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Right to Repair - UK and EU making changes to facilitate repairs :)
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Bassman59:

--- Quote from: AndyC_772 on April 15, 2021, 06:51:30 am ---The problem there is lack of clear, accurate information at the point of sale. By looking at an appliance from the outside, can you tell if it's repairable?

--- End quote ---

The standard customer -- not the engineer who knows about such matters -- cannot tell if anything is repairable at all.

That customer also cannot tell whether there's some extra circuitry in some electronic gadget that makes it more resistant to failure. That extra stuff adds cost but the customer has no way to evaluate whether the cost is necessary. And when compared to a similar item that doesn't have that extra stuff, and so costs less, what choice is made?

Maybe the only way to tell is by looking at the warranty. if the manufacturer stands by it for three years, likely the design includes the extra stuff. Something with a 90-day warranty? It will cost less but you take your chances.

And, in the end, barring a compelling reason to purchase the more-expensive item, the customer generally chooses the less-expensive option.

I guess once upon a time, brand names meant something. In a lot of cases now, the old "trusty" brand names are just trademarks owned by some anonymous OEM, and labels are slapped on junk with the hope that the buyer who remembered that brand being quality will continue to trust it.

And because brand names no longer have that meaning and trust, the overseas producers no longer bother to put an American-sounding brand name on a product sold here. Americans are no longer scared of a Chinese or Chinese-sounding brand name. We can't remember them -- the brand names vanish as soon as they're established -- but that doesn't matter. Only the price matters.
AndyC_772:
That's what I ended up doing. Make a shortlist, then rank by (price / length of warranty) to get a figure for worst case cost of ownership per year. I ended up buying the cheapest machine I could find that came with a 10 year warranty.

I'd love to see domestic appliances advertised with repair information alongside the (already mandatory) energy efficiency rating chart. Things like:

- guaranteed parts availability for 3 yrs / 5 yrs / 10 yrs
- full schematics included in box / available to end user on request / available to independent service
- 100% of parts available to end user / independent service
- does / does not contain components that must be set up / programmed / commissioned using proprietary software
M0HZH:
This won't change things.

Having a lab that costs £100/engineer*hour to debug & repair a £30 board in a £300 appliance that is really worth £150 on the used market is not really attractive to anyone. Not even manufacturers, that have all the required know-how and equipment don't bother with repairs anymore, they just replace and bin broken appliances returned within warranty. The only real exception is computers/mobile phones etc, where data held on the device might be of considerable value; Louis Rossman's niche is probably the most significant.

There is also the greater scope, of what we do as a civilization. Manufacturing is mostly automated and allows us humans to use our minds for greater things. Why waste a bright engineer mind on repairing some dusty, smelly TV when machines take a few minutes to make another one, much cheaper?

The real effort should be put in recycling electronics, not repairing them.
MadScientist:
+1 :-+
SilverSolder:

--- Quote from: M0HZH on April 16, 2021, 02:44:09 pm ---[...]
The real effort should be put in recycling electronics, not repairing them.

--- End quote ---

This is the direction things are going...  hand in hand with easy monthly payments, where you never really own anything, but are just paying for a service to be available to you.  If you think about a modern electronic product with a potted battery that cannot be replaced when it wears out after 2-3 years, it looks a lot like you are just buying a service for 2-3 years rather than buying something that you can keep for a long time.
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