**Repairability of household appliances is mission impossible**

This is an extended post of the Mastodon/Fediverse thread that somewhat become fungal (‘viral’ for those from mainstream social media). It got ~20 boosts, which is quite a lot for me, so I decided to detail it a bit. It seems I share the pain of non-repairability with many of you.

If you ever wanted to repair a device or appliance that is designed, sold and ‘supported’ in a way that actively discourages actual repair, you’ll find this post familiar. It’s mostly about common household appliances and electronic devices.

Heck, even F. Kafka would stand in awe and congratulate companies that managed to complicate the repair process or even completely disabled it.

TL;DR 1

Repairability of household devices in 2025 is a bad joke. That’s all you need to know.

TL;DR 2 / Privileges are not enough

Even though I have some knowledge on how to repair things, it is still not enough to do it successfully.

I’m prepared to pay more for repairs and parts (relative to new products). Even if it ‘doesn’t pay off’.

I have strong drive and motivation for repairs.

I have enough time to deal with it. I spent hours for studying devices, searching for manuals, schemes, replacement parts.

I have a space and tools to do it: a special room – workshop with tools like a table, a small vice, multi-meter, soldering equipment, several hundreds various bits for screwdrivers (flat, phillips, torx, hexa, …), magnifying lens, various calipers, pliers, saws, drills, wrenches, you name it.

I have some practical skills (disassembling & assembling devices, analyzing electronics parts – voltage, resistance, current, circuits open/close), (de)soldering, 3D design and printing of broken parts, ordering from obscure online shops.

These are all privileges.

But still, many times I can not repair stuff and it frustrates me. Most of the times it’s not about technology or skills. Most of the times it’s about planned obsolescence and walled gardens.

If I, with all these privileges can not do it, how can we expect that people that are less privileged to do it?

Obstacles, summarized

I found out there are numerous obstacles for repairing stuff:

• Design obstacles: parts are glued or strange screws are used. Triangle screw heads? Who t* f* has a triangular screwdriver?

• Parts availability:
  • sometimes, parts are not available anymore (example: my kitchen hob glass top, my oven handle). Both are Electrolux and only 20 years old, otherwise working perfectly.
  • sometimes, the parts are available in some other country and they do not want to deliver to a small EU country. Example: ransomwares.co.uk or Indonesian tokopedia.com. Or even Allegro.pl, that delivers in HU, SK, PL and CZ, but not in Slovenia. Are we not all in EU? I can order almost anything from China, but my almost neighbour country refuses to deliver to my country?

Example of strange Allegro.pl policy of not delivering to Slo.:

Example of and obstacle at checkout: I could put the PCB in my shopping basket (ebay.de), but couldn’t checkout, because the do not deliver the product to Slo. The seller even decided that they do not accept message inquiries. I can’t even ask them if they’re sending to Slo.

• repair service providers availability:
  • sometimes there are simply no service centres available to repair things
  • sometimes the communication with some people is impossible
  • sometimes they make their own strange rules that they do not accept products if you are not their existing customer or didn’t bought them in their shop (example: Smartus.si)

How it started

It all started with a mistake of the electrician who forgot to connect neutral wire in my main junction box.
This caused voltage imbalance/overvoltage on 2 phases (~400V) which damaged some appliances in my home: microwave, kitchen hood, AC, receiver, and a bunch of smart sockets (that luckily protected connected appliances like dishwasher etc.).

The insurance company reimbursed me a part of the costs. Too little to buy new appliances (because of the depreciation). They paid ‘current value’ of the appliances.
Dealing with insurance company is a whole different story, will not describe it now.

So I took the repair path for bigger appliances and bought new smaller ones.

The repair path

I didn’t bother to repair smart sockets and chargers, just bought new ones. The damaged ones are waiting in my workshop, maybe I’ll take a look at their damage closely someday.

LED lights

I tried to repair self-built led lights (3W). This was easy (from the finding and replacing perspective). I just bought some generic/universal switching power supplies from Aliexpress and replaced the faulty ones.

Now, the bigger appliances.

Robot vacuum cleaner

I wanted to send my Viomi V3 to a local repair center (national Viomi distributor and repair centre), but they rejected it, because I didn’t bought it from them. I don’t understand this policy.
Then I decided I’ll replace the charger and a docking station. Bought both, but the robot still doesn’t charge. I hit a dead end.

Obviously the issue is in the robot charging circuit.

I wanted to buy a new motherboard (because charging circuit is integrated in it), but I found out it is available only in Indonesia (Tokopedia) and Allegro (Poland). Nobody delivers in Slovenia (EU).

Currently I am in a lengthy back-and-forth email discussion with the Viomi representative. They redirected me to Aliexpress, but there is no replacement board on Aliexpress. I asked them to give me the exact link, but they couldn’t. We’ll see how it will work out.

Kitchen hood (Respekta)

Firstly, I couldn’t find nobody to repair it.
Then I disassembled it, found that a motherboard is faulty (fuse, transformer and some other parts) and wanted to order new one directly from the producer. This was their reply:

“Dear Sir or Madam

Thank you for your message. The spare part you require is generally not available, as it is not worth repairing the bonnet.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen – Best Regards”

So, there is officially no parts for the hood anymore.
But wait!
I spent some more time searching (using the PCB serial number from the board) and found there is an identical PCB available (sold under different brand – Baumatic), but in UK (ransomspares.co.uk).

Guess what?

They don’t deliver to EU.
Then I tried ebay.de.

No luck. I could put it in the basket, but no checkout.

Then I used amazon.de*, found very similar part and they deliver to Slovenia. From the same seller.
Now I’m waiting and praying it will fit.

*(not promoting Amazon here, but … if other online shops will continue to operate as they are currently operating, they have no chance to compete with Amazon).

I received the PCB after a few days and … it works!

So just in case anyone else out there needs that part:

• hood type: Respekta CH 0120 IX
• PCB number: HQ-SYXK201-VL7PCB
• compatible with: Baumatic BT6.3GL, ransomspares part number: RS265465 manufacturer number: 07018766 alternative numbers: 07018766 XSYEBPCB
• Amazon.de link

I was a bit worried because it differs from the original one in one number (my is ZD-98F not KB-5151 as marked on PCB).
And while installing it, I got an idea how to automate it.
What if I activated a kitchen hood fan when kitchen VOC (measured by Ikea Vindstyrka) achieves a certain threshold? Hm… but where to connect it?

I found the wires that are connected to the fan buttons and then I found out I need a dry contact to close the button circuit. But that’s for another post…

AV receiver

Now, one positive story.
I took my 20 yrs old AV receiver (Sony) to a local repair shop, 20min from my home (Konrad s.p.). They repaired it in two days. They replaced its switching power supply and some diodes. I paid around 100€ (that is more than receiver is currently worth), but I was satisfied. It has nostalgic value for me and I wanted to keep it.

Hats off to Konrad guys.

The microwave (Electrolux)

I opened it and saw the power supply transformer and some other elements around it are smoked.

I’m still deciding what to do with it. Currently I’m researching the options. I will probably reuse the main transformer from the microwave for the spot welder, if all other options fail.

AC – Gorenje

It looks like the external unit is broken. It is mounted high on the wall and I can’t reach it.

Now it’s summer and it is impossible to get a repairman to take a look at it. I called some and they said:

• call again in 2 months or
• Gorenje? Impossible to get spare parts or
• Gorenje? We’re not dealing with this trademark, parts are too expensive

Note: Gorenje is a Slovenian producer of household appliances. Or, at least, it used to be. They used to be good. Now they mostly rebrand noname Chinese products and consequentially, the repairing is difficult.

My time investment

The accident with the electrician happened on 12. Jun. 2025. Now it is 29. Jul. 2025 and I still didn’t manage to established the initial state – before the damage.

Until now I invested 50+ hours only because I like to repair things. I doubt many people would (or, could afford to) ‘throw away’ so much time. Actual repairing is much less: maybe 10 hours. The difference represents searching for parts, communicating with online shops, service companies, studying manuals, learning new things.

Why I even bother to write all this?

Why I am telling you this?
EU and their USB connector legislation is a joke. Although the standardisation of connectors is nice, it doesn’t address the real issues related to sustainability of electronic devices.
EU’s right-to-repair policies are currently only on paper, doesn’t help me at this very moment.
For a real change towards repairability, we would need:

1. Easily accessible (and deliverable) spare parts and the design that allows repairs. Generic replacement parts with a references to which products they fit.
2. Well organized warehouses of broken products and a database of their (still good) parts. People often throw away devices where only a small part is faulty (transformers/relays/capacitors/diodes/MOSFETs or similar).
3. Less limitations for international deliveries. Some companies make a list of ‘specific country allowed sales’ that is nonsense and artificial limitation to obtaining a part.
4. Change of mindset – everybody says: you’re crazy with your repair ideas, it’s cheaper to replace. Of course it is cheaper. It’s baked in the business model of producers. This is a root of the issue. But I don’t know how to tackle this.

P. S. #repaircafe are a good thing. We need more of these.

P. S. 2: We need to make repairs feasible for all, not only for privileged.

https://blog.rozman.info/repairability-of-household-appliances-is-mission-impossible/