General > General Technical Chat
Right to Repair - UK and EU making changes to facilitate repairs :)
themadhippy:
My first experience of manufacturers giving 2 fingers to the consumer was proctor silex back in the early 1980's ,who changed from making individual elements replaceable in there toasters to having to replace the whole internal assemble.Up until them most domestic appliances could be repaired,hoover vacuum cleaners for example were simple to striped down(as long as you had a long phillips screwdriver) and individual parts like motor brushes or bearings replaced and work fine for another decade or 2.However once one company was seen to be getting away with it the whole repair industry slowly died.
SilverSolder:
There is also the fact that it can be easier to manufacture than repair something. - that's the call an auto insurance adjuster makes when assessing if a crashed car is worth fixing, or not.
It seems that over the last couple of decades, industry has tried to get to a position where manufacturing is cheap, recycling is easy, and repairs are never worth it.
Even if they are right, the problem is that this rubs people the wrong way. - And they are not right... most EEVblog members are probably pretty adept at keeping things alive way beyond the expected life.
peter-h:
This thing is likely to get watered down to limited areas and eventually it will become irrelevant.
It's like REACH. It was supposed to force any manufacturer to accept back a product for recyling. But generally the cost of shipping the product back to them exceeds its value, and most consumers have no practical means of packaging anything sizeable, so nobody is going to do it.
Also, spares are available for a lot of stuff. For example I can buy hinges for a Miele oven which is 20 years old. The gotcha is that the hinges are almost £200. Then I have to pay for someone to change them, which is a big job because the oven has to be extracted, taken apart, etc... not an easy job.
SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: peter-h on March 10, 2021, 02:50:47 pm ---This thing is likely to get watered down to limited areas and eventually it will become irrelevant.
It's like REACH. It was supposed to force any manufacturer to accept back a product for recyling. But generally the cost of shipping the product back to them exceeds its value, and most consumers have no practical means of packaging anything sizeable, so nobody is going to do it.
Also, spares are available for a lot of stuff. For example I can buy hinges for a Miele oven which is 20 years old. The gotcha is that the hinges are almost £200. Then I have to pay for someone to change them, which is a big job because the oven has to be extracted, taken apart, etc... not an easy job.
--- End quote ---
Exactly, this kind of maintenance is almost only worth it if you DIY and see it as a hobby/challenge, or if the appliance is "industrial grade" and worth fixing, with a long life expectancy.
I run a bunch of old cars on a shoestring budget... it would not be possible if I had to pay a mechanic to do all the stuff I do myself. Sunny afternoon, a cold beer, and a wrench...
ferdieCX:
Four years ago, while living in Berlin, my landlord had to throw away a perfect working freezer just because the thermostat was kaput.
It used a proprietary connector that was not any more in production. Such proprietary things should be forbidden.
A few years ago, each cellular phone used a different connector for the charger. After an ultimatum from the EU to adopt a standard charger, the manufacturers quickly agreed to use the micro USB standard.
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