I've heard that there has been legislation passed in UK and/or EU improving the rights of equipment owners to repair equipment but I'm not sure what practical difference it makes.
A specific question I have is does it mean that mfrs should make servicing information available? I suppose that in the general case, e.g. White Goods, the user might be deemed unqualified so mfr can restrict the servicing info to repair shops. Begging the questions:
- If they must empower independent shops to fix appliances, surely there should be general availability of service manuals, not just to franchisees?
- In the specific case of electronic test equipment, surely the users naturally count as being qualified. It doesnt make sense to sell specialist equipment such as scopes, DMMs, bench power supplies etc. and then say the user doesn't have the level of knowledge required to fix them. This forum proves they do Does this mean users now should have access to proper servicing information (i.e. schematics, board layouts, servicing menu options in software etc.?
Apologies if this has been discussed. I see there's a long thread about Keysight
here. Reading between the lines, seems they'd rather lawyer-up than recognise that users paying thousands of $ on specialist test equipment might have some technical competence!
I also note that TTi seem to embody the ideal by making service manuals available and supplying spare parts even for very old equipment. Maybe the manuals are just leaked though? Fluke seems somewhat inbetween, some svc manuals available but many parts unobtainium or prohbitively expensive. Should we maintain a list of how complaint and helpful different mfrs are? Again apologies if i got this summary wrong or its covered in another thread.