Dave from NaimUSA here...seriously, I think you've caught on to a real dilemna that established manufacturers with lots of legacy equipment still out there in the field have to face.
I spent quite a few years in and out of the musical instrument (MI) and pro audio industries, as well as a few stints doing PC systems integration and consumer audio before I joined NaimUSA in 1995. During those years, I have slowly watched the mom-and-pop repair shops that dominated the service and repair field slowly wither away and die, due to tectonic changes in the industry (especially as regards component availability).
As NaimUSA service manager for well over ten years, I instituted a third-party service and repair training program–problem is, it's difficult to find decent technicians with production-grade point-to-point (or point-to-PCB) soldering skills these days, which makes the process of locating decent repair shops with a decent business model even more complicated.
Unfortunately, at the present time there exist no authorized third-party repair facilities for Naim equipment in the U.S., warranty or otherwise. All equipment passes through Chicago, where we have three or four staff members capable of diagnosis and repair of items up to thirty-five years of age.
For most repair shops, the parts cost is quite small relative to the labor and administrative costs, services which permit one to repair and ship units from all over the States. Unfortunately, these costs are escalating while at the same time there are fewer parts available for older, pre-RoHS equipment, especially limited-run, select or binned-value items. Key modules manufactured by others (e.g., Philips) often pass out of availability, which makes this process even more difficult.
Eventually, a threshold is crossed where equipment gets too expensive to repair through normal channels–this essentially reduces the purchase/resale value to a point where refurbishment service remains viable only as a portion of the overall cost of the equipment (purchase value + maintenance). As the resale value of older equipment affects (to a certain degree) the sale of new manufactured equipment, it is in the best interests of a manufacturer / distributor to keep these maintenance costs as low as possible to keep the bottom of the market from dropping out.
