If they were lucky, it was only water, tea, coffee or club soda. Simply drying off the board and wit was back in business. If it was something like Mountain Dew, it would remove the gold plating on the contacts within 24 hours. I was still able resurrect one by cleaning the contacts with and eraser down to the bare copper and then covering them with some lite electronic oil. A cheap recovery for one that would normally be thrown away.

Although I quit TV servicing a while back, I took on a repair a few years ago for a neighbour in the flats.

In the TV itself; the only fault I could find was the main fuse "tombstoned" in its holder - but I totally earned my fee sorting out what was left of the remote handset!

 

The rooms where people watch TV are usually carpeted, so dropping the remote doesn't often damage the resonator.

In my TV servicing days I frequently had to clean remote PCBs after drink spillages - it was an absolute rule; remove the resonator before putting the board in the ultrasonic cleaner.

Actually a lot of TVs here in Australia are in shared kitchen/lounge areas, with hard floors or tiled floors. (It's hot here).

And sometimes when a customer sheepishly says the remote got "dropped"... What he is really saying is the wife got mad and threw it at his head at high velocity and missed and it bounced off two walls and the stone ktichen counter.