[sdiy] Conjob report

[Batz Goodfortune]

Y-ellow All.
         I guess it's a good idea to mention that I just got ripped off by 
these clowns. "www.user-manuals.com"

I'm loath to give money to these extortionists as it is but I've had a 
number of amplifiers thrown at me with an expectation that I might fix 
them. All of them with their own particular sets of over the top 
complexity. 2 of them choc full of digital crap that's just bound to cause 
problems. And has.

In this case it's a JVC surround amp will all singing, all dancing, 
over-headed under-hangs and dooberries. (to quote the late Kenny Everrett) 
Which will not power on. Ironically it's the exact same problem as the 
Yamaha amp I just fixed for a mate. Only unlike the Yam amp, this piece of 
excrement doesn't use a relay to switch on it's main supply. It just leaves 
the main supply on all the time and I have no idea how it decides whether 
it's on or off. But I'll spare you the gory details.

So after a long time weighing up if I really wanted to reverse engineer 
this thing or just pony up the money, I did the latter. 4 hours later they 
finally got round to letting me download my service manual. And only then 
did I find that it contained everything except the amplifier. The very 
thing that lends it's model number to the title of the PDF.

Repeated attempts to email these clowns has resulted in email bouncing like 
a Russian SPAM outfit. I eventually found a contact form on their web site 
but as expected, I've heard nothing from them. Not even a form-letter 
acknowledgement. In the mean time I'd like to get this thing off my bench 
and back to what I'm supposed to be working on.

Tomorrow I'll start up a paypal resolution thing but I doubt it'll go 
anywhere. Since PreyPal are judge jury and corporate executioner, you know 
who they're going to side with. But I'll go through the motions.

But before anyone else gets stung by these ass-clowns I thought I'd better 
relate my experiences.

My personal opinion of these extortion rackets wasn't very high to begin 
with. At best I'm just able to distinguish them from the gutters they 
spring from. I should have trusted my senses but I was a bit desperate. I 
realized that most, if not all of their claims about originality and 
quality of their PDFs were fabricated but I hoped that I might at least be 
able to read the thing. Maybe enough to figure out what's what. I mean when 
the testimonials sound more like they were written by a desperate 50 year 
old, trying to crack onto an 18 year old, on "adult-friend-finder" you know 
something's a bit fishy. Well at least pretty kinky. And they're saying how 
much they just LOVE their service manual. How many people love their 
service manuals that much? Or in THAT way? "Nudge, nudge. Wink wink." At 
least you know that the pages of a PDF won't be stuck together when you try 
and open them.

Personally I feel that anyone charging money for data-sheets, service 
manuals, and programming information should be summarily rounded up and 
bulldozed off the nearest cliff. A great many of us spend a huge amount of 
our time supplying, collating and developing information of which we not 
only give to the world for free but actually pay for the web site to do so. 
And we rarely get so much as a "Thank You" for doing it. Is there little 
wonder then that I haven't bothered publishing much of the stuff I've been 
doing in the past year or two? Because when you get ripped off by a bunch 
of ass-clowns like this, who's only claim is that they know how to turn 
badly photocopied service manuals into PDFs and then hold them for ransom, 
you start wondering what the real costs of adding to the discourse actually 
are.

OK. End bitch mode. Don't ever be tempted to give money to these bastards 
otherwise you too will be sorry.

Be absolutely Icebox.

  _ __        _    __International Pain-in-the-Ass and prophet of doom__
| "_ \      | |
| |_)/  __ _| |_ ____       ALL ELECTRIC KITCHEN
|  _ \ / _` | __|___ |Your source of Armageddon in a musically crass world
| |_) | (_| | |_  / /
|_,__/ \__,_|\__|/ /   Disgusting-> http://all-electric.com
                 / ,__  Music-> http://all-electric.com/music_downloads.html
Goodfortune    |_____| Cult  -----> http://www.subgenius.com