from the ♪it's-my-pc-and-I'll-fix-if-I-want-to♪ dept.
Right to repair rules will extend lifespan of products, government says:
Products such as washing machines, TVs and fridges should become easier to repair and cheaper to run under new rules coming into force.
Manufacturers are now legally required to make spare parts available to people buying electrical appliances. The aim of the new rules is to extend the lifespan of products by up to 10 years and benefit the environment. However, one company said that the new rules could make white goods more expensive.
The right to repair rules are designed to tackle "built-in obsolescence" where manufacturers deliberately build appliances to break down after a certain period to encourage consumers to buy new ones. The new rules apply to products bought from Thursday, but manufacturers have a grace period of up to two years to make spare parts available.
Many consumers have complained that goods don't last long enough, then can't be fixed in the home.
Adam French from consumer group Which? said that electrical items end up in landfill too often "because they are either too costly or difficult to fix". The rules "should ensure products last longer and help reduce electrical waste", he said.
Only parts for "simple and safe" repairs will be available directly to consumers, including "door hinges on your washing machine or replacement baskets and trays for your fridge-freezers", he said. "Other parts that involve more difficult repairs will only be available to professional repairers, such as the motor or heating element in your washing machine," he said.
(...) These new rules should bring an end to the frustration of having to throw away an item because a small part is no longer working and no longer in stock.
Often the seal around a fridge, the detergent drawer on a washing machine, or the runners on a dishwasher break. Rather than having to buy a whole new product, replacement parts must now be sold directly by the manufacturer for 10 years, whether or not they are still selling the complete item in their range.
This isn't a law about who is responsible for the repair. If it's still within warranty, then the manufacturer or the retailer should repair it, but after that, you are at least now guaranteed access to a replacement part. You'll probably have to buy it, and you may have to pay someone to fit it if it's a complicated internal part, but at least you should be able to get hold of it.
Related Stories
President Joe Biden's latest executive order is a huge win for right to repair
A sweeping executive order aimed at promoting economic competition and signed Friday by President Joe Biden called on the Federal Trade Commission to institute rules to curb anticompetitive restrictions that limit consumers' ability to repair gadgets on their own terms.
Tucked into the executive order that covered 72 initiatives to promote competition in the US economy, Biden specifically asked the FTC to crack down on "unfair anticompetitive restrictions on third-party repair or self-repair of items, such as the restrictions imposed by powerful manufacturers that prevent farmers from repairing their own equipment."
BIDEN SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER ON RIGHT TO REPAIR! (11m48s video)
Many other items besides Right to Repair were covered in the executive order. See, for example: Ars Technica.
Previously: Colorado Denied its Citizens the Right-to-Repair After Riveting Testimony
Apple, Microsoft, and Google Team Up to Block Right to Repair Laws
Related: Right to Repair Rules Will Extend Lifespan of Products, UK Government Says
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday July 02 2021, @03:56PM (46 children)
Being able to repair something could extend its lifetime? Who would have thought.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday July 02 2021, @04:02PM (18 children)
Any price controls for the parts? Or can manufacturers offer the spare part at close to the price of a full replacement device?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @04:23PM
Appliance many have been doing this for years. Your options are to (a) buy new and get a new appliance warranty, (b) hunt around for some poor bugger who did (a) and has the appliance has the part you need and it still works, or (c) look for older appliances without the failure-prone motherboards that allowed the manufacturers to make appliances for less and really gouge you on the motherboard as compared to replacing discrete parts.
If you're really adventurous, you could probably cook up a new stove from an old chassis and new discrete parts.
Of course a front-loading non-industrial washing machine is defective by design anyway, so best to just get rid of it.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday July 02 2021, @04:25PM (5 children)
I suspect not - but intentionally spitting in the government's eye is usually a good way to draw their ire.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday July 02 2021, @06:06PM (4 children)
Someone will suddenly be randomly selected for a tax audit.
Every year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @08:34PM (3 children)
The additional accounting costs are probably cheaper than the profit gained from the practice.
IOW, that doesn't sound like an effective deterent.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday July 02 2021, @10:06PM (2 children)
You're assuming that they're not trying to dodge taxes and hope that they can slip by.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @02:26AM
No competently run business has to "dodge taxes" in any illegal manner. Corporate tax dodges are entirely legal, because it's cheaper to buy laws...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 05 2021, @02:08AM
If you rephrase "dodge taxes" as "pay the tax they are required to pay by law" it takes the punch out of your post. But that is the truth.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday July 02 2021, @06:00PM (8 children)
This is what I'm wondering to. They could just price a single part pretty much at the cost of a new machine and then add work cost to it (unless you do it yourself) and you would be better off just junking it and getting a new one.
Also for how long are or will they be required to carry spare parts for their device(s)?
Considering they have to print that the coffee is hot on the cup so they don't get sued one is or can argue about what is simple and safe. After all you could really hurt yourself if you don't know what to do with the screw driver, perhaps you don't fasten the screws good or well enough and then the door will become a projectile next time it spins up or whatever (im-)plausible excuse they can dream up. Also if they go to "professional" repair people they could probably start to require repair certification courses or that you buy their special kind of screwdriver that only they make etc. Is a replacement tray or basket for your fridge really a repairable part? Should those things even count.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday July 02 2021, @06:11PM (4 children)
Well, if the item can be repaired, then there isn't really any kind of obligation by the person using it to heed any of the manufacturer's recommendations or even requirements, but in turn, it also means that they can't sue the manufacturer for faulty parts if they themselves fucked something up.
That's similar to something that was common around here when computer stores sold their own desktops, assembled from parts. They assembled them and sold you the desktop, with a "warranty sticker" attached so that if you opened the case, you had to break that seal. This voided the warranty for the assembly, but of course not the parts themselves. If the part was faulty, you would get your refund, if the sticker was broken and the CPU cooked off because the cooler was put on top crookedly, they brushed it off to your tampering.
Same here. If the case was open and the damage is due to your fiddling with it, cry and buy a new one because you voided your warranty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @07:06PM (3 children)
There was another guy who did the same thing - fried 7 cpus and motherboards ina row. Finally - "just ship me the parts and I'll assemble it." Worked like a charm. Don't ask me why the motherboards fried - the cpu should have acted like a really expensive fuse and protected the motherboard.
When I see "no user serviceable parts inside" something that's broken, its a challenge. Even if I have to drill out rivets, it's broken anyway …
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday July 02 2021, @10:09PM (2 children)
It's no scam. You can offer any kind of warranty on top of what the part warranty says. If I want to grant you 2 years of warranty on assembly provided you don't mess with the seal, that's my business. I can also not give it to you and just offer warranty on the parts. It's up to you to accept that warranty or break the seal and forgo it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @11:18PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 03 2021, @08:48AM
How so? If I grant you warranty on an assembly, I have to somehow make sure you do not mess with it. Else you fuck it up by tinkering with it and claim "oh that's how I bought it" and I have to foot the bill of your blunder?
I guess we can agree on this being not really sensible.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 02 2021, @06:21PM (2 children)
I saw that too.
Let's take a dishwasher. Everything under there is modular. For a person who has never built or repaired anything, it's probably too big a job to even get a dishwasher out from under the cabinet. For someone who has ever worked with tools, even a little bit, there is nothing in a dishwasher that is insurmountable. Anyone who works with hand tools routinely can do a complete rebuild in an afternoon. Replace the motor, replace the pump, replace the control board, replace the door gasket - the works. My wife guided one of our sons through a rebuild when I wasn't around. To me, the hardest part of that job, is ensuring you have the CORRECT parts for your particular make and model.
Some other appliances are a bit trickier - like replacing the heating element in a clothes dryer. Still, most people can probably do it, safely, if they are patient, and read the instructions.
So, who draws the line at what is available to the end user? We don't want shop owners making that decision - they're going to want every appliance brought to them so they can make a killing.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @10:59PM
I thought that too until my sister asked me to fix her dishwasher. The only part that was "user serviceable" was the power cord. The pump, hoses, and valves used single use clamping seals that had to be broken to get them off and standard clamps wouldn't fit the joints. Everything else was sealed inside moulded plastic assemblies. I couldn't even find the bad fill sensor, only that it was probably somewhere in one side assembly where I couldn't even get to it without destroying the machine. And of course no maintenance manual is available to the public. The way it was built, aside from the pump and valves even the dealer couldn't fix it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @01:32PM
> Let's take a dishwasher.
I took a look at a replacement upper rack for the rusty one in our older Kenmore and the price was out of control. If this "right to repair" stuff catches on (even a little bit), maybe some enterprising company will come up with a universal dishwasher rack replacement for a reasonable price--some sort of adjustable features so one rack would fit many different washers.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by crafoo on Friday July 02 2021, @10:17PM (1 child)
price controls? really? that's always you communist's go-to economic self-destruct strategy. How about instead restrict patents and copyrights, and encourage 3rd party parts without legal bullying?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @11:25PM
A requirement that they sell to third parties for the same price they offer their dealers isn't unfair when third party parts aren't available. Tying (only works with our brand cartridges) should also be prosecuted.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 02 2021, @04:18PM (26 children)
Only if there are additional incentives.
Recent example: in 1999 we purchased a $18,000 pickup truck. It came with steel (not stainless) brake lines, which recently corroded through and needed labor intensive replacement, not to mention the inconvenience of suddenly losing brakes with essentially zero warning. The entire set of replacement brake lines made in stainless steel and bought on Amazon cost $80. That's the retail consumer price for relatively rare parts including fittings, figure cost of production at OEM scale is $40 or less, differential cost to make the lines in stainless instead of plain steel? Probably $5 or less.
So, for an additional $5 per truck, the brake lines could have been made of stainless steel - but since regular steel lasts for the 10 year warranty in all but the most extreme environments, we get plain steel and the manufacturer pockets an additional $5 per truck, but $5 per truck is $5 million per year from their perspective, so these kinds of limited lifetime choices are made throughout the vehicle - at basically every opportunity. And, yes, those savings are passed along to the buyers in the highly competitive low-end pickup truck price wars, but I'd much rather pay $500 extra for a truck that is built without these cost cutting measures, rather than encounter them one by one as early failures throughout the life of the vehicle.
$5 in up front additional expense could have saved me $80 in parts and 4 hours of labor, which most shops around here charge at $120/hr, so $485, plus the cost of downtime, potential for accident when the brakes failed, etc.
Same kind of cost cutting was no doubt behind the battery early failure at 22 months, shock absorber failure at 12,000 miles resulting in tire damage, ABS wheel sensor at 35,973 miles, water temp sensor failure at 37 months, A/C evaporator failure at 39 months, radiator hose failure at 48,000 miles, seatbelt module failure at 7 years, vacuum line (controlling the A/C vents) spontaneously falling apart at 20 years, and no doubt other problems I have forgotten.
It's important that we have the right to repair these things (and all of the above was repairable, though several parts were not readily sourced from anywhere but the manufacturer), but for reliability and longevity we need some other kind of incentive besides the open market.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @04:37PM (9 children)
You can buy steel brake line by the foot. The flaring to to add the fittings is cheap, as are the fittings and the mini cutter. If you're handy you should e able to do it yourself. It's a truck, so LOTS of clearance and less chance to skin your knuckles. If the bleeders are still good, bleeding the system is easy.
As for stainless steel brake rotors, you'll end up with less friction and longer stopping distances, as well as increasing pad wear. And a lot higher cost. Because there's cheap stainless and real stainless.
Sure you could make something that lasts 20 years - but it's going to be built along the lines of heavy construction equipment, with low poser to weight ratio, very low top speed, and it's still going to cost real money when something breaks (and your maintenance schedule is going to be more time consuming).
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday July 02 2021, @05:59PM (8 children)
A flaring tool that works reliably on stainless tubing is not all that cheap. Example: https://classictube.com/product/universal-hydraulic-flaring-tool-kit/ [classictube.com]
GP is lucky that premade stainless lines are available for his vehicle. I bought several coils of tubing and bent my own brake and fuel lines. I had to get 4x 20' coils because the lines that run to the back of the car are 11' long. As soon as I was done with that, I ordered four more and did the other car. It was worth it to not ever have to deal with that shit again.
Stainless brake and fuel lines, stainless exhaust, and a gallon or two of Noxudol 700, and it becomes possible to drive on road salt without needing constant repairs.
Brake rotors are not a problem though, as long you don't park the vehicle when it's wet and leave it sitting there for days with moisture trapped between the pads and rotor. That's what causes rotors to become pitted and act like they're 'warped'
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 02 2021, @06:27PM (3 children)
I've got flaring tools in my toolbox. Works great on copper. Not so much on steel or stainless. I never saw the need to invest in better tools, because I almost never use steel or stainless. Maybe 3 times in m life? That's about it! ;)
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 02 2021, @11:18PM
Considering the labor involved, copper-nickel tube is a small price to pay.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @01:44AM (1 child)
Once again, we learn interesting trivia about Runaway. Not so much about the topic at hand.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 03 2021, @02:52AM
And, once again, Runaway triggers some fool AC.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @07:09PM (3 children)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @11:14PM (2 children)
JoeMerchant said stainless steel, because it is corrosion resistant. This matters anywhere that roads are salted in the winter because otherwise you get brake failures like happened to him.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @11:22PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @01:38PM
In the last 30 years I've had two cars that needed brake line replacement due to salt corrosion. I live in the USA, near the Canadian border and this area uses a lot of road salt in the winter. The most recent car was aftermarket undercoated (yearly re-sprays), but the salt got to the brake lines above the fuel tank...where it seems that the under coating didn't/couldn't reach.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday July 02 2021, @04:47PM (6 children)
>but for reliability and longevity we need some other kind of incentive besides the open market.
Or at the very least, make it mandatory that such longevity and repairability information be made available to consumers in an easy-to-read form, preferably compiled from an analysis by a completely independent authority, before purchase. Maybe something like a long-form "nutritional information label" for consumer products. Perhaps summarized as a "projected total cost of ownership under typical usage" graph out to 20 years or so? Probably with consumables like fuel, filters, etc. as a separate graph - that's still important after all, but far more subject to usage patterns.
Make sure consumers at least have the information easily available at time of purchase to decide for themselves how much they care about the long-term cost effectiveness, and you make designing for such cost-effectiveness more attractive.
That still might not be enough to dramatically change purchasing patterns, but it would at least let the *informed* free market decide... which is usually pretty effective. It's when important details are hidden from consumers that all sorts of cost-cutting shenanigans become far more attractive.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 02 2021, @04:55PM (5 children)
The "competitive" healthcare insurance market in the US comes to mind when you say this: sure, we have choices - and they all suck uniformly. You can read the disclosure information continuously 8 hours per day and not keep up with all the available information and choices as they are updated and modified, but when you get to whatever conclusion you finally reach it will be along the lines of: they're all bad, try to pick one that's not unusually bad.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday July 02 2021, @05:25PM (4 children)
Well, I was talking more about
*products* - services are a rather different set of challenges.
I will say though, mandatory publishing of up-front pricing for complication-free medical services (and probably the incremental costs of common complications) would probably go a *long* way toward making medical care *actually* competitive. I recall an article I read several years ago about a couple shopping around, trying to figure out how much it would cost to have their baby delivered. Apparently it was a major ordeal that took months, they never managed to get prices from several hospitals, and the prices they did finally get varied from around $2,000 to $18,000 (I think, it was a long time ago). If those prices were all common knowledge I'd be willing to bet they'd be far more competitive.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday July 02 2021, @07:47PM (3 children)
> how much it would cost to have their baby delivered.
Wtf? You have to pay to have your baby delivered?! And you voted for this system? USians are nuts!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday July 02 2021, @08:23PM
So do you - you just pay in the form of taxes instead. And you've got it a little backwards - we didn't vote for this system, it's the default. You voted to change yours. And unfortunately that whole global war on communism thing found fertile ground here to tar any sort of socially funded services as anti-American.
That said, you won't get any argument from me that it wasn't a good idea to do so, medical services and insurance have proven to be perniciously exploitative fields, full of perverse incentives. And maintaining public health is a valuable investment that pays substantial dividends.
However, we deal with the system we have. And unfortunately in the US we have the claim of free market efficiencies, with none of the realities. As I mentioned, it's almost impossible to get up-front prices for services so that you can actually bring market forces to bear.
To make matters even worse, medical insurance largely hides the direct cost of services after the fact as well. And since insurers' profits are tied to the cost of services (in fact they have a legal maximum % profit margin), we get the lovely situation where both the people selling medical services, and the people directly paying for those services, both have a financial incentive to increase the price as much as possible. It's a F'ing nightmare.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 02 2021, @11:14PM
We didn't vote for this system. What we have failed to do is elect a Congress and President that will do anything substantiative to fix the mess that has evolved under our business friendly regulatory environment.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @02:32AM
The US has been a democracy for ~250 years, there's a lot of BS built up in the system. Most of the countries in the world haven't maintained a coherent government for even 100 years, let alone any kind of democracy.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @06:33PM
You say that. You may actually be that way. However, "the market" has proven time and again that the average consumer will not.
Case in point, printers. People would rather spend $75 to buy a DRM laden, mega-expensive printer than $150 to buy a higher-quality one which allows ink replacement. (And then the consumers complain about the cost of ink repair, not making the connection.)
Also, to advocate for the other side, "you bought a machine warrantied for 10 years and an expected lifespan of 10 years. Why should you expect any more than that? If you wanted a 20-year machine, then buy one with a 20-year warranty. That in the past quality control was such that, in order to get a reliable 10-year lifespan they had to target a 15-year one, was more past windfall than a promise for perpetual benefit."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @07:01PM (2 children)
There's a story that Henry Ford once bought a bunch of worn out cars and had his engineers tear them down and provide a report on all the parts. The report came back that everything had noticeable wear except for the kingpins. They were always in almost perfect condition.
The response was to lower the standards on kingpin manufacture, and make them out of cheaper softer metal.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @11:21PM (1 child)
He didn't do that just once. He had people who regularly went out to scrapyards to examine cars. Yes, he lowered standards on parts that weren't a problem, but he also raised standards on parts that wore out too quickly. That is actually good engineering. The problem today is that manufacturers are colluding to reduce product lifetimes and increase maintenance costs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @02:45AM
Yes, the point was that all manufacturers do this to some extent. Selling a spare part for 20% of the item price is not that useful when 10 parts wear out simultaneously. It also means that buying other broken machines to get spare parts doesn't work. They all have the same list of worn out bits.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday July 02 2021, @07:43PM (4 children)
> cost cutting
Wonder why many American car manufacturers are going out of business? Bad reputation for reliability.
Same as UK car manufacturers 50 years ago (I am British), so that now there are none left.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 02 2021, @11:38PM (2 children)
There isn't really such a thing as a German, Japanese, British, or even American car manufacturer anymore. They're all global corporations who have merged and acquired and divested each other until they have at most two degrees of separation from each other. Their factories are located everywhere, using globally sourced parts and basically shared procedures and quality standards across the industry.
Low volume makers like Maserati, Aston, Koneigsegg, etc. are exceptions, but any model that sells tens of thousands? Global, with some consumer perception quality/price tiers. But if you think new BMWs are built to last, take a look at the plastic parts all over the engines.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Saturday July 03 2021, @11:04AM (1 child)
Sure, but the engineering is done in one place and the QA is driven by the management team.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 05 2021, @02:17AM
BMW is junk that doesn't last. This is why in America BMWs are very popular to LEASE instead of buy. You get to drive around in your fancy German engineering while it's new and dump it before it has a chance to break.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday July 03 2021, @09:40AM
"""
Nissan had been importing cars from its native country Japan to the UK since 1968, under the Datsun brand (which was phased out between 1982 and 1984, when the Nissan brand took over completely). After a steady start, its market share rose dramatically from just over 6,000 car sales in 1971 to more than 30,000 a year later, and reaching 100,000 a year before the end of the decade, aided by competitive prices, good equipment levels and a reputation for producing reliable cars. The success of Datsun came at a time when the British car industry, particularly British Leyland, was blighted by strikes as well as reports of disappointing build quality and reliability of many of its cars.
"""
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motor_Manufacturing_UK#History
"Disappointing" - hah! that's an understatement - everything "Austin" was complete crap by that stage, and even the Rovers weren't what people pretended they were!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday July 02 2021, @04:37PM (7 children)
"Rending is better than mending!"
Won't this cause problems for appliance sales, when someone can fix their problem with a £5 screwdriver and £10 worth of parts rather than buying a new £300 refrigerator? Why won't someone think of the big businesses!
Then again, those silly Brits probably have this notion that corporations shouldn't be allowed to just bribe politicians to get what they want. Where do they get these crazy ideas?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @04:43PM (6 children)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday July 02 2021, @05:04PM (1 child)
I don't know - I'm a fan of buying mostly cheap tools, and then replacing the ones that break (or otherwise prove inadequate) with good tools. At least when the price difference is large.
Probably 80% of cheap tools are good enough for the amount and way that I use them - which leaves me the vast majority of my tool budget to invest in the relatively few tools where the quality difference will really offer me a big benefit. Obviously different people will end up with a different selection of good tools, but that's kind of the point. It's can be really hard to judge ahead of time which tools are worth paying the quality premium for.
Also - using the cheap tools will very often teach me what features I really want (or don't) in a tool, which can make a big difference when I decide which good tool to replace it with. The extra satisfaction from picking the "right" good tool can easily be worth the extra 5-10% I paid for the "practice tool" up front.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @01:48PM
> tool budget
Funny thing happened as I got older. Like you, I used to have a tool budget, pre-internet it was hard to find low cost tools that were any good, so I mostly bought high quality brands.
Now, my "tool shopping" seems to mostly be at the houses of older friends that are giving their tools away as they go into retirement homes or otherwise quit working in their shops. And local garage sales (she drags me to these) where I sometimes find an interesting hand tool that I don't have.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday July 02 2021, @05:39PM (3 children)
I double-checked my estimates of prices in the UK, it seems to be that £5 is a reasonable estimate for a screwdriver made by a reputable company. Maybe £10 for a really good screwdriver. If you were thinking I was spending $5 instead of £5, that's your error, not mine.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by shortscreen on Friday July 02 2021, @06:07PM (2 children)
I'd say AC was pulling your leg. A good price for a plain screwdriver (not ratcheting, electric, pneumatic, impact, etc.) is $1.85
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @07:24PM (1 child)
Problem now is that it's hard to find suppliers for what used to be called "professional grade" tools because they slap that sticker on everything from China nowadays.
I have a socket set I inherited thats got to be 60 years old. The chrome is still brilliant, the rat hets are a pleasure to use, it's all 6-point sockets (12 point sockets are a dead givtof cheap crap), the rathet mechanisms are still tight, the quick released work as expected, and the balance is excellent. It will probably be the same 100 years from now. They literally don't make them any more.
I buy quality because I'm cheap.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @01:56PM
> Most of my band tools
Funny slip! My only band tools are an ~80 year old Walker-Turner band saw and a newer belt sander...
Don't have any specific tools for repairing musical band instruments.
Otherwise, couldn't agree with you more, buying quality when I was younger (and also inheriting quality from earlier generations) means the tools are still good now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Friday July 02 2021, @05:18PM
Companies could save a bunch of money by using off the shelf parts for new designs. They've avoided that for a long while now simply because they wanted the parts to be hard to get for consumers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @06:01PM (4 children)
'Only parts for "simple and safe" repairs will be available directly to consumers, including "door hinges on your washing machine or replacement baskets and trays for your fridge-freezers", he said. "Other parts that involve more difficult repairs will only be available to professional repairers, such as the motor or heating element in your washing machine," he said.'
What a wanker. That makes this whole thing not worth even half of what the idea is.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday July 02 2021, @06:19PM
That might just mean that some reseller goes around buying up the 'professional' parts and you buy from them instead. Especially after the 10-year time frame is over and the manufacturer still has parts to get rid of.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday July 02 2021, @06:36PM (2 children)
This requirement will not be much use if it is only for parts easy to replace. It will just come down to fridge shelves and control knobs. Actually, door hinges are not particularly easy to replace - on my last washing machine you would have had to take out the entire internals to reach the screws on the back of the hinges, and I never heard of them needing replacing anyway. It is motors, drive belts and the electronics that fail..
But hopefully there will be sellers who won't care if you are a professional. As a UK "amateur" (who is more capable than most professionals, but we won't go into that) I have generally been able to buy stuff that is labelled for professional use only (Gorilla glue is an example). Only once have I been refused a sale because not in the trade - an internal wooden door FFS, that was by Howdens Joinery, the bastards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @08:33PM (1 child)
Taking the door and drawer off a stive to move it takes care of at least half the weight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @02:00PM
> the hard part is not losing the baggie I stuck the hinges in.
Next time, use some good packaging tape to tape the parts-baggie to the appliance (like cheap tools, cheap/thin packing tape is also a false economy, imo).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02 2021, @08:11PM (6 children)
Right to repair founder (Llouis Rossmann) is from the U.S. but it's the U.K. that's saying it's a good thing.
Still, once one country starts adopting it this would encourage others to follow. So anything is a good start.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Friday July 02 2021, @10:12PM (5 children)
One country mandating it pretty much means that it's the rule for others, too, since the manufacturer will probably not want to create one model for the UK market and another one for everyone else. Aside of the cost, it would certainly be a PR disaster.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @02:39AM
Maybe, but I don't think there is actually that much cross-Atlantic trade in repairable goods. The EU may benefit from those laws, but I doubt Americans will.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday July 03 2021, @06:47AM
Most appliances do have a specific model number for the UK, if only for the mains plug.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday July 03 2021, @09:48AM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 03 2021, @10:05AM (1 child)
Works as long as you have a product without competition.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday July 04 2021, @06:46PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Interesting) by acid andy on Friday July 02 2021, @11:04PM
I repaired a dehumidifier that kept shutting off due to overheating. It wasn't the cheapest device and on the outside looked moderately robustly made. When I opened it up and found the point of failure it was indicative of the sorry state of our throwaway society. An electric motor that rotates the condensing surface had stopped working. Not a surprise in itself but when I popped the motor open I saw the absolutely minuscule worn-out nylon gears in its built-in gearbox, just a few millimeters in diameter. OK, so I found a motor similar enough to repair it myself without much bother but that misses the point that most people would have had to send the whole product to landfill and the notion that all the parts such a big, fairly expensive, complicated machine (including a very big and thick metal ring gear) were relying on the survival of those tiny, feeble little bits of nylon, that would be more at home in a child's toy, is at once completely absurd and horrific.
I would welcome these new rules in theory but I'll wait until I see how they're implemented and whether they're even enforced before I feel good about them.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @01:56AM (3 children)
Manufacturers end up eating the cost of stockpiled bits and bobs that will probably never see use, and keep building things shittily because now they just shrug and say that it's repairable, and please give them money for bits and bobs.
It doesn't drive the right action.
What you want is other people to be able to make replacement bits and bobs to spec, and to discourage crappy construction.
Make the manufacturers supply full engineering specs to the world, everything from hardness to mass, torque and maintenance schedules, conductivity and so on - and then require them to support disposal, recycling and so on on terms of complete indemnity to the user, backed by a bond or insurance plan. That way shipping shit costs them money in disposal costs, and they can't create artificial scarcity. Penalty: if they don't provide full removal/recycling, they're automatically liable for triple costs, including legal. Penalty for failing to supply engineering data: the government reverse-engineers it and fines them triple the cost of doing so.
End result: they either provide full data and recycling indemnity plan, or the tax man takes their shit. Add provision for piercing the corporate veil for costs of recovery, and parent companies will make goddamn sure that this gets done.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @02:48AM (2 children)
Requiring manufacturing companies to be responsible for disposal logistics just encourages gigantic lawyer-heavy multinationals, because it raises barriers to entry. In any case, recycling and material reclamation is the next frontier for small scale/home manufacturing now that 3D printing and CNC are relatively well developed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 04 2021, @01:46AM (1 child)
Any kind of regulation requiring manufacturers to do anything involving heavy stockpiling of components has the exact same result, because it comes down to a sunk cost as a requirement for entering the field. The difference is that requiring release of engineering data actually enables 3D printing and CNC machining to be more successful, while requiring a laundry list of parts just supports the chokehold of the manufacturers.
Either way, the ship of supporting big manufacturers sails just the same; one way just supports the end user better. I'll go for the more empowering option.
Alternatively, if you want to correct the problem while supporting end users and not choking small entrants, you end up with a government subsidy for all the recycling and disposal - yay! Or did you want to encourage a never-ending series of shell companies that vanish in turn, to dodge disposal costs?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 04 2021, @04:10AM
I don't think more government will provide any kind of relief to the issue. Decentralization of productive capacity, as I alluded to above, will solve many repairability problems. The only thing more regulation will accomplish is extending this purgatory.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 03 2021, @10:10AM (2 children)
You don't even have to read the article linked.
Translation: You may only repair parts yourself that won't break anyway, anything that is subject to wear and tear, you have to keep a local repair guy in business.
It's an attempt to restart the floundering repair service industry. Because manufacturing has gone over to China, but repairs will at least ... hopefully... be kept domestic.
It's not about you being able to repair your crap. And certainly not about any ecological "reduce the landfill" issues. As if we suddenly have qualms increasing Africa's toxic waste problem, because where do you think these things go to? It's an attempt to prop local repair shops up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 03 2021, @05:48PM (1 child)
Local non-dealer repair shops have to compete with each other, so this still helps the consumer.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday July 03 2021, @09:39PM
Not saying that it ain't better than the status quo, because it sure as all hell is. But presenting it as if they're trying to give the people control over their appliances is at best dishonest.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday July 03 2021, @03:21PM
Is there a minimum part count? Otherwise we'll find that each appliance has just one part, which can already be replaced without relying on the new law.