How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court(blog.simonrumble.com) |
How to get stuff repaired when the manufacturer don't wanna: take 'em to court(blog.simonrumble.com) |
Here is the directive adopted by the EU Council to promote the repair of broken or defective goods, also known as the right-to-repair (or R2R) directive:
"The directive adopted today enshrines a new right for consumers: the right to have defective products repaired in an easier, cheaper and faster way. It also gives manufacturers the incentive to make products that last longer and can be repaired, reused and recycled."
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024...
It shows that diversity is a good thing, you end up having to compromise no matter how rightful you feel.
The model in the US is nominally to have few regulations limited to things like enforcing contracts and antitrust laws and pricing major externalities, then leave the rest of it to free market competition. That isn't compatible with a model where regulators are trying to run the economy, because then the regulators get captured by industry and thwart rather than protect competition, and competition can't save you from needing complicated rules if it is not present. And those kinds of complex competition-destroying regulations are showing up everywhere, including in the US.
Conversely, the model in the EU is to not care a lot about small businesses and just regulate the large ones. But that model isn't really compatible with free trade. You can't impose expensive regulations on domestic companies and then put them into competition with countries that don't do that and expect them to succeed. But people want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the expensive regulations but not the correspondingly higher prices, and then the stuff they buy gets made in China where the rules don't exist (or exist on paper but the government waives them in order to capture the market). If you want to have the rules without destroying domestic industry then you have to impose them on the manufacturers of imported products too. Which would actually help the US increase competition, because the regulations would then shackle global megacorps that want to sell into the EU but not smaller domestic US companies that don't. But then foreign-produced stuff sold in the EU would cost as much as domestically-produced stuff -- a boon to local industry but higher prices on local consumers, and apparently they're not willing to suffer the latter.
You can edit your post if you do so soon after posting, and sometimes the meaning isn't lost (stale matches -> stalemates) but other times it (subjectively) is. For example I don't know what "rightful" should be here.
Meta don’t, for instance. They sell their quest headsets throughout Europe, but offer no warranty or support in many European countries in which they sell them, which is illegal under the EU CRD.
I foolishly bought one, knowing the risk - and it stopped working after a week, and that’s the end of the story - they refused to do a return or exchange, said I could ship it at my own expense, which I tried, only for them to “lose” the inbound package. They received it from the courier, mislaid it - my problem. They then kindly offered to ship a replacement controller at my expense (€150), but only to a different country, not to where I live. They then “lost” that too, forcing me to do a chargeback to get my money back, as despite having no proof of delivery to me, they insisted it had been.
As to “take them to court” - they know damned well that it’s not worth it to spend €10,000+ on legal fees over a €500 piece of electronics, which is why they knowingly and willingly act illegally.
The EU needs a simple, pan-European way to deal with bad actors, or it’s just meaningless legislation that provides no protection to consumers.
Do you mean that you can buy it from the manufacturer website and have it shipped directly to a country where it's not released officially? Or are you taking about third party retailers selling grey market units?
It's also a great consumer friendly regulation!
In the past 14 months I've had to deal with two misbehaving insurance companies, one misbehaving utility provider (overcharging), and a few other things as well that I don't really want to talk about here.
I did not get to the point of actually having to take legal action but I did have to threaten it in two cases, along with action from the relevant ombudsmen.
Nothing like this, or on this scale, has ever happened to me before (once, about thirty years ago, I had to threaten a company with small claims for unpaid wages, but that's it).
There are, to an extent, processes you have to follow before you can get to the point where you are within your rights to threaten to throw the legal book at companies. You usually have to have gone through their complaints procedures and got to what you consider an unsatisfactory result. This in itself can take weeks or months of emailing back and forth, phone calls, etc. You gradually escalate your approach, you cover the internet in bad reviews, you contact your local MP and the local media, and so it goes on.
Its an exhausting and kafkaesque shitshow and this is with the backing of authorities, such as ombudsmen, who operate with the backing of legislation.
I understand why you have to do it: because some consumers are vexatious and dishonest. But it takes too long (elapsed) and it takes far too much time (effort) that could be better spent with family and friends (as an example).
I am currently gearing myself up to deal with the other insurance company, who I haven't so far had to threaten with legal action, and file a police complaint due to some new information that's come to light that shows our insurers, and the advice they gave us, in a very bad light.
Honestly, I don't know if I can be bothered any more. Taking the actions that I have, well, I wouldn't say they've left us better off, but they've left us much less worse off, because we haven't been taken for mugs... but the cost to my sanity and my soul. I don't know if the juice has always been worth the squeeze.
And that, of course, is what these companies bank on: that you'll get tired of it all and stop bothering them. It's extremely scummy behaviour, and frustrates me that I have to get to the point of threatening them with legal action just to get them to do the right thing. I strongly resent being forced to act like an asshole just to get a fair outcome.
I welcome any legislation that helps consumers get to a fair outcome more easily, but I also suggest that we need to look at the question of the obfuscatory tactics companies use to force consumers to jump through ridiculous hoops first.
I doubt it'd fly in the EU.
To what end? Annoy the people who are responsible for your predicament. Don't take it out on call center workers.
The more time you spend with the call center, the more it costs the parent company. They don't like long calls.
If your call lasts long enough, it will get reviewed by a manager. Your class of complaint will end up on a tally.
Enough of these, and someone does something.
If it were my business, I wouldn't make shitty decisions and then force an army of phone operators to run my customers around so that no customer could ever have an effect on my company, while only offering up the customer service reps as any kind of interface with the company.
You want me not to bother the customer service reps? Give me a different way to interact with the company. But I'm not going to pity anyone who stays at that job (I did my time in customer service; I have the wherewithall to leave every emotion from one call with that caller). Reps should understand that the actual description of the job they are signing up for is "repeat talking points until the customer hangs up and weather their anger, until that point. if within your approved talking points - help with their problem".
Some advice to a co-founder, if you make customers waste their time going in circles with the help desk just to get their concerns reviewed, they'll take their business elsewhere.
To quote from that article on the parent company's website:
According to the American National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) - who
helpfully released research called the Study of Life Expectancy of Home Components
- the contemporary average lifespans are as follows:
• Fridges - 13 years
• Dishwashers - 9 years
• Electric ovens - 13 years
• Gas stoves - 15 years
• Microwaves - 9 years
• Dryers - 13 years
If I buy an expensive fridge and it fails in 5 years due to a faulty component, then that is up to the retailer and manufacturer to sort out between themselves as to who wears the cost of replacement or repair.
≤ € 199 2 years
€ 200 - 299 3 years
€ 300 - 399 4 years
€ 400 - 499 5 years
€ 500 - 599 6 years
€ 600 - 699 7 years
≥ € 700 8 years
On one hand this seems rather short to me, on the other hand, it's kind of a "you get what you pay for" affair. I don't really know what profit margins manufacturers have, but when I worked for a store profit margins for us really weren't all that big for us (and also didn't scale as much with price as many people assume).
30 years :)
But I actually think it's fine that the warranty shorter than 9 years.
Even, if I agree that 2 years (as is common) is too short.
[0]: https://www.europe-consommateurs.eu/en/shopping-internet/spa...
As long as no exotic or custom components are used they should be easy to find parts and repair too
Not that the controller board on a washing machine is particularly exotic; it's made from standard components. But each model of washing machine has it's own controller board, so the boards are low-volume, and ridiculously expensive. And the boards themselves are about as easy to repair as any modern PCB covered in SMDs.
I suspect the reason that white goods nowadays all have digital displays and digital control panels is that those "features" necessitate a proprietary controller board, which turns out (surprisingly! /s) to be the component most likely to fail.
Those two/three things are entirely unrelated.
Power efficient appliances are a must in most countries not powered by low-carbon energy (so in the EU, that basically leaves everyone outside of France and the Nordics), and a good to have for those that are. Quality of those appliances is entirely unrelated to their power efficiency.
Smart appliances are on a spectrum. Some are useless, some are practical. Again, their quality is entirely unrelated to their smartness. Their smartness can be optional, non-blocking and using open protocols; or it can be mandatory, cloud-only so that when the cloud service gets retired to save money the appliance is useless. As an example, my LG washing machine/dryer combo can connect to my Wi-Fi network to be able to send me notifications when it's done, to load custom programmes, to remind me I need to do a wash cycle of the machine itself. Those are useful features, entirely optional, and the machine won't stop working if it can't connect to the Wi-Fi.
Some of them hook up to a mobile phone by bluetooth to track how you brush. The thing is once the battery dies the £150 toothbrush is useless, it's' sealed so replacing the battery isn't trivial.
I think in the battery may last a fair bit longer now.
Electric tooth brushes are quite an improvement over a normal tooth brush.
I bought that brush handle in 2009. 15 years of life, and if I didn't mind about the second brush charge I probably could have squeezed another year or two out of it.
A user replaceable battery can extend the life, but it also introduces a way for water to get in and short it out, thereby drastically decreasing the lifespan. But given the overall power requirements for the device, ensuring that the battery is charged appropriately to extend the lifespan is pretty easy. My Philips is over 4 years old now and if I'm traveling for a week I may need to charge it once (never really tried to let it drain fully), and it gets used twice a day.
Consumers voted for this a long time ago, people want cheap s*t. There are manufacturers that do take pride and their products can last a lifetime if not easily repairable. Guess what, nobody actually wants it. (except the HN crowd aparently).
[1] https://e-justice.europa.eu/content_small_claims-42-en.do
The thing is, if you say something stupid, people forget about it. If you write it down, it stays.
But often I write like I speak, not thinking about the consequences.
Courts will, and have in the past, throw this table out, if you make a reasonable argument why you could expect a longer lifespan.
But yeah, it's just a guideline like I said. Some people here are throwing out numbers such as a "15 years" or "decades" with no qualifiers, and I'm not sure if that's reasonable for a €230 oven (cheapest in a quick check).
Aside on retailers: I haven't worked in a store in 15 years, but back then a lot of manufacturers just said "lol fuck you" when you tried to claim warranty above their stated warranty period. It was typically up to the retailers to bear the costs. One (of several) reason we left the consumer business: it's hard to compete as a small independent store for many different reasons, and this just made it that much harder. You can't spread out the costs, and you have almost no leverage against Asus or HP.
In short, at least back then the manufacturers could just keep shipping wank without really suffering too much damage to their bottom line, and the retailers with essentially no power to change anything were getting screwed. I don't know if that's changed, but probably not.
Yes, it gets often quoted, but things don't become true by being often repeated. It probably wasn't the Consumentenbond, as they actively call out the list from Techniek Nederland (previously Uneto-VNI) as being too short on their website.
[1] https://www.consumentenbond.nl/nieuws/2016/consumenten-hebbe...
200 euro also says nothing: 200 euro for a small tabletop oven is extremely expensive, for a large build-in one it's cheap. Considering as well it's usually a build in one, you can expect to not have to change it every two years.
If, however, for whatever reason you don't want that, you can't demand all your money back, but only 50%. That's only if you agree to the money though, the seller can't unilaterally choose to give you 50% back instead of repairing it.
I'm very cynical about this "diversity is our strength" stuff
In my opinion the problem is that society has been working hard to reduce "diversity" to mean different skin colors, genitals or sexual preferences, with a sprinkling of different cuisine. What most people refer to as diversity is very superficial
Diversity of ideas, diversity of politics, diversity of beliefs are still not very popular
The idea seems to be that the superficial diversity automatically produces the meaningful diversity, but I don't think that is true
Also, this (to me) is a strange use for the word diversity.
A similar issue comes up around education although things are a bit more even there with Texas and Florida also using the size of their markets to set their version of education standards.
According to ustr.gov, US imports from China in 2022 were worth $562.9 billion.
According to eurostat EU imports from China were 627.3€ billion, so a significant difference (note the currency).
As a rate of the total import/export they are actually quite comparable.
This also gets back to my point about the US increasingly failing at its ideal of not imposing high regulatory overhead.
In fact, we should be able to build ovens that last a lifetime. And not only ovens, there are many appliances and gear that can easily be made to last a lifetime, except for some wearing parts. However, many companies that did this were competed to bankruptcy by cheap low quality competing products.
With the abundance of low(er) quality products, we tend to expect a shorter lifetime.
Luckily there are still a few countries at the bottom of the world with good consumer legislation.
But that price increase will go into longer-lasting parts, because that costs a lot less than needing to replace every unit halfway through the warranty period.
And since the 20 year oven is a lot cheaper to build than two 10 year ovens, the per-year price to the consumer will go down.
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.
Who knows, maybe the author has been using the oven excessively or never cleaned it etc.
So far, we‘ve heard one side only.
That's actually false. Almost all of the engineered goods are engineered to a certain lifetime. Usually companies have internal endurance testing results for every item. The ones who care about will release their expectations.
Considering the cost of sending a lawyer attend the hearing and the potential risk of creating a precedent, it may simpler and cheaper to send an engineer when someone complains too loudly...
If they got invited to a hundred cases at the same time, they'd send a lawyer and perhaps even would tweak the design to include some extra $1 parts which actually work.
In this case it seems to boil down to: "In the end he replaced the light bulb (which hadn't worked for years, we hadn't bothered replacing it) and the message had gone away anyway."... i.e. the guy could have replaced the light bulb when it broke and perhaps nothing would have happened in the first place. So this article comes across as complaining too much, frankly.
a failed bulb could result in a 'please change the bulb before the rest of me breaks' on the display, too.
It’s designed so a lay person can represent themselves without having to understand the justice system.
I know in New South Wales companies have to apply for special leave to have a lawyer represent them, and they need to supply a reason why. In New Zealand lawyers are not allowed in the tribunal, a company must be represented by a manager.
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.
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...
Company X makes a great product that everyone only needs one of and lasts a long time. Over time, the market starts to dwindle and. Company X is going broke. Now, Company X must either invest in innovation or reduce the lifespan of its current offering.
There's nothing inherently evil about this concept, but we tend to want to chalk it up to greed when Company X really just wants to survive and make a profit, which I suppose is the point.
The problem is the concept is ripe for abuse. If Company X makes their product worse, but starts charging more while laying off employees, posting record profits during recessions, adopts unnecessary subscription models cosplaying as continued service and development, etc...now we get to the greed part. There seems to be a line between designing a product to secure the longevity of Company X and straight up using your customers as micro-transaction ATMs with planned obsolescence. Some companies conspire to cross it.
Then their strategy worked - if you really believe it's more complicated. Haven't investigated this particular subject, but many others subjects are _made_ complicated to achieve a particular outcome. Along lines of: 'let's protect the children' argument.
- Lower-quality components (especially capacitors) being used to meet the lower price point. This is by far the most common failure mode I have experienced, it's never the LEDs dying but the power supply.
- Higher-quality LED light is usually result of driving the LEDs harder, causing them to fail earlier.
- Probably some other reasons too.
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li...
Only shows you bulbs can be made well and last long. But those are not for you. (Assuming most readers here are not Saudi)
Usually they’re over-driven and you can jump a burned out LED and scrape off a bit of a resistor to reduce the amount of current going through to (over-)account for the reduced current need.
Key points from an AI summary:
- Incandescent bulbs had to balance factors like light output, efficiency, and lifespan - hotter filaments produced brighter, whiter light but reduced bulb lifespan.
- Longer-lasting bulbs were less efficient and produced dimmer, yellower light, so they were not simply "better" products being suppressed.
- The 1,000 hour target was a reasonable compromise that balanced these competing priorities, not necessarily a sinister plot.
- Even after the Phoebus cartel dissolved, the 1,000 hour lifespan remained the industry standard for general-purpose incandescent bulbs.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-04/cheeri...
Undoubtedly there are some alternate materials you could make a light bulb out of that present a trade off between longevity and efficiency. But there will also be materials that last a long time and have high efficiency. Moreover, even if they want to use the filament material that emits whiter light and then burns up faster, they could then use more of it so it still doesn't burn out quickly. But they don't want to do that, because it would cost marginally more and more importantly then you wouldn't have to buy as many light bulbs.
It's no good to pretend this isn't possible. There isn't an inherent trade off between brightness and efficiency, because inefficiency is just the percentage of the electricity that goes to producing heat rather than light. At the same power consumption, a more efficient bulb is brighter. LEDs are rated as "100W equivalent" even though they consume ~20W. And the LEDs themselves last far longer than the equivalent incandescent light, but then they purposely combine them with a power converter that burns out much sooner. It's marketing, not physics.
Additionally, the companies set up a whole compliance regime with bulb testing and fines, not for bulbs being too dim, but for bulbs that lasted too long, which I think clarifies the intent more than anything else.
Hotter filament gives more efficient and whiter light (the black body radiation has more visible and less infrared), but the hotter filament doesn't last as long (faster evaporation rate).
It's perfectly possible for end users to use a dimmer switch to make incandescent lamps last much, much longer at the expense of less light and a "warmer" colour.
Lifespan is very, very sensitive to the temperature.
The 1000 hours limit is in practice a lower bound to a combination of luminosity and efficiency
https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-l-e-d-quanda...
A stable DC current and temperature limited LED can easily last decades.
> "A longer life bulb of a given wattage puts out less light (and proportionally more heat) than a shorter life bulb of the same wattage"
As long as we can recycle (or at least safely get rid of) the burned out ones I'd say its a win from ecology perspective, and at least in some cases also for end users. But this wasnt the main driver of the change, it was the good ol' corporate greed as per the same wiki page.
I know this is a common pop-history thing to cite on the Internet, but I would think hackernews would understand the benefits of standardization.
If every brand's lightbulb has different luminousities how on earth would architects decide how to space fixtures?
This "cartel" is how we avoided a dimness war, like the loudness war we had in digital music a decade or so back
Consumer NZ is usually used as the independent source for expected product lifetimes: https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/appliance-life-expectan.... Interestingly, they specify 15 years for an oven, which is more than the company in this article claimed electric ovens should last for.
After that it never booted past the setup pages with a "unable to get token" message. I messaged the company who was very responsive but the end result was that they said it was unfixable and to return it to the store.
It was only $8, but I was looking forward to a wifi connected picture frame.
In a hindsight it seems obvious, still this video was the first time I've heard this verbalized so clearly.
Rainforest Automation is uninterested in debugging it and is offering only a discount on replacement hardware. But this is likely a software problem (I suspect failed certificate rotation to connect to their backend) and I don't want to give them more money.
I live in California and the right to repair goes live next month. Anybody know how I can use that right to actually get a repair?
via[0]:
Manufacturers must also make available documentation, parts, and tools for at least three years after the product was last manufactured for products priced between $50 and $99.99 and for at least seven years after the product was last manufactured for products priced at $100 or more, regardless of any warranty periods.
The law broadly covers electronic and appliance products, including cell phones, laptops, tablets, and various home appliances, that were manufactured and sold or used for the first time in California on or after July 1, 2021.
edited to add source URL.
FOREVER. Just design them so parts are replaceable and buildable by any third party and provide the documentation.
For me, it's the most interesting with EU/Sweden. We don't have courts like this do we?
It can be difficult to directly sue a foreign manufacturer but importers and retailers tend to have domestic legal entities that can be compelled to attend court appearances etc.
https://toroid.org/exide-warranty-nightmare is an Indian story you might like BTW.
Tell your friends and family.
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)
Here’s one, but there are others as well: https://www.shuchow.com/so-i-took-a-huge-corporation-to-arbi...
However, I suspect that if something breaks out of warranty, you don't have a legal right to get it replaced/repaired.
If you have a working small claims court system, I can recommend giving it a try. It can be way less frustrating than trying to deal with a company that just doesn't want to.
- it avoids costly class actions in "big" cases - it avoids costly discovery in "big" cases - it avoids sky-high damages claims in extreme cases - it allows small everyday fuck-ups to be handled more cheaply than a court
However, I'd argue that for this kind of issue, arbitration isn't necessarily worse. Especially in a clear-cut case, you don't need the court to win, you just need the court to trigger an escalation at the company. Arbitration is good enough for that.
Electrolux is a Swedish company that has quietly bought-up most of the European brands, like Hotpoint and AEG. When you buy one of those brands, you are buying the Electrolux standard of service. The service engineers are a third-party. Last time I looked, there was no contact information on the Electrolux website. And TBH, I think it must be at least a decade since I saw Electrolux-branded products in stores.
I think Electrolux' business is like those cheapo Chinese companies that buy up good bicycle brands, and then drastically downgrade the product. So be careful if you're buying white goods in Europe: you could be buying Electrolux in mufti.
I have a similar situation right now. Washing machine is leaking when load is anything bigger than light load. Initial guarantee claim to Whirlpool was sent 8 weeks ago. It's dead, no response from anyone.
Under consumer rights shop should refund, but claim is without response for 3 weeks (14 calendar days is upper limit according to EU law + local regulations).
Today I was supposed to contact the lawyer, but I figured out that f** this s**. It's weeks of legal battle over 300€. They won. Stress enough isn't worth it.
Oven is a different thing though, as I don't think it's as essential as washing machine (and dragging clothes every week for washing).
Maybe I should file a claim to refund after it was made, but it's still a net loss. Lesson learned: stay away from manufacturer Whirlpool, don't ever spend a dime on a shop and live on.
Those companies hire a lot of lawyers, have extensive data on customer behavior, court costs and generally know that most people don't have the time and/or the money to sue, and will find that it is more economical for them to just forget the matter and buy a brand new item.
Usually a complaint gets forwarded to the company which requires some sort of authoritative response (which wastes time and money) so you can have reasonable success there.
Same issue as the article explains, it still takes a lot of time on the consumer side (who wants to be without an oven 2 months while they file paperwork and wait)
I’ve never actually used small claims court in the US. Curious if those who have can answer if it’s a similar experience?
Did a claim with MCOL, they waited until the day of the hearing to pony up what I was claiming for, with interest. In the UK the individual gets to choose the venue with MCOL, so they'd have had to send a lawyer to Cheltenham to contest it.
That system fails unprivileged people though. Even if the "privilege" is "a number of Twitter followers".
That's probably why a tradition of more formal courts arose. But they probably worked better when they operated at a communal scale.
Think: "walk down the road to the courtroom on the second Wednesday of the month and wait your turn" and if you win, you get to boast about it at the pub for a few weeks: "can you believe ol' Jon thought he could pull the wool over my eyes?! Ha! Shame on him! He had to pay me for two days labor, the bastard!"
I wonder how we bring some of that convenience and public shaming back?
My sense is that there's not enough personal accountability because the courts and companies are too big for "ol' Jon" to held to account.
Ideally everything is shipped back to the manufacturer at the end of the life span. Those dates would also be nice to have.
It seems like those Samsung/LG smart appliances are constantly breaking (especially fridges)
Really it seems anything with a circuit board is more likely to break (which I suppose is somewhat intuitive given mechanical parts are fairly durable)
Who gets to decide how long something gets to last for?
No, I wouldn’t like the extended warranty thanks - I’m covered already.
It’s silly that the US doesn’t set up similar protections. While manufacturers race to the bottom, we (consumers) could race to the top.
Some companies like Apple try to make up for this by replacing broken devices, then refurbishing and reselling the formerly broken device.
> And that those properties (being hard to damage/destruct and being easy to repair) might be mutually exclusive.
I disagree on a fundamental level.
You could say such a thing when talking about really small (micro/miniature) devices. But as size increases, the validity of such arguments rapidly goes down. A phone case/bumper for example - makes the device larger, yes - but increases strength while not hurting reparability.
The "problem", imo, is two-fold: 1. Apple does not care too much about making repairs easy. If it costs $100 to make a board they can charge a customer $500 to repair, or $800 for a new phone, it's easy for them.
2. (Some) people prefer sleeker designs. Samsung has its active range of phones, CAT makes durable phones - but many prefer a smaller thickness/bezel etc. This means that when tech improves to make smaller bezels, manufacturers decrease the bezel a little and add protective padding a little... haha no. It's only bezel reduction. Because it sell, I suppose.
For example gorilla glass/protective glass has improved in technology, but thinner screens (for thinner devices) have eaten up the benefits of stronger tech.
The real "killer" argument? The presence of companies like Framework. I'm typing this out on my FW13 & its build quality is really good. Perhaps a 10 year old thinkpad may be similar or better, but this is almost certainly thinner. But it is almost definitely more repairable.
It's possible, but requires companies to offer products, and people to use and buy them.
They do. iPhone 14 internals was redesigned to be more repairable [0], which extended to pro models with iPhone 15 [1].
[0] https://www.ifixit.com/News/64865/iphone-14-teardown
[1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/82867/iphone-15-teardown-reveals...
There would not be an issue for Apple or Samsung to design a backplane that uses screws to hold the phone together, eliminating the need for glue entirely.
It just looks a bit ugly.
> For example gorilla glass/protective glass has improved in technology, but thinner screens (for thinner devices) have eaten up the benefits of stronger tech.
Right )
[1] https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/indice-reparabilite [2] https://www.ecologie.gouv.fr/indice-durabilite
Plenty of devices are indestructible and repairable, they're just bulky.
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/legal-syste...
The N1 form is to be sent by post[1] and there is also an online version which can be used in some cases[2].
[1]: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65eb13af62ff4...
So in practice the iron clad guarantee is only 6 months for most consumer products.
At least that's the interpretation of the law in the UK.
edit: small claims courts are quite accessible in the UK, so often the threat of small claims can get thing moving.
https://e-justice.europa.eu/42/EN/small_claims?SWEDEN&member...
This link also contains a reference for all other EU member states
I'm not that knowledgeable about all the details here, but I've done it once for a PSU which stopped working after four years.
Do I expect a laptop to last 5 year? Yes, most of them. Do I think it's inherently problematic or that consumers were "cheated" if say 25% of laptops only last 4 years instead of 5? I do not.
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 court date" in the past to challenge an illegal rent increase in Switzerland. The court for that here is called the Schlichtungsbehörde.
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.
As for courts - there is a customer protection commission/service in most (all) EU member states. However, they won't do anything if the item is out of legal claim for 'free' (any) repairs.
My personal issue is not the warranty/courts, though. While I can repair all kinds of stuff (from laptops board repair to gas lawn mowers), the fact you get a piece of junk that serves no purpose until repaired, is damning. A story may make a decent material for a blog post, but in real life you generally don't have luxury to pursue a slow process for repair/replacement, if it's an important piece of equipment.
Although we didn't explicitly have a consumer court, we have a court department in both municipal and Provincial Courts. (ศาลจังหวัด/ศาลแขวง... แผนกคดีผู้บริโภค)
People can file a complaint themselves both in-person or via e-Filing system. Although very tedious to do so, at least in my opinion, it still workable.
Same as the blog's author, any plaintiff I've help with, need some patient and times on both evidence collecting and consulting with the court's appointed lawyer to draft the complaint. But, for the case against big company at least, it mostly worked out for them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_small_claims_proced...
This is old law (common law, although now redefined in legislation). EU law added some protections on top of this, and non-EU UK law added more. I am not up to date with the details, but there are plenty of readable guides out there to anyone who needs them.
We are not alike. As soon as it costs them several tens of billable hours (people on phone, someone making appointments, discussions, emails, lawyer doing it's thing etc) I'm all fair game and will definitely spend my time screwing with them simply to make them pay even if I lose in the end.
Since I'm going to be frustrated when I'm being screwed over I see no reason not repay that and to act out that frustration in the worst possible way I can manage for the companies involved.
Conversations with lawyer is 1.5h, preparing documents another hour. I need to keep appliance somewhere, which is a storage cost. Average time to resolution is 8 months. I need to pay lawyer up front, and the costs are going to be returned, but this is yet another process. Initial costs are 200€ to even start, not to mention legal fees.
Even a simple form for costs reimbursement has 4 pages and based on requirements would require approximately 2h of gathering receipts, proving communication.
If I'd earn 30€/hour (and my rate is much higher), it would cost me around 600€ to get into the process. Anything outside original amount requires follow-up process so another 8 months.
Do I want to spend 2 years to get approximately 1000€ in total, during which I have not usable washing machine stuffed somewhere in my apartment? Nope.
As for "legal billable hours". Companies of specific size have lawyer on payroll. It doesn't increase the cost for them and they won't blink an eye or even notice. Facebook post will do more damage to them than above stunt, but it won't bring me anything in return.
So yes, they win, because my cost is higher than theirs. And I will stress about it, shortening my lifespan and they won't care at all.
Under New Zealand and Australian consumer law (the laws are different but similar) we have access to a low-cost tribunal. In fact in New Zealand you’re not allowed to be represented by a lawyer - on either side. It’s a single hearing with immediate resolution. Appeals and re-hearings are very limited and pretty rare.
I’ve used it twice. Both times the vendor magically found the warranty to be valid and fixed the issue before the tribunal date arrived. You don’t get a refund on the filing fee, but on most home appliances it’d be NZ$45, or about €25.
Not a single one has burned out in something like 4 years of runtime. Honestly the paint inside the bulbs is going to fade away completely before these things go out. The trick is 2 things:
1. Don’t move them
2. Use a dimmer and run them around 75% power
Ok here it is --
The lamps you're not allowed to have. Exploring the Dubai lamps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klaJqofCsu4
> These fascinating lamps are a result of a collaboration between Philips Lighting and Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum - the ruler of Dubai. They are designed to be the most efficient available, matching high lumen output with very long life. Once you see the construction and circuitry you'll realise this isn't just marketing spin.
Now I want to actually look into and see if they're available elsewhere, because my LED bulbs really do seem to fail pretty frequently...
As to the latter point, no, that's incorrect. There were some issues in the past with getting a game approved at a 15+ age rating instead of 18+, but those have gone by the wayside as videogames in general have become more mainstream & accepted.
I seriously doubt you can recycle the tungsten as it literally evaporates and oxidize on the lightbulb.
But yes, pretty much everything in Australia will try to kill you: it has world's most venomous snakes, world's most venomous spiders, saltwater crocodiles, sneaky dropbears, dengue fever carrying mosquitoes, world's most venomous jellyfish and sea snakes, and, of course, the IT consultants who will eat one alive.
Well. There is nothing left to discuss then.
Historically, Apple made sourcing genuine parts an impossible feat. This potentially wouldn't even be a problem, if Apple didn't go to such great lengths to detect "non authentic parts". They changed that somewhat, but only for private consumers. Their model for their repair/replacement parts program still makes it borderline impossible to operate an independent repair service business, effectively protecting Apple from any competition.
But most people are going to buy what their telco offers on sale, and that is iPhones and Samsung Galaxy S series. Everything else is specialty that you need to buy in cash.
(Landlords in the UK are obliged to register their tenant's deposit with a scheme upon the start of an tenancy, and raise any objections to the full return within a short period of the tenants move-out (possibly as short as 14 days) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenancy_deposit_scheme_(Englan...
1. We create a law that says companies _are_ responsible for the environmentally-conscientious disposal of any good they make.
2. Then we let them decide.
Manufacturers also keep making phones with headphone jacks, sd slots, swappable batteries, and all the other features that people loudly insist they want in their phones, right until it comes to choosing a new phone to buy. Then they buy something thin and flimsy again and repeat the whine cycle; and every year another manufacturer drops their sturdy&servicable line because nobody cares enough to actually buy it.
Guess: "Gas Seals" was a checklist item for that last service man at church. I think we have our gas stove, water heater, and furnace looked at every 7-ish years by someone from the local gas company.
I'd recommend you get an isolation tester device and an instruction on how to use it by a local electrician. That way you can (relatively) easily check your house installation - not just devices but also the home's wiring itself - against danger due to insulations going bad, before someone gets hurt or devices start tripping the GFCI.
Speaking of GFCI, I seriously hope you and everyone else reading this thread has all their wiring protected by one. If not, please please please get it retrofitted ASAP, and if you can afford it, retrofit a combination of thermal fuse, GFCI and arc fire detector. Electrical issues are a leading cause for domestic fires.
> Guess: "Gas Seals" was a checklist item for that last service man at church. I think we have our gas stove, water heater, and furnace looked at every 7-ish years by someone from the local gas company.
Good, then you should be good to go (and it's crazy that the pipes, fittings and interior seals are still intact at that age and not dried out!), although 7 years is quite the stretch. Here in Germany, the norm is once a year for furnaces/water heaters - personally I had an emergency repair to be done as in well below a year the water heater went from "perfect emissions" to "dangerous CO levels". The cause turned out to be cat fur being sucked in and burning up, depositing soot on the burners.
[0] https://www.calmont.com/wp-content/uploads/calmont-eng-wire-...
Solid wires are used for fixed installation (eg. inside walls). Any cable with solid conductors must be mounted in such a way that it does not move or bend during use.
Electrical resistance is very similar for solid vs stranded conductors.
But these are a voluntary guarantee from the manufacturer, which naturally are much harder to enforce legally. As you are not arguing the law, but the manufacturers wording of his guarantee.
The free market is designed for this. If the bulb lasts 5000 hours, but burns 1/2 as bright, consumers can easily decide what they prefer.
And further, the cartel did not have exceptions for product enhancements, or improvements, which might have enabled > 1000 hrs without any drawbacks.
Why are people defending this cartel? Market collusion is generally frowned upon.
The standards were set around what could be sold as a standard lightbulb.
No, that's exactly the problem. Company X surviving isn't a good enough justification for it to start making shittier products. Especially when they don't inform the customers of the degradation.
This is a business model problem, or perhaps a whole-market problem; papering over it with "oh just a little planned obsolescence is good, because it lets the vendor survive" is kind of a bailout, and prevents the problem from being corrected. By now, this has happened in so many places across so many industries that it's a rot that runs deep through entirety of the market.
A properly protected door should last many years. One that we bought was not up to outside use, and failed. That manufacturer ended up purchased by a competitor, I think.
My experience: swan-neck kitchen taps all now seem to be quite different in design from one-another. To replace a washer, you have to dive under the sink, completely dismantle the tap, replace the washer, and re-assemble the tap. And the new taps start dripping after just a couple of years.
So you have to hire a plumber; and he'll probably work faster (i.e. lower charges) if he's fitting a new tap than repairing an old one. So you might as well order a new tap before you call the plumber out.
One can model their business around market rules. It just might not be as huge as you want.
But Instant Pot is the classic example of going broke because everyone bought exactly one of their products and never needed another (ignoring the three we have...)
It is my understanding that when Instant Brands filled for bankruptcy, they weren't selling just the Instant Pot. It wasn't even the original Instant Pot company. They were selling a wide range of kitchen products. I don't think they went broke because people bought exactly one Instant Pot.
The story doesn't end here. Apparently, Instant Brands emerged from chapter 11 as Corelle Brands.
> They go broke or rely on an ever growing market, ie housing is always being built (most of your examples).
Wouldn't that mean those new houses have new families which want a new Instant Pot? In fact I can think of other situations: people moving, going to college, splitting some of their items in divorce, etc. Sure, it's not much but it's not like the demand grinds to a halt.
Keep a perfunctory tidbit of the once great company chugging along to provide replacement parts, do some servicing, and sell new ones at a much reduced volume. Just enough to keep a handful of people employed at good wages and turn a miniscule profit.
I know it is heresy to suggest this kind of thing when our entire way of life is predicated on infinite growth, but our entire way of life is also grossly inefficient (not to mention inequitable) and we are facing ever more scarce resources on a planet with less and less carrying capacity for our wasteful and destructive tendencies.
Of course this is all just yelling at clouds, because billionaires and the people who service them cannot be made to think in these terms, else they wouldn't be where they are in the first place.
There are ways to protect against that. And actively cooled equipment (like computers) get way worse problems than stuff with no air circulation.
Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. v. Bobker, 636 F. Supp. 444 (S.D.N.Y. 1986)
There is no regulation of arbitration services.
Depends on other laws, here they have to take it back and recycle it. This also applies to old appliances. I had some empathy for the poor guys who had to take my extremely cheap, completely rusted washing machine away when I bought a new one.
While repairing might be better, it's not the worst outcome to replace it.
Stand mixers were solid metal so I'm guessing a decent portion of the cost was casing/housing
At least in the U.S. this stuff tends to be called "manufacturer refurbished"
But yes, the reasonably-priced LED bulbs don't last any longer than incandescents. I am replacing a few every year around the house. The saving grace is that they generate a lot less heat. I was in a house the other day that still had incandescent bulbs in the bathroom fixures, and could feel the heat from them as soon as I switched them on.
I actually swapped out my shower light because it got so hot the insulating wire melted and it created a short. Took forever to figure out, but once I did, I got a nice $30/$40 shower light fixture that went right in the same spot and its much nicer now. I'm just glad the short was running through metal wire/fiberglass and never started a fire.
1. Stronger filaments that last longer will be a lot less efficient, so the consumer ends up using a lot more electricity.
2. The filament doesn't burn per-say, but actually evaporates. This is why it'll eventually break. But where does the evaporated metal go? It condenses on the inner surface of the glass, making the lightbulb dimmer than when it was new.
So 1000 hours is a good middle ground. The lightbulb is fairly efficient and 1000 hours isn't long enough for the inside of the glass to get too dark from the condensed filament metal.
Price of the bulbs was also reasonably low. It's cheaper to change out a lightbulb every 1000 hours than the electricity costs of a 10 000 hour lightbulb that emits the same amount of visible light. I don't have hard numbers for that, but it's my understanding.
Watch the youtube video linked by one of the grandparent comments. It's super informative and also contains some experiments to show the trade-offs.
Ultimately which scenario makes the most sense: that these businesses went through the time and effort to set up this testing organization out of a desire to ensure they all made better products for consumers, or out of a realization that they could all stabilize their revenues if they all sold products that would need to be replaced on a regular basis?
This also strikes me as an area where consumer choice can be particularly effective: most of the attributes of a lightbulb aside from energy consumption are pretty tangible to the end user, and since they are fairly inexpensive and replaceable, the buyer is more able to evaluate them side by side than many other things. It makes total sense to me that the manufacturers would see this as a problem, and choose to limit consumer choice instead of competing to make better products.
That's the expensive bit. That's a lot of machinery and tooling sitting around mostly doing nothing.
Such a price would incentivize manufacturers to make warranties last as long as possible. This encourages repairability where it's economically and physically viable, without the tradeoffs necessary if repairability is mandated by law.
Or keep warranties short, but push consumers into a pay by month model, because the amount per month is less than than the advertised "expected monthly price". The company then gets a regular income stream.
I don’t think the EU says anything that specific (https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers...)
> At least that's the interpretation of the law in the UK.
If that’s true, I think it would be specific to the UK.
Also, what the UK says isn’t relevant for discussing EU consumer rights anymore.
"3. Unless proved otherwise, any lack of conformity which becomes apparent within six months of delivery of the goods shall be presumed to have existed at the time of delivery unless this presumption is incompatible with the nature of the goods or the nature of the lack of conformity."
A sibling comment states that this might have increased to one year though.
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:31...
This is great to know. Unfortunately yes, UK won't pick it up automatically.
And yes, in practice you need enough proof to convince a small claim judge, which might not be a lot, especially if the defect is well documented.
You seem to be out of your depth here, while accusing people of propaganda.
Anyway, no there aren't. The efficiency x longevity trade-off is inherent to the incandescent bulbs, you can't just wave all of Quantum Mechanics away. Material changes will increase or decrease the entire pair, and bulbs were already made with the best material that could possibly be used.
And leds, of course are different.
Anyway, nobody on the entire thread is denying that the cartel wanted to increase profits. What people are trying to say is that reality is more complex than looking at a single organization goals and deciding what happens.
What you're ignoring is that although a different material would still have the trade off, the optimal point on the curve for that material could be in a different place. Material A lasts for 1000 hours at a given amount of light/watt, Material B only lasts for 500 hours at that amount of light/watt, but lasts for 3000 hours at only 15% less light/watt, which some people might want. As an example, there are some applications where the bulb is repeatedly being turned on for only short periods of time, which would tend to shorten lifespan from thermal stress but also implies that power efficiency is less important because the bulb isn't continuously on.
The optimal trade off would also be different for different people. If your light bulb is hard to reach, saving two bucks worth of electricity over its lifetime may not be worth having to drag out a ladder or disassemble a piece of equipment to change it more often. If you have electric heat in a cold climate, a bulb that generates a higher ratio of heat to light isn't costing you anything because you were only going to use a different kind of electric heater regardless. But the cartel took those peoples' options away, claiming that the trade off could only be made one way.
And even for a given material, the failure mode is that enough of the material evaporates for it to lose structural strength and snap. Implying that you could use more of the same material with the same efficiency but improve structural strength.
> And leds, of course are different.
They don't operate in a universe with different physical laws, proving that incumbent incandescent bulbs are nowhere near the limits physics imposes on efficiency.
You don't have to ban longer lifetimes unless you're afraid someone will find a way to do better.
For every issue created by cartels or monopolies, there will be at least one "Akschually..." competitive explanation from libertarians that will either give a completely benign explanation of why this is actually good for your or blame the government/regulations for the issue.
Those explanations will become memes and every single time the subject is discussed they will be brandished by the faithful as axiomatic truths in ad nauseam fashion.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.This is just an internet forum for us technology well paid proletarians, you shouldn't take it that seriously.
The existence of poor quality products does not indicate malice -- many buyers demand low end products.
Cost/quality/performance is an engineering tradeoff without a "correct" answer. The answer is up to the opinion of the customer.
I fail to understand the link here. The video contains arguments and examples of that premise. Dismissing arguments and jumping straight into the "here's my opinion" is exactly the communication style I chuckled upon.
There is no better way to show that you don't care about truth and only care about defending your current opinion than to say "I don't know your arguments, but I disagree".
The thing is, all the theories of communication for persuasion (Social Judgement Theory and Elaboration Likelihood Model mostly) boil down to "hear your audience". If you really want to convince or persuade anyone, the starting point is to understand what's in the head of the audience you are trying to persuade. It's not often easy to get this information, so you start by expressing your views and carefully listening to the answers and arguments of those who have different views.
So if you have a chance to get the arguments in advance – before communicating your opinion – it's a blessing. It's a free lunch for persuasive communication. You're given people's opinions and arguments on the plate, basically.
And here this free lunch is thrown away just to be replaced with "here is my opinion and I don't care about arguments" communication style. That's not a starting point for debate at all.
I'm sorry if it came across that way but I absolutely didn't mean it like that. I'm happy to have my point refuted. I am a (mechanical) engineer but haven't worked in this specific field professionally, so I felt I might be able to contribute, as making devices sturdier is something I think a lot about. I normally don't mind watching MKBHD's videos, at that point of time I was in a silent place where I couldn't have done it.
Buyers want cheap bulbs, they don't want crap bulbs. If that means $1.25/unit is impossible, so be it.
This can't be understated. You never know with a bigger price tag if you are actually paying for a better build or just for branding + tidy profit. So you see two light bulbs with similar specs and the pictures on the box look indistinguishable.. unless you have specific experience or knowledge you are often doing yourself a favor to buy the cheaper one. Sometimes things are priced because they are actually better, but too often it is purely branding that justifies the price tag.
Not specific to lightbulbs, but I've also noticed a trend where a more expensive product with a big name and obviously more of an ad/branding budget actually is better for a few years... and then at some random date the bottom drops out and the product becomes almost indistinguishable from cheaper options while the price tag remains the same. Or even increases if they have enough market share and brand recognition.
And sometimes the better quality isn't worth the price. I bought a "Coochear" brushcutter on Amazon for a whopping $125 when my more expensive Husqvarna died due to a spun main bearing. At $125, I didn't care if it lasted longer than the time it would take me to remove the saplings that I needed to. The thing goes through 2" trees like they weren't even there. Yeah, it vibrates a lot more than it should and runs really rich, but it works a lot better than I expected for that price.
I know that I could have gotten another Husq that would work great but I really don't want to spend $600 for something that only gets used a couple times a year.
I have $1.25 bulbs in my home. I use them in unimportant locations with infrequent use. They are perfectly serviceable for this use.
> The customer will choose the cheap bulbs because they can't be sure the expensive ones are better quality. They often aren't.
This is a big problem for all consumer products. The root of the problem is that most consumers are wholly unqualified to be a judge of engineering quality themselves, few even know how to effectively obtain trustworthy information about quality, and those who do often value their time more than the effort required to do so. For larger purchases, some people who care to be informed will do some research, but I don't really think there's a solution for products <$500.
Even trying to find such a content creator on the fly can be dicey since so many of them are doing paid reviews or at the very least are sent free products + incentives. That, or get lucky googling site:reddit.com/r/[subreddit] [product] to find a thread that isn't too recent, isn't overrun by shills and isn't woefully out of date and full of deleted/overwritten content.
Another problem is that there are just too many products these days. 40 years ago someone might have 5 options for a vacuum cleaner, period. Someone on the internet today might have 500 options. It's just information overload. Someone who really cares to, might go through the 236 options that Consumer Reports has tested [0]
But most people aren't the type of people who would spend a half-hour arguing about consumer product quality on the internet. Most people aren't willing to spend any time to evaluate their options for relatively small purchases beyond the immediate moment of purchase.
[0]: https://www.consumerreports.org/appliances/vacuum-cleaners/b...
Good information for the quality of cheap consumer goods is hard to find because the information is not particularly valued by most people.