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How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

blog.simonrumble.com

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Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#61

Post by afiori »

r4indeer wrote: post #21

> Now an old fashioned light bulb shouldn't be expected to last a decade, but an oven? Funnily enough, there actually was the Phoebus cartel [1] which sought to reduce the lifespan of incandescent light bulbs to around 1,000 hours and raise prices. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

Planned obsolescence is very real, but the reality of incandescent light bulbs means that lifespan, efficiency, and luminosity are not independent.

The 1000 hours limit is in practice a lower bound to a combination of luminosity and efficiency

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#62

Post by promiseofbeans »

23B1 wrote: post #2

I'd be curious to hear about stories of this working in the U.S., if ever.

Sadly, the US doesn't seem to have particularly great consumer guarantees - you just have to rely on warranties given as an extra marketing point by a company.

In more developed countries like Australia, NZ, and the UK, warranties last less time than the guarantee offered by consumer law and only exist to try and confuse consumers into not asking for repairs after the warranty expires (but not necessarily the consumer law guarantee)

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#63

Post by gnicholas »

r4indeer wrote: post #21

> Now an old fashioned light bulb shouldn't be expected to last a decade, but an oven? Funnily enough, there actually was the Phoebus cartel [1] which sought to reduce the lifespan of incandescent light bulbs to around 1,000 hours and raise prices. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

I recall reading a quasi-debunking of this. I didn't go down the rabbit hole far enough to understand all the details, but it seems the situation was more complicated than just corporate greed. [1]

The topic has been discussed here in the past a few times, including [2] and [3]

1: https://readmedium.com/en/the-phoebus-cartel-was-never-reall...

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21596792

3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606748

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#64

Post by lostlogin »

promiseofbeans wrote: post #36

We've got a similar thing in New Zealand: the Consumer Guarantees Act. The people who sold the broken thing to you can either fix it, replace it, or refund you the cost of it. The decision is unfortunately up to them, so they sadly often replace things rather than fixing them. Consumer NZ is usually used as the independent source for expected product lifetimes: https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/appliance-life-expe…

It’s fantastic.

No, I wouldn’t like the extended warranty thanks - I’m covered already.

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#65

Post by promiseofbeans »

Ylpertnodi wrote: post #49
promiseofbeans wrote: post #36

We've got a similar thing in New Zealand: the Consumer Guarantees Act. The people who sold the broken thing to you can either fix it, replace it, or refund you the cost of it. The decision is unfortunately up to them, so they sadly often replace things rather than fixing them. Consumer NZ is usually used as the independent source for expected product lifetimes: https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/appliance-life-expe…

Replacing seems fair enough...eliminates buyers remorse.

It's not as good for the environment, though.

Some companies like Apple try to make up for this by replacing broken devices, then refurbishing and reselling the formerly broken device.

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#66

Post by graemep »

cbmuser wrote: post #52
promiseofbeans wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've been conditioned by anti-consumer companies who want you to BUY BUY BUY to expect that. Ovens should last 20 years or more, and if you're sold a faulty product, it's fair to expect it to be fixed. Luckily there are still a few countries at the bottom of the world with good consumer legislation.

You do realize that in the end the manufacturers will just increase prices or move production to low-wage countries, no?

How will moving production to low wage countries help? The importer and/or the retailer still have to comply with the law of the country they sell in.

The only exception is when people buy from a foreign retailer online. However that is a problem regardless of where the retailer is as long as they are not in your country. My daughter (in the UK) currently has a problem with Boox (in the EU) refusing to replace a product that was delivered with a faulty screen claiming that she must have damaged it.

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#67

Post by Rygian »

divan wrote: post #60

MHBKD recently made a video on Apple testing lab [1], and one thing he talked about and that was kinda new to me is seeing repairability as a spectrum. I.e. on one side is "indestructible" product and on the other is "perfectly repairable". And that those properties (being hard to damage/destruct and being easy to repair) might be mutually exclusive. In a hindsight it seems obvious, still this video was the first tim…

In France, the "Repairability Index" was mandatory since 2021 [1, in French], and will be superseded by the "Durability Index" starting on 2025 [2, in French]

[1] https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/indice-reparabilite [2] https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/indice-durabilite

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#68

Post by Denvercoder9 »

constantcrying wrote: post #8
Tistron wrote: post #3

Does anyone know whether and how this translates to other places in the world? For me, it's the most interesting with EU/Sweden. We don't have courts like this do we?

I don't think the courts really matter, what does matter are the legal guarantees. In the EU it is an explicit two years, so I think a situation like this, where a 9 year old appliances is being repaired under threat of legal action, simply won't arise as the customer has no legal basis for his claim.

2 years is the EU-wide minimum, individual countries can raise that bar. The Netherlands for example has the same reasonable expectation rule as discussed in the article. You absolutely will win a similar court case here (I know people who've done it).

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#69

Post by promiseofbeans »

cbmuser wrote: post #52
promiseofbeans wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've been conditioned by anti-consumer companies who want you to BUY BUY BUY to expect that. Ovens should last 20 years or more, and if you're sold a faulty product, it's fair to expect it to be fixed. Luckily there are still a few countries at the bottom of the world with good consumer legislation.

You do realize that in the end the manufacturers will just increase prices or move production to low-wage countries, no?

They're already doing that, so you may as well exercise your rights (and help the environment at the same time).

Re: How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court

#70

Post by Tistron »

bjackman wrote: post #32
Tistron wrote: post #3

Does anyone know whether and how this translates to other places in the world? For me, it's the most interesting with EU/Sweden. We don't have courts like this do we?

I don't think it's actually what you meant to ask (I think you are actually interested in legally mandated warranties rather than the courts where they're enforced) but I think most countries have something equivalent to "small claims court" to make low-stakes suits viable. I have successfully used exactly the same technique of "get a court date, wait for your opponent to contact you and resolve the issue, cancel the…

Yeah, I guess I was/am curious about both.

It seems like we have 2 year legally enforced warranty (which I knew about), and some sort of small claims court (which I did not know about).

I think I would have heard about legally mandated warranties that extended beyond the 2 years I knew about. The Australian system seems quite reasonable, I wonder why we don't have something like that? 2 years for everything seems pretty weird.

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