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from the an-industry-group-of-notorious-for-lobbying-to-protect-is-repair-monopolies dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
When you buy a game console, smartphone, dryer, vacuum cleaner, or any number of other complicated electronics, there’s usually a sticker or a piece of paperwork telling you that trying to repair the device yourself will void your warranty. That’s illegal under the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Companies offering a warranty on their goods aren’t allowed to void that warranty if the user attempts to repair it themself, but that doesn’t stop the company from scaring customers into thinking it’s true.
It’s such a huge problem that US PIRG—a non-profit that uses grassroots methods to advocate for political change—found that 90 percent of manufacturers it contacted claimed that a third party repair would void its warranty [pdf]. PIRG researched the warranty information of 50 companies in the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM)—an industry group of notorious for lobbying to protect is repair monopolies [sic]—and found that 45 of them claimed independent repair would void their warranty.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RedBear on Sunday October 14 2018, @04:02AM (2 children)
You're right. They don't have to. That's not what the law says. And no one actually wants that. Because that would be unreasonable. What are you talking about?
This problem is not limited to electronics. It is easy to accidentally damage or fail to properly repair a great many things, from tiny chips to huge power plants. Lots of equipment will rapidly fail if it is so much as a micron out of specifications. Most repair people know this, and conduct their repairs accordingly, so their customers don't get angry and give them bad reviews and never become repeat customers. Bad repairs are bad for business.
No. And the law does not require them to do so. But if your engine fails because of a manufacturing defect unrelated to a third-party installed rebuilt carburetor, you're damn right I expect the company to replace the engine, unless they can show that the engine failed due to the third-party carburetor repair. That is, in fact, what the law requires. And it is usually pretty easy to determine what actually caused the failure.
Actually, you don't. You support the right for the company to use unrelated repairs or modifications that did not cause the failure as an illegal excuse not to back their warranties on unmodified components. Oftentimes those "repairs" consist of nothing but a torn or missing (illegal) "warranty void" sticker, with nothing inside the device having actually been touched.
That would certainly be big step in the right direction, but is only loosely related to the problem discussed in the article.
I would submit that if damage is in fact "impossible" to detect, is there actually any damage? Most of the time it's pretty easy to figure out what component has failed, and why, even with "sensitive electronics". Watch a bunch of Louis Rossmann's videos, you might be surprised how easy it is to competently repair even nearly-microscopic electronic components and bring a device back to fully working condition. It's just a matter of using your eyes and reading the schematic correctly.
A major mistake you are making is believing that all third party repair people are incompetent and/or fraudulent while all company repair techs are competent. In the real world the balance seems to be decidedly in the other direction.
Bottom line is that we have the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act for good reasons, because car manufacturers were extorting car owners with threats of completely voiding their warranty if even the most irrelevant component of the vehicle was changed by a non-dealer repair or used a non-OEM part, even if the non-OEM part was actually superior, which it often was. "Oh, you replaced a broken side mirror with a third-party part? Then screw you, we won't replace your $3,000 transmission that just destroyed itself due to a manufacturing defect." Congress acted (no pun intended) because this state of affairs was really bad for the consumer and the economy. MMWA is the law, and every company should be required to take reasonable steps to comply with the law. Nobody wants anything here that isn't reasonable. We just want to be able to trust that manufacturers will be required by law to stand behind their product, even when it may have been modified or repaired in a way unrelated to the warranty issue.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday October 15 2018, @08:11AM (1 child)
> Lots of equipment will rapidly fail if it is so much as a micron out of specifications
Very few things require that level of precision. Even microelectronics don't require that level of precision (although modern semiconductor fabrication might). However, electronics definitely requires more precision than most things.
>Most of the time it's pretty easy to figure out what component has failed, and why, even with "sensitive electronics". Watch a bunch of Louis Rossmann's videos, you might be surprised how easy it is to competently repair even nearly-microscopic electronic components and bring a device back to fully working condition. It's just a matter of using your eyes and reading the schematic correctly.
How much does Louis Rossmann charge for such an investigation? $50? $100? You're saying that a manufacturer of a $1000 smartphone is going to spend $100 in labor (not counting administrative overhead) to prove that they don't need to repair the device because the user fucked it up? At that point it's probably cheaper to send a new phone for every warranty claim, and I don't need to tell you why that's not a sustainable business model, do I?
A manufacturer selling a $35,000 car meanwhile can afford to pay a few hundred for a mechanic to examine it.
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(Score: 2) by RedBear on Monday October 15 2018, @07:26PM
I was thinking more about physical objects like the moving parts in a car engine. They often have to be machined to extremely tight tolerances in order to function properly. Maybe not microns typically, but certainly a thousandth of an inch can in some cases be too much to be out of spec. The MMWA covers a great many things, and I was speaking very generally, not just about electronics.
You're really thinking about this the wrong way. The techs who typically do repair work inside a company are not paid that well, and they are paid by the hour. It may take 15 minutes for a tech to determine what's wrong with a device, or even 30 minutes. But it will often take only 5 minutes. And they are looking at only a small percentage of the total product that is sold. Common failure rates for many products are anywhere from 1% to 20%, but typically around 5% or less, if the company wants to survive. So even if it did cost the company $100 to repair a $1,000 phone, that doesn't mean they are losing 10% of their total sales revenue. More like 1%.
It is up to the company to make products that don't fail and are easy to repair, so that they don't have to pay for too much labor on repairs. That's just the way things work. The companies that can't do this go out of business, and that is as it should be. They get replaced by companies that make better products. That is theoretically the whole idea behind the mythical "free market".
Last time I checked $1,000 - $100 = $900, so... no, I don't believe it would be cheaper to just send everyone a new phone for warranty claims. And I don't believe that it would typically actually cost the company nearly that much on average for internal techs to do analysis and repairs.
I find your whole take on this to be very illogical.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ