Europe’s right-to-repair rules will force vendors to stand by their products an extra 12 months after a repair is made, according to the terms of a new political agreement.
Consumers will have a choice between repair and replacement of defective products during a liability period that sellers will be required to offer. The liability period is slated to be a minimum of two years before any extensions.
[…]The rules require spare parts to be available at reasonable prices, and product makers will be prohibited from using “contractual, hardware or software related barriers to repair, such as impeding the use of second-hand, compatible and 3D-printed spare parts by independent repairers,” the Commission said.
↫ Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica
An excellent set of rules, and once again puts the EU at the forefront of consumer protection. Maybe some of it will trickle down to other places in the world.
I haven’t read the actual law, but going by this summary…wow once again the EU is way more progressive than the rest of the world. Here in the US I’ve been cheated by manufactures intending to deny warranty service. Not every time of course but I’d say around 50% of the time they’ve put up a fight. When my car was broken and covered by a “bumper to bumper” warranty, I expected the defects would be fixed under warranty, but instead I had to pay out of pocket and fight them and report them to consumer protection agencies. The excuse they used with me is that they resell customer warranty contracts within days of buyers signing them to a new warranty company that’s out of state and out of reach. Their intention is to “outsource” the liability so that when it comes time to honor the warranty they will say the warranty is no longer with them and tell the customer to take it up with a new company, which is what happened to me…meanwhile my car literally wouldn’t start and was supposed to be under warranty. What a freaking nightmare. I hear some banks like to pull this crap too. Shame on Honda for certifying dealers with these warranty scams! Anyway it’s a learning experience. This is exactly why we need strong consumer protection laws.
Is it really the case that consumers decide whether to “repair or replace”? Usually the manufacturer makes the decision to repair or replace. As long as they do repairs in good faith I wouldn’t expect them to have to replace every product. Does anyone else think that may go too far?
I have not read the text but it does indeed seem to be placing too much power on the consumer if they can decide that every issue requires a “replacement”. Some problems are easily repaired in place. Replacements can be expensive. Having to have large numbers of replacement devices for older models on hand seems like a supply-chain nightmare.
I would expect that “replacements” may have to in fact be newer devices. That would seem to create an incentive to force replacements purely to get a free upgrade. It is a perversive incentive.
The manufacturer should have an obligation to restore the function of the product. How they do that should really be up to them. A better approach to consumer protection is to place a greater responsibility on the manufacturer to ensure that repairs really fix the problem and maybe “lemon laws” that do require replacement after the same device has required more than a certain number of repairs.
I am all for protecting consumers but consumers can also be quite evil. I do not think a world were we change the balance of power to allow consumers to abuse corporations is really all that much better than the reverse.
While I agree with you, I also wouldn’t have any sympathy for corporations with decades worth of history abusing customers were they to be the target of the same behavior they’ve inflicted. If they have to use, for the customers benefit, some of the unimaginable amount of money they’ve swindled from them, no tears will be shed over here. I’m not someone who feels bad for the bully that finally gets his ass beat and lunch money taken.