Replacing items has become cheaper than fixing them.

By JOANN JONES

Replacing items has become cheaper than fixing them.

The turntable in the $79.99 microwave no longer turns.

The picture on the $149 television set is dark and grainy all of a sudden.

The $15 watch stops working, but you can’t get a department store jewelry department employee to replace the battery because you didn’t buy the watch there.

What do you do? If you’re part of today’s “Throwaway Society” you pitch it and buy a new one.

That’s the problem here.

Dick Wright, the owner of Audio Arts on Market Street, is retiring and closing his shop this month. He’ll take some well-deserved time off — and then, at age 70, he’ll start all over, reorganize his business and work out of his home.

Wright, who sells and repairs audio and video equipment, finds his vocation “a dying art” because people are throwing out items they once had repaired.

“The mentality of today,” Wright said, “is ‘if it breaks, just get a new one.’”

Add this to the push for finding the lowest price, regardless of quality, and people will go out and buy a new CD player for $29.95 or a DVD player for $59.99 each time one breaks.

“I couldn’t afford to open one up to fix it for the price of a new one,” Wright said. “The public doesn’t understand the cost of parts and the higher price of shipping. Shipping and handling costs are over $15, and I have to pass that on.”

“The public doesn’t want to pay for anything,” he added. “The common denominator here is price.”

Sue Risbeck, owner of Leonard Hardware in Sebring since 1974, agreed with Wright that the bottom dollar is what leads people to buying cheaper items of lesser quality.

“People are price-motivated,” Risbeck said. “Everything is geared that way anymore.”

“It’s a mindset,” she said. “People buy new, cheaper items, such as spigots, that won’t last as long. When they break, it’s just easier for them to buy new.”

Major appliances, like refrigerators, Risbeck said, aren’t made as well as they used to be. The major items her store sells — hot water tanks, bathroom fixtures, toilets, etc. — can be repaired by her service staff because they make sure they have the parts to fix whatever they sell. “What we stock, we can repair,” she said.

But that’s not a standard of most retailers, today, she said. Many larger department stores or home improvement stores sell items for which the consumer must contact the manufacturer to get service.

“Our store survives because we still repair,” Risbeck said. “We even get a lot of referrals from larger stores. They don’t do the repairs because they expect people to buy new.”

Wright also repairs what he sells. In fact, he sometimes repairs items before he sells them.

“One unit in three is defective in the box,” he said. “I repair things before they leave the store. I’m a rare and unusual bird.”

And speaking of rare, in his 45 years of being in the business on Market Street, he’s seen seven other similar businesses in the area close down. He’s the only one left, and he’s about to close, too.

Selling the business to someone else isn’t an option.

“My belief is no one could sell this business to someone who could make a living out of it right now,” Wright said. “Something has to happen in this industry.”

Because Wright is a rare bird who feels loyalty to his customers, he won’t shut down completely. After he takes a little time off, he’ll restart his business through e-mail orders. And he’ll keep a computer list of phone numbers of his current customers.

“Many of my customers have said, ‘Please don’t close ... we need you,’” he said. “I could have sent them to other places before, but not now.”

“This is not an easy job,” Wright added. “You have to work hard. Young people just don’t want to do this.”

Risbeck concurred that younger people don’t have the training or the motivation to work in the repair business. She credits some of the store’s success to her manager, Shawn Morrow, who began working for the hardware over 30 years ago when he was barely 16.

“When Shawn started, he had to learn everything,” Risbeck said. “Today most people work in one department.”

“We still do everything ... window and screen replacements, cutting and threading of pipe,” she said. “Shawn assembles pieces at the counter and then tells people how to put it together back home.”

“We are very optimistic,” Risbeck said. “We’re surviving because we have the service.” Risbeck also employs a service technician/plumber who goes into homes to install items and fix things.

Despite her optimism, she said, people still come into the store about once a week about rumors that the store is closing because it can’t compete with the “big box” stores. Right now things are fine, but she said she doesn’t know what could happen 10 years down the road. “There’s nobody like us anymore,” Risbeck said.

And because she, like Dick Wright, recognizes this, her customers may be begging her to stay open someday.