TECH REPAIRS: WHO CAN YOU TRUST?

Your PC is emitting an unsettling burning odour; your smartphone screen has been smashed into a gazillion pieces. You need help and a Google search reveals your local area is teeming with repair “professionals”. How do you know which to trust?

If you need your boiler repaired, you might look for someone on the Gas Safe Register. If it’s an electrician you need, you might search the Registered Competent Person database. Other industries have established trust marks that are instantly recognisable and give consumers that bit of extra confidence. But when it comes to fixing your computers or other gadgets, you’re largely on your own.

We’ve spoken to technicians, safety experts, educators and consumer rights advocates to examine the current state of repair and why, as a society, we lost our preference to fix things. We’ll also examine where legislators and manufacturers are currently clashing over ways to make repair more prevalent and environmentally sustainable. As literally anyone is at liberty to set up a business fixing consoles, phones and PCs, it’s vital that you don’t hand your kit to bad businesses, so we’ll tell you how to avoid the traps and find a technician that you can trust.

A LOST GENERATION OF REPAIRERS

It wasn’t so long ago that most high streets had a repair shop, a place that