I suppose the main thing about my experiances being a bit coloured toward cautious is that later on working for a large organisation you are a large target. When a one man band the smarties don't go for you (because you are close to bankrupt anyway and have no dough) but when you are a large organisation and have plenty of money for them to go for, you cannot believe the actions taken. We had claims for damages, subsequent damages, hurt both physical and mental and stuff you could not believe. Sometimes I thought I was in fairy land. The worst thing is a matter could simmer for months or years and in court documentation was so important. This of course is getting a bit remote from just fixing radios but the principles are the same, document, day diary, photograph. We all think everybody is sane and sensible like we are but sadly it is not so. When somebody complained to me as a one man band I would just go back through my duplicate books, find the job and say "mate I replaced the output valves and you played it ok before you took it away and I've got that in writing with your signature" .........end of story.
I only had to have one bad expensive experience very early on to understand how simple documentation, even if it is only to jog your memory as to what happened.
What Marcc says above just is an example and a perfect response, ..." I would have just noted the issue on the quote ect" there you go...........documented, duplicated, photographed and no argument by some bar stool lawyer can refute that!..
Fred.

This is hardly a police matter. Consumer Affairs/Small Claims Tribunal, or equivalent, at the most.

Unfortunately there's people out there prepared to go to the police because they are more accessible than the Office of Fair Trading, even though they'd most likely turn such petty issues such as a cut cord away. Even the police have better things to do with their time, especially in the age of terrorism, paedophiles, coward punchers and the like.

Even back in the days when I was a security officer... at times I'd get a complaint about someone accused of loitering outside the premises and I'd reply by asking a few questions: 1. Is the person holding a bag? 2. Is he holding a housebreaking implement or is he wearing a mask? 3. Has he broken anything or assaulted anyone? If the answers to those questions are either NO or DUNNO then I'd say come back to me when any of those questions become a YES. If course, unbeknown to the informant, I was already watching the suspect on CCTV and found no reason to enquire as to their presence. A wise security officer doesn't go looking for trouble just as a police officer doesn't go on the hunt for spitting on the footpath or dropping fag ends in the gutter and this is the category that a cut cord would get thrown into.

As for getting signatures on quotes, that might work, not sure. I'm not the perfect legal expert either. This is something I'd avoid doing though because it creates an environment for conflict to occur. EG: If someone told me to sign a quote or a disclaimer and I said I wouldn't do it, what is the next step?

One way of bringing what I mentioned about cutting cords off into line with the ethics of having an electrician's licence is this: if I go to a customer's premises and I find a portion of an installation that does not comply with the SAA Wiring Rules I am obliged to disconnect it, or if the customer agrees to pay for repairs, repair it. Again, there's times to exercise this and times when it is not necessary. Exposed wiring that can be reached by children is a time when it would be necessary.

I think with the licensed electrician thing, that is covered by the law and hopefully there is no recourse on you, because it is the law. There is always the option there of offering to have a licensed, Inspector look at it for a second opinion and re-connection, if deemed safe and it might, albeit inconvenient to have a copy of that regulation.

Some customers are just ignorant ......... & think they know everything. Clearly if they knowingly leave the fault & does damage there are insurance & other ramifications.

As I pointed out in a previous post. This place (Farm) has recently been converted from part OH aerials to underground. One new distribution / meter box which is subject to a recall. & three new sub boxes (2 were already modern). Naturally the opportunity was taken to go through the sixties & after wiring & check & modify: There were problems found.

This does have insurance ramifications: The fact that everything has been upgraded & tested, reduces risk. The fact that the supplier of the box been advised & has done nothing to fix it, has been noted & the insurers advised. A person sorting out the "dumb meter" told me that they had to test all of the metal boxes to make sure they were not "alive": That in itself is scary. Mine is on metal poles in the ground: However.

I think that with a quote in the future, it may be a case of do nothing to it: Other than note the faults as said.

One thing I would do with plugs, even if it's just a quote, is to inspect the plug and tighten the screws holding the wires onto the terminals. Personally, I've noticed almost every old radio I get has loose screws inside the plug. The customer might never know or appreciate you might have saved him from a house fire.

Once you've been granted the job, of course you might want to upgrade the cord & plug to something safer.

The way the regulations are around "Tag & Test" which has become a money spinner, one tests & inspects everything associated with the mains. Many of the sets that arrive here have tatty two & three wire cables in plugs that fell of the ark when it grounded. Cable anchoring within them is often an illusion & some allow alive metal parts to be touched. So its "do you want originality or death".

Even that the specs of those old transformers were high, there is one breed of Philips radio transformer (& I have one in a 132L) where the winding exits the side of it. That, if it is the primary, it could be nasty with a 2 wire cable. So I normally retro-fit earthed cable. The other advantage there is an earth return for the RF, if the antenna coil primary goes to chassis. Shielded transformers also put a charge onto the chassis.

One should also be mindful of some dodgy stuff that should never have been let into the country. It, like the dreaded "Hot Chassis", has capacitors (sometimes with a 470K resistor parallel) to chassis from the mains. That chassis is contained and connected to a metal cabinet. The capacitor can, especially with the American two pin plug, end up on Active instead of Neutral. Most of the caps of that era were not rated approved line caps and mains could then get to the metal cabinet.

I have named a couple of these, where I have the original circuit / manual showing it. This practice I consider intrinsically unsafe and any transformer device I see with it, gets modified & a grounded cable fitted. That eliminates that problem.