Welcome back.  We've been talking the phenomenon known as "no fault found", and why the phenomenon is causing retailers to sweat profusely—and what can be done about it.  We're up to reason #3: The industry's failure to provide resellers with proper tools to detect and diagnose component failures.

No Tools? No Problem.  Or Maybe There's A Problem After All....

Imagine the chaos that would result if manufacturers like Kitchen Aid or Maytag allowed their products to be sold to the public, but failed to provide repair technicians with diagnostic tools to fix broken (or, allegedly broken) appliances.  Think of the scene: the Maytag man rings your bell, you answer the door and say, "Thank goodness you're here.  The dishwasher is making a strange noise and I smell something burning when I wash my dishes."  Without a repair manual, what could the repairman do?&nbs p; What should he do?  What if he ran a test, but found nothing.  Should he ignore your complaint?  Wouldn't you expect him to use a tool, a computer—something to tell him whether the machine was working correctly??? 

That hypothetical situation plays out every single day in the consumer electronics industry.  Amazingly, virtually every return counter in virtually every consumer electronics store across the country, from the largest to the smallest, doesn't have a single tool to diagnose consumer-reported problems.

Want to know why?  It's simple: those tools don't exist.  Really, they don't.  No kidding.  And if they do, they're not made readily available to the repair staff at the stores that sell the products—so they might as well not exist.

So what can a repair counter do when it doesn't have the tools need to diagnose cons umer-reported problems?  It does the only thing it can do—it accepts the product back from the consumer, and sends it back to the manufacturer.  This happens regardless of the problem being reported—even if there is nothing wrong with the product in the first place. 

What comes next?  Say it with me: NO FAULT FOUND.  (If you say it a few times, you can be just like the dozens of engineers across the country who are hired by electronics manufacturers to test returned products...)

Are there solutions?  Actually, yes, I have two solutions. 

Solution 1: Manufacturers need to spend a little bit of time creating diagnostic tools for their products before shipping them to resellers.  If they did this, the NFF phenomenon would be dramatically reduced. 

Solution 2: Retail stores should require diagnostic tools to be provided to them.  They should make product placement dependent on such tools.  

I think that we may see solution 1 implemented one day.  I doubt solution 2 will ever see the light of day...

Ok, let's not ponder too long on my solutions—we're here to discuss the problem, not save the world.  Let's press ahead.  Stay tuned for the final reason why the NFF phenomenon exists..coming soon.....