and it's easier to delete those comments.

Another potential is when the feedback is item-based comments ("item was dirty"), but the item was refunded. eBay considers that comment voided, and may remove it (even if their policy states otherwise, and yet CS can override it). Had it been more about the seller ("seller lied about condition"), it'd have a better chance to stay.

This is how the Houston VCR scammer is able to still operate. He sells lots of misc items, exploits loopholes, in addition to having multiple usernames. When an account gets "blown" (too many bad feedback, yet not suspended), he shifts it to cheap trinkets, and gets enough clout to earn removals. In addition to exploiting rules, getting feedback removed on technicality.

Also remember that feedback doesn't count after 1 year. So (in theory only) you could have daily negative feedback for cameras/VCRs/TBCs/etc, stop, then sell $1 Mardi Gras beads for the next 366 days, and it'd look like you have a 100% positive feedback account with thousands of "good seller" comments.

There's also a common tactic used by Chinese scammers. They'll run up an account to have lots of positive feedback (sometimes 500+ comments), by selling junk trinkets, mostly not even outside China (ie, all Chinese buyers). Then they'll sell the account on an underground site. The new owner will have an aged positive account, then list 10's of thousands of dollars in high-priced items (SSDs, Transformers Masterpiece figures, etc). They'll get caught long before everything listed sells, but it'll be long enough to get at least $5k or more. Chinese scammers accounts are rarely "hacked", that's mostly the Russians that hack accounts. I've written about this in depth before at TFW2005, as it's a huge problem for Transformers collectors. There are some tell-tales, such as those sellers usually using port cities in CA/NY/GA as the location, or generic "USA, USA" locations.

Lots of shady SOBs out there on eBay.

Amazon has similar issues. For example, that new "ruby sliders" commercial has likely-fake feedback on the Amazon page, cheaply made "reviews" (paid Fivrr shills) on Youtube and blogs. Aside from that, the internet has no idea what a "ruby slider" is. FYI, it's just a standard felt furniture slider dyed red, drop-shipped crap from China.

If you ever get a PAL DV camera in decent shape, I'd appreciate one, :)

Boxes of them, I probably have at least twenty laying around, can't say they're all decent some are barely used, boxed etc...

FWIW: some camcorders (and other gear for that matter) have an issue with ribbon cables coming loose, or their contacts corroding a wee bit so reliable contact was lost. The bump might fix it for a short while. (This was an issue with some Canon camcorders failing to communicat4e with the LCD screen.)

A bit far afield but I just had that issue with a Maytag dishwasher wherein the touch panel did not communicate with the controller due to ribbon cable contact issues.

Any luck? I sent a message at the start of the week. Hope it went through? Thanks.

Hi mate,

Yes apologies, been a crazy few days - I will check over the weekend for you.

Archiving is back on my mind (and so is my budget). Some people say just buy another camcorder which is what I did in the USA when the tapes were NTSC but PAL cams are unusual and expensive. So checking back to see what others may have done. No fair repair place that others have used?

As mentioned both faults sound easy to repair for a good tech. Nothing like the time involved recapping. So it comes down to finding that good tech. If you're near a large city there should hopefully be a tech or two there.

Not near a city. Just surprised out of all the people doing things with camcorders here that some honest USA repairers don't come up. Like I said at the start, from my amateur perspective, it just seems to that the connection for the s-video port is loose somewhere?

I'm afraid that non working S-Video was enough to get me on to other non video projects. Once more I'm back on the trail to get these things archived. Today I got everything hooked up. S-Video still wasn't working. I plugged the composite video feed into an inexpensive ONN TV that automatically switched to PAL (unusual to get that feature here in the USA for me). It looked fine and put the audio through my sound card and it was fine too. Just to make sure there wasn't something wrong with the cable or Vdub setup I hooked up a minidv cam (which was ntsc). I changed the settings in vdub to ntsc and resolution and got a decent capture.

Good job!

I threw away all of those camcorders in the end (well, WEEE waste) as I'd touted them out and nobody seemed to want them. I'll start stacking more up I'm sure. I have a single Hi8 one that works at the moment sitting lonesome waiting for friends. We can pick up 5-10 a week during busy periods - they're usually 'gifted' to us... Ho-hum!

The capture that worked was off a minidv camera not the Hi-8. So, I'm still looking to solved the non working s-vid port.