When I read about yet another EU regulation of this kind I always remember the cookie law :/
I want to write some comment to agree with you, but I can't find the words the express my frustration with the cookie thing. It beggars belief.
EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
141–150 of 241 posts
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the fundamental issue, yes. Some thoughts: A large part of the discrepancy is not automation, but cheap labour in the East where many of our products are made. Regulation can help redress than inequality. Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that…
> Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that by mandating reparability. Which can increase the original cost of the good.
> Which can increase the original cost of the good.
... to better reflect it's real cost by including all the otherwise externalized costs.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#143I agree. I live in the EU and bought a washing machine for 450 eur. After 1 year and 2 months a big hole in the Drum appeared and this makes it flood my apartment. LG wants 530 eur to fix it, so obviously not worth it. My parents had 2 washing machines in their whole life, in contrast...
If this was a concern for you why didn't you buy a more expensive washing machine that has a longer warranty and a reputation for quality? These things exist but they cost more. Consumers need to be willing to put money where their mouth is.
450EUR is an expensive washing machine, they start at about 200.
"Reputation" for quality won't ensure you anything and noone gives out warranty over mandatory minimum enforced by law.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the fundamental issue, yes. Some thoughts: A large part of the discrepancy is not automation, but cheap labour in the East where many of our products are made. Regulation can help redress than inequality. Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that…
> Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that by mandating reparability. Which can increase the original cost of the good.
The cost will go up only a little. The price though...
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
A better incentive would be to require manufacturers to sell unlimited (yearly) warranty for their products. When you buy a product, you'll get the option to pay a yearly renewable sum that guarantees that any failings from normal use will be repaired. Such a requirement will make the seller optimize the product for affordable longevity and make it cheap and easy to repair the product. A significant number of consume…
That isn't really reasonable. No product is expected to work _forever_. Things fail. ICs go out of production.
Buildings fail over time. Yet when you rent a flat you have a reasonable expectation that it won't collapse on you.
Perhaps there is a good function between product age and monthly warranty cost that creates the right incentive.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#146I kind of want these rules to go into effect in the EU just to see what happens. I don't expect good things to happen, but one way or another it would be instructive.
Mandatory warranty of 2 years seems to be doing fine
It should be at least 5 years for large home appliances like washing machines, refrigerators, TVs, etc. Cars too.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the original cost of the good is so expensive as to significantly prohibit replacement of broken/defective parts, is the good really all that... good?
Watch this video of a crash test between a 1959 Chevy and a 2009 Chevy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g The '59 Chevy gets 13.5 miles per gallon. [1] The '09 Chevy gets 25. [2] Yes, modern cars are more difficult to maintain than older cars -- they require more specialized equipment to maintain, parts are more difficult to replace, so on and so forth. Modern cars are also incredibly more fuel efficient an…
The argument is more like 'soldered RAM' versus 'user replaceable RAM'.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#148I agree. We need something like this in the US. By law, electronic products sold in EU carries 2yrs warranty and I always wondered why U.S has only 1yr warranty. I can think of an incident where my laptop crapped out right after a year of purchase but the manufacturer was nice enough to repair it for free.
With phones running $800+ nowadays, i would expect it to last longer (3yrs min.) like a laptop.
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#149When I read about yet another EU regulation of this kind I always remember the cookie law :/
I want to write some comment to agree with you, but I can't find the words the express my frustration with the cookie thing. It beggars belief.
I think the idea's reasonable but it was implemented wrongly by everyone, making it stupid. The aim was to stop unnecessary tracking, not all tracking. See the list of exempt cookies here: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm
Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products
#150Of course, the flipside of this is the flipside of Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness - if the cheap boots that fall apart quickly didn't exist, Sam Vimes would not be able to buy boots at all in the first place. The solution is, of course, to put more people in a position where they can afford to buy the more expensive boots and see the value in doing so.
I am unconvinced that more expensive = better quality for a lot of things these days. There are some anecdotal examples of people with Miele washing machines that have lasted for decades etc (... as an aside I guess we wont know about today's Miele washing machines for several more years at least ...), but in my experience paying a premium for a product more often than not just gives you an as-cheaply-made product bu…
I just bought a washing machine. I spent a long, long time looking for the simplest one I could find, in the hopes that I could replace any mechanical part. From other HN threads it seems the control panels tend to go out a lot.
Since I live in an apartment and wanted a small one anyway, I ended up with a portable one (oneConcept DB004 - odd name) that uses mechanical timers for the stages (you can hear them ticking!). It hasn't arrived yet but I am hopeful that when it inevitably breaks I can fix it.
I want to get a dishwasher next and sadly don't know if I can find something equivalent.